Remembering Legacy of Heroes

My brain works in weird ways. I woke up this morning remembering this gem:

It's a free to play game released by 5th planet games, and I played it on Kongregate way back in the day. 5PG shut down the servers back in 2012 or 2013, and I remember feeling...cold...when it happened. I think that's the right word to describe it.

The game was all about super heroes. You'd create your own hero, build a deck of allies to help you and super powers to use in game, and...that was the schtick for this game. It was a simple idea, and they drew from years of comic book history to shape the design of the game. What impressed me the most about LoH was the original universe that 5PG created. It felt familiar, like you had grown up reading the comics.

The story mode was broken up into chapters, which were depicted as issues of the Legacy of Heroes comic book. And the story shared was fun! You're a student at a school for super heroes, a school very similar to a certain Marvel school for gifted children. The lead instructor is Professor Helios, a fire manipulator who strikes me as eerily similar to Dumbledore the more I think about him. While I don't remember much about the actual story, I remember the school coming under attack by a bunch of Villains, Helios getting stomped (and maybe dying? I can't remember), and facing off against a league of villains along the way. With the rise of Boku no Hero Academia, I'm a trifle surprised we haven't seen a resurgence of this game. There's a whole lot of parallels!

The game featured the standard fare microtransactions of the time. You could refill your stamina, buy card packs, cosmetics, you know the drill. I don't remember it being excessively aggressive in its monetization, but I definitely couldn't afford a lot of what the game had to offer. The grind wasn't that bad, and you could get some decent cards just by playing the game.

The raids were pretty famous on this game. You'd get a handful of people together, and take on a supervillain together. one of the most famous (and more memorable) raids was against Dimetrodon. I looked online today, wondering what happened to this game, and stumbled upon a forum thread of other people asking if they remember LoH. The first response? A line from the Dimetrodon raid: "DIMETRODON FIGHT!!!" If that's not an indicator of how memorable the raids were, I don't know what is! The raids gave you equipment, special cards, and I thought one of the higher level raids gave currency for a special shop. They were a nice buff to your decks, especially when you needed that little boost to get to the next chapter.

For as detailed the game was, It was a real shame that the game shut down. I remember logging in for my daily login bonus, and seeing that I got a bunch of premium currency. And a large amount! And then the chat showed up on the side. The chat was already mourning a game that was set to shut down in a month. It sucked, but there we were. Legacy of Heroes had entered its death knell, shut down by the developers. I guess they weren't making money on it, so they couldn't afford the servers. And I...I couldn't stick around. That was the end of the game for me. Every now and again, my ADHD addled brain remembers Legacy of Heroes. It remembers the artwork, the design aesthetic, and the DIMETRODON FIGHT!!! Unfortunately, that's all it's gonna be now. Memories of a time lost to the aether.

This post was also shared on my Steem profile.  You can check it out here.

Review: Titanfall 2

Developer/Publisher: Respawn/Electronic Arts

Platform: Xbox One, Playstation 4, PC

Rating: Mature (Blood and Gore, Language, Violence)

Reviewed on: Xbox One

When the Xbox One launched in 2014, Respawn Entertainment was tapped to create a launch title for the new system.  It was a decent game, not without its flaws, but I enjoyed what it offered.   With the arrival of Titanfall 2, I knew I needed to pick it up and review it.  How did it turn out?  Pretty good, actually!

Review: The Division

Platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One

Price: $59.99 USD (Standard), $99.99 USD (Gold)

Release: March 8, 2016

Rating: M for Mature (Full ESRB Synopsis)

Platform Reviewed: PC

Ubisoft's newest series inspired by Tom Clancy launched last week.  Ubisoft's Tom Clancy games have been rather hit or miss, but they seem to sell well for the company.  How did this one fare?  Find out more after the jump!

Character Development and writing: A Conversation with Ashton Raze

Ashton Raze

Not too long ago, I talked with Ashton Raze about character design, writing, applications in Game Development, and other highly unrelated topics. She was willing to answer some questions I had for her, and I thoroughly enjoyed talking to her.  It's amazing what random conversations on Twitter can turn into! Our conversation started on Twitter before moving to a more formal interview.  Those 140 character limits tend to really cramp what one can say.  Our initial conversation was how easy it is to add a token character to the plot for little reason than to check off a box on the diversity checklist.  I got to thinking about solutions to this problem when I started talking to Raze.

Admittedly, I had a bit of an agenda to push when I first reached out to Raze.  I set out to rant about game characters and how developers don't spend enough time fleshing the character beyond a few simple traits/tropes. While talking with Raze, the conversation quickly changed and went an entirely different direction.  The conversation changed to writing and character development, and as such, I've had to rethink how I would write this article.

Review: Spec Ops The Line

Platform: PS3, Xbox 360, PC

Developer: Yager Studios

Publisher: 2K Games

Players: 1 (offline) 2-8 (online)

Rating: Mature (Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language)

Reviewed on: PS3

Playstation Plus has a knack of pulling out the occasional awesome title.  Just last week, they added Spec Ops: The Line to their list of free games.  And boy, is this a title to add!

Review: Aliens Colonial Marines

Release Date: 02/12/2013 Rating: Mature (Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language)

Players: 1-2(Splitscreen co-op) 8 (online)

Platforms: PC, PS3, Xbox 360, Wii U(release date to be announced)

Platform Reviewed on: Xbox 360

Now, I was a late comer to the Aliens franchise.  I admit it.  I used to hate scary movies.  Now that that's not the case, I love what Ridley Scott did in 1979, and James Cameron expounded upon 1986.  Those movies did more for science fiction than anything else out there.  I wish I could say the same about Aliens: Colonial Marines...

Playing for Free: League of Legends

If you haven't been gaming under a rock for the past couple of years, you've probably heard about League of Legends.  If you haven't played it,  you can sign up for an account here.  You may have heard about how passionate the community is, the cheating at last week's world championships, and the folks that drop an insane amount of cash into it.  But the game says, "Free to Play."  Is this a game that you can actually play without spending a dime? Over the past six months, I've been putting this very question to the test.  And now, I'm here to post my results.

Preview: MechWarrior Online Closed Beta Impressions

Some of you may have noticed that I've been away for a while and haven't spent much time writing about games.  Part of that was due to the Non-Disclosure Agreement I signed when I started trying a few games.  I've been in the closed beta for MechWarrior Online now for a little bit, and I've been holding back on gushing about it.  That is, until now.  The NDA has been lifted, so there's a lot to discuss on this little gem.  So, without further ado, let's get started!

Scrooge Alert! 10% off Mists of Pandaria!

Buy.com has a 10% off deal for the newly released World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria.  It's $36, down from the MSRP of $40.  Those of you that were thinking about getting it, this might be the tipping point.

Scrooge Alert! Metro 2033 for $5!

Bourbon wants you to buy Metro 2033.  Go do it!

Those of you who read my review of Metro 2033 and didn't buy it now have no excuse to pass it up.  Green Man Gaming has the game available for PC download for all of $5.  Go do it, now!

How to fix World of Warcraft

In the years since Blizzard released the MMO juggernaut World of Warcraft, the community has seen its share of ups and downs.  In the past year, WoW has shed roughly one million subscribers to various competing MMOs.  Now, with Mists of Pandaria on the horizon, Blizz is banking on more people coming back.  But what if they didn't need an expansion to accomplish this?  What if there were simple things that they could do to bring in more users and subscribers?  Here's my laundry list of ways Blizz can "fix" their aging titan.

Getting Digital Distribution to be taken seriously

PC gaming has changed, just like war.  Developers have had to grow and adapt to the changing environment.  Some do better, some don't do so well.  However, there's still quite a bit that needs to be fixed.  If this is going to be the future, there's a lot that needs to be done.

Metro Last Light teaser now online!

Those of you who saw my review of Metro 2033 yesterday will be interested in this little tidbit...

Review: Metro 2033

Platforms: PC, Xbox 360

Publisher: THQ

Rating: Mature (Blood, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Use of Drugs, Violence)

Players: 1

Reviewed on: Xbox 360

Metro 2033 literally flew under the radar of most of the gaming communities when it came out in 2010. It's based on a Russian novel by Dimitry Glukhovsky, and set in a post-apocalyptic Moscow.  After playing it, I really wish I'd stumbled upon this game sooner.

What can we learn from Diablo 3 & and open letter to Blizzard

With all the hype about Diablo 3 as of late, it's been plagued by several issues.  What lessons should Blizzard take away from this?  In my book, plenty.

Retro Review: Area 51

Players: 1-2

Rating: Mature (Realistic Violence)

Reviewed on: Saturn, PS1, Arcade (Yes, I've played all three, and recently!)

If there's any genre that gets a ton of attention out of me, it's the light gun shooters.  There's something about the actual holding the gun and actually aiming that Call of Duty and Half-Life just don't do for me.  And Area 51 is quite probably one of the quintessential light gun games of the late '90s.  For a game that gave me the willies when I was younger, it really has its charms.

AO Ratings: should they really be a kiss of death?

The Adults Only rating, or AO for short, has long been seen as a "kiss of death" to a video game.  Most if not all retailers will outright refuse to stock an AO game, and the rating itself is largely associated with porn, sex, and the most depraved violence out there.  But, perhaps the fear of an AO rating is doing more harm than good.  Here's a couple of ideas on how to make AO work, and where it can and should be used.

Top 5 video games based on movies

Ah, the ever classic movie tie-in.  It's the bane of quality video gaming, full of rushed games and frustrating controls.  Every now and again, however, a shining gem appears out of nowhere.  Here's five of them, epic games based on movies.

Still more reasons why DRM isn't working

Destructoid had an interesting comment thread in an announcement about Ubisoft games going offline for server maintenance.  With this downtime, legitimate copies of some of Ubi's biggest PC titles will be unplayable, even in the single player campaign.  Here's an excerpt from the article:





The affected PC games are HAWX 2, Might & Magic: Heroes 6, The Settlers 7. Those using a Mac will be unable to play The Settlers, Assassin's Creed and Splinter Cell: Conviction. Most other games will have their online modes unreachable for the day, although Just Dance 3 and Driver: San Francisco are said to be unaffected.

Understandably, people are less than thrilled about this.The comments in the Destructoid thread are funny, but they raise some good points.  This rant is continuing on the DRM rant that I posted a while back, and I'll be including some other topics that have come up since then.

Five video games that were marketing ploys in disguise

As long as video games have existed, there has been someone looking to advertise in them.  Some companies go a step further, making a game that serves as one big advertisement.  Some of these games are surprisingly enjoyable, and others are notable in a historical sense.  So without further ado, here's five video games that were marketing ploys in disguise.