Artifacts of roleplaying: the Marvel Super Heroes City Map
Roleplayers put a lot of stock in maps.
Maps can fire the imagination, make you see worlds in a way that description can’t. A good map of a fantasy world can supercharge your play experience, and take you into that world better than anything else. I think there’s a reason why the most popular request for Collector’s Edition items in MMOGs was always “a cloth map”.
Not all maps are of fantasy locations, however, and the map that made the greatest impression on my mind as a roleplaying teenager was this:
The city map as seen in the original ‘yellow box’ of Marvel Super Heroes, from TSR in 1984.
No single item (with the probable exception of the map that came in the Advanced Set, two years later) had more of a jumpstart on my gaming than this map. I played endlessly on this thing, generating plotlines simply based off the names on the buildings. It came alone in the box, with no explanation, no attempt to define everything you’d find on it; in other words, your imagination was allowed to run wild. Continue reading
FPS by numbers
I finished Call of Duty 4 today, which was sort of surprising as I thought I had ages left to play through. Turns out ‘Act I’ was the longest of the three, so without even trying hard, I suddenly came to the end.
Probably took me about 10-12 hours to play, which I know these days is seen as “Too short” but for me it’s just right. (I like to finish stuff, and preferably not over a period of months and months – unless we’re talking some super-engrossing strategy game, and those don’t often appear on console.)
Overall experience? Pretty good, but I came away thinking it wasn’t the breakthrough FPS experience I thought it might well be, judging by some reviews. Perhaps that’s because it’s not that up-to-date (it did come out in 2007) but actually, I think it’s because I felt like I’d seen it all before:
- The ‘hold off the bad guys for X amount of time’ mission
- The ‘escape under heavy fire’ mission
- The ‘fire on people from a flying thing’ mission
- The ‘shoot from the back of a moving vehicle’ mission Continue reading
Re-learning to love City of Heroes
As I’ve said many times in many an interview and to many people in person, City of Heroes was the reason I joined NCsoft.
In April or May 2004, I can’t recall, I was playing the game (on the US servers, natch) and enjoying it so much that I was considering starting a fansite about it, based around a twinned blog – one character based, one player based. A very good friend of mine said to me: “Instead of making all that effort for nothing, why not go and work for them instead?”
The rest is history. (Funny thing is, I never did get around to that blog idea.)
While I worked for NCsoft I never stopped playing City of Heroes (Well – not altogether), but of course I was privy to a lot of behind the scenes information. Which meant often, very little came as a complete and total surprise. (And if it did, it was often not a good surprise.)
Which is why it’s great, now, to start to look at the game from a genuine, uninformed player’s perspective again. Today the EU site is hosting a Developer Diary focusing on the Day Jobs system from Issue 13, and it makes for a very interesting read. Continue reading
Spending October inside
Autumn’s here, and it’s not going to let you forget it.
After a brief respite last weekend, where I lay about on green grass near my house reading Piers Paul Read’s biography of Alec Guinness, the weather since has just gotten progressively worse. To the point where I didn’t even want to leave the house today. The fact that I was supposed to be going to the gym had nothing to do with it, you understand.
I did leave the house though, and I even made it to the gym. If I hadn’t though, I’d probably have stayed in and played games. Which is as good a segue as any, I suppose, to what I’m playing. Continue reading
Limited Edition… featuring me
(I almost wrote the subject line ‘Wearing Yellow Spandex’ but I get enough random weird search queries as it is…)
Limited Edition, the new podcast from John ‘Shuttler’ Nicholson, ex-host of TabulaCast, and his partner in crime Matt, has moved on to Episode 2 – and said episode has a brand new voice in the mix, namely me! Yes, after hearing episode one of the show I thought I could help these ‘babes in the wood’ on the subject of comics and superhero-type stuff, so I volunteered my services.
Did I completely take over? Are they regretting ever asking me to appear? Did I vent my spleen on the subject of NCsoft? Even worse, did I spill precious secrets about Issue 13??? Continue reading
This week, next week; and games
This week’s been busy, and next week may well be busier.
This week was all “Oh, so that’s how it’s gonna be” and “Well, that won’t work, maybe this will” and “My brain can’t even cope with that” and “Sure, but who’s going to pay for it”.
Next week could be “Do we want taller?” and “Well you should have said so” and “I know, but we’ve got to get it done” and “Don’t bother me, I’m learning”.
This weekend is going to be “I can’t bowl to save my life” and “My booze tolerance is so low these days” and “Man, it feels like a week” and “At least it’s Monday tomorrow”.
In the middle of all this, I played a few games.
Finished (deep breath) Penny Arcade Adventures – On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode One, which I did enjoy a lot, but didn’t love, like a long-lost relative or whatever. Continue reading