Inspired by my comments regarding WoWs Rogue Killing Spree move and its similarities to Wolverine earlier, I feel the need to write about the wonder that is Marvel Ultimate Alliance (MUA).

I picked this up when it come out on the Xbox 360 a year or two ago, and played it co-op with a buddy.Let me tell you, this game is genius. If you haven’t played it, and you have at least one friend (only one is required, I know it’s hard speaking to people in real life, right) pick this up. By the looks of things there’s a gold edition come out anyway, so it’s probably cheaper than a months play of Archlord or RF Online. Oh wait, RF online got closed didn’t it? oops!

(In your face shitty MMO developers!)

Anyway, as I half mentioned before, MUA is a hack and slash game played out with various Marvel characters from an isometric viewpoint. Not being able to distinguish which character is from which type of comic I just call them all Xmen, but I don’t think they are. So you have 4 characters on screen at any one time and you run around smashing enemies faces in, beating up bosses, and trying your best to annoy your buddy who you are playing with. This is basically my main objective when playing any co-op game with a friend sitting next to me; get through the game whilst causing the most amount of frustration to your partner as possible. MUA caters to this well:

1. Obsessive collections. Part of the game involves collecting little glowy baubles you find lying around on the floor, affectionately referred to as trinkets by me and my buddy. This has spawned a whole trinket related in joke between us, but I won’t go into that. So collecting trinkets allows you to… you know what, I don’t even recall what the point of it was. I became so fixated on collecting the trinkets that it didn’t even matter what the point was, I got my joy from just getting them. Also it means hours of frustratingly slow (for my buddy) progress through the levels as I single mindedly sought out every trinket possible. This caused me even greater joy. Trinkets could be found by killing baddies, or (and more importantly) destroying certain bits of the world; barrels, pipes etc. This leads me elegantly onto my next point:

2. Destructible scenery. A lot of stuff in this game can be broken. Walls can be smashed down, or at least cracked, pipes can be broken, barrels exploded, you get the general idea. Some items can be smashed apart in one attack, whereas others require a concentrated effort; potentially causing your buddy to sit there twiddling his fingers while you spend 5 minutes smashing apart all 3 pipes that are on the screen before moving on. Combined with my obsessive need to collect every trinket, this made playing MUA with me an even more laborious task.

3. Annoying characters. I played two characters almost exclusively; Wolverine and Deadpool. Wolverine is great because he regens health, so is almost invincible. This meant I could charge around trying to kill anything and everything as much as possible, and probably come out on top (even when I didn’t deserve to). Not annoying on the surface perhaps, but when I demand to be Wolverine (arguably the best character) each and every time, it got old fast I’m sure. Later in the game I picked up Deadpool, let me tell you, this guy is amazing if you want to piss your friend off. He can shoot his guns, so you’re able to shoot baddies before they even make it onto the screen, rendering your companion(s) useless/unnecessary. He can do this thing where he jumps up into the air and drops 4 bombs spread out across the screen. This is a pretty good move, but when it’s accompanied by me screaming “DROP BOMBS” like an excitable child, every, single, time I do it. It got old, fast. He also has swords, which are just awesome, I don’t think those are annoying really.

Off the top of my head, other games that are great for playing co-op (and hampering your friends progress):

- The early Splinter Cell games (who needs stealth)
- Gears of War (“don’t worry, I got this”)
- The Rainbow 6 games (Bash door)

No, I am really quite sure I won’t shit bricks when I see your crappy picture.

Now don’t get me the wrong, I love the internet and all it’s little meme’s, but really, there needs to be some sort of quality control for the internet.

Yes motivational pictures are amusing, see below:

However, taking a picture where something isn’t immediately obvious to the naked eye, and then writing “you’ll shit bricks” underneath, is not funny. Even when something is genuinely shocking or amusing when you don’t first notice it; you don’t shit bricks; and no I’m not being literal here (of course you don’t actually shit bricks, idiot) no one is metaphorically shitting bricks either. A picture of a guy with a blind persons walking stick reading a newspaper does not make my glass of Coke come out of my nose, nor does it create any manner of stirrings in my nether regions.

I’ve seen literally one or two of these “you’ll shit bricks”” pictures that I’ve found even marginally entertaining, and that was mainly due to the offensive connotations as to the reasons why I might be defecating building materials. I’m fine with non-PC, although your attempt at satirical racism actually just comes off as ignorance, however what I am not ok with is idiocy. If you aren’t 100% convinced that your picture is the most hilarious thing this side of… well anything, then DON’T POST IT ANYWHERE. I can guarantee you no one else will find it funny. Heck, even if you are convinced it’s utterly hilarious, ask someone else who isn’t an idiot first.

If for whatever reason you have no idea of the existence of the motivational posters trend, or the “you’ll shit bricks” flavour, then go look them up. Though if you’re the sort of sad lonely individual who’s actually reading this, I’m sure you’re already aware.

No, this had nothing to do with gaming, but you still needed to be told.

With Ironbreaker currently sitting at 15, I’ve a little experience in both Tier 1 and Tier 2 scenario PvP, along with the comparison that can be made with my Marauder. As with my previous post, this will be interspersed with random scoreboard screenshots, as per my ego dictates.

Starting off at rank 4 or so, I have to say I felt pretty useless as an Ironbreaker. Healers and damage classes have their roles and abilities to perform them clearly defined from the beginning of the game. However as a tank I found I started with a series of mediocre damage moves, and nothing that made me feel very tanky. I basically just ran around with a two handed axe trying to chop people’s kneecaps. This proved vastly ineffective some matches, and slightly better in other matches when the opposition were unorganised and a healer decided to take pity on me.

I ended up avoiding scenarios until about rank 10, where things started to pick up. By this point I still wasn’t feeling very tank like, but being higher for the bracket and having a wider selection of skills made me a little angry powerhouse. Slapping your Oathfriend ability on whoever happens to be getting the snot beaten out of them helps keep your grudges high. Not that keeping your grudge level at 100 is ever hard when in combat anyway. Good matches in the later part of the Tier 12 bracket frequently ended in me topping the scoreboard, whatever metric I chose to look at.

At this point I was still thinking in a similar mindset to my Marauder; try and get lots of kills and do lots of damage. Yes I’d put more of a focus on protecting the healers if I saw someone break through our lines and attack them, but I still didn’t really have many tools to do much about it, aside from taunt.The only class that was consistently out damaging me was Bright Wizards, but then that’s not a surprise is it.

Moving onto Tier 2…

This coincided with my decision to try out sword and board (or axe and board in this case) rather than the two handed weapons. My main motivation for this was actually wanting to try out the shield skills, which had been sitting on my bar for a few levels and I’d never tried. In PvE questing I found the switch not to slow me down much, at least I haven’t noticed it so far.

I now have a series of skills that make me feel more like a tank, I won’t name them all (because I don’t remember the names) but in essence:
- Oathfriend – good for keeping my grudges up, as mentioned
- Guard – protect your squishy, or the guy carrying the scenario objective. Or maybe that Warrior Priest that you hope might heal you but never does
- Shield of Reprisal – activates on parry, knocks the opponent down for a couple of seconds
- The other shield ability (told you wouldn’t remember all the names) which allows you to swipe up to 3 opponents
- Away with ye’ – Knock someone down, 20 sec recast (I think)
- Hold the line – Increases block and disrupt chance for yourself and all team members who are behind you, good to use when moving forwards (if you remember to)

All these skills enable me to much better do the job that I’m supposed to be doing; protecting squishies, holding the line, generally making a nuisance of myself, AND dishing out whatever damage I can. This has lead me to change my focus a little. My focus has been more on protecting people and holding our lines, than trying to kill people myself. Often this involves knocking down and harassing the tanks or melee DPSers that are trying to kill our healers. I find that if I get my hands on a squishie I can dispatch them quite quickly too, so annoying the enemy healers myself also seems to be a valid tactic.

This new focus, combined with my low level for the bracket, and move to one handed weapons, has lead to be sitting much lower down in the tables as far as kills and damage goes. However In the matches that have gone well, I’ve still felt like I was doing a very useful job. After playing a DPS character though it feels slightly weird; you don’t have a metric on that scoreboard that you can use to measure how good your performance was. Yes I know that even for melee DPS characters if you’re just sniping killing blows, or doing loads of AOE damage without ever actually killing anyone you might end up topping the scoreboard without actually helping your team that much, but at least you have some figures on the board to show in most cases that you’re doing well. It’s both a blessing and a curse; I never feel like I really know if I’m doing well compares to other tanks, but at the same time I don’t feel the need to try and beat everyone in quite the same way. Essentially if you’re protecting the right people and doing the right things your team will win (in most cases) and people will recognise you did a good job. That seems to be about the closest you can get to knowing you did the “tanking” part of your job right.

To sum up my general strategy right now; slap Oathfriend on Warrior Priest, melee DPS or other tank, guard a healer, then head to the front lines and simultaneously try and stop the enemy getting through ours, while trying to get my hands on any squishies that venture too close.

In conclusion; Ironbreaker PvP just got fun!

As is becoming the norm with me these days, not much gaming went on at all this week. My little Marauder is still sitting at lv23, and my Ironbreaker has not been touched from one weekend to the next. This is not for any reason other than laziness to be honest. However, in the last couple of days I’ve done a few different things, which seem to have got me back into my groove (and out of my funk?).

Firstly, I decided to log back into World of Warcraft for the first time since Warhammer Online came out, to test out patch 2.3 (or whatever it is). So far I’ve tried 3 of my different characters, to see the new talents.

Paladin – I tried out Protection spec to se the new skills, and get a feel for the changed seals/judgment system. The talents seem to sync nicely with Paladin tanking as a whole (not that I have much experience in it) and make it feel a little more interactive. The new seals system I find to be a massive improvement on the previous one. However none of this really motivated me to go do anything on my Paladin, so 20mins later back to sleep she goes…

Shaman – Currently sat at lv66 my Shaman has switched between Enhancement (mainly) and Elemental (when duoing). I decided to give Enhancement a bash with the new talents, who wouldn’t want pet wolves right? Well the answer is me. After the second time you cast them the novelty wears off, and I soon realised that Shaman has gained nearly nothing in this line from the new talents. I have a new skill to use, which triggers an off hand melee hit…. awesome (that’s sarcasm by the way) and that’s about it. Every other facet of this spec seems identical to me. I levelled at pretty much exactly the same speed as before, if anything my ability to take hits and dish them out seemed slightly depleted. Nothing new here, and hours play and it’s time to move on. Having said that, I did get to witness Retribution Paladin whilst on my Shaman, in the form of Dan’s Ainia. I have to say it was impressive, he was killing monsters in a couple of hits (literally) and putting anything I could do to shame.

Almost made me want to switch back to Paladin…. almost.

Rogue – Here we go, killing spree, that looks fun. This immediately made me think of those Marval Alliance games. For anyone not familiar they’re isometric view punch-em-ups where you take control of Xmen, and maybe other comic book characters too. I’m not nerdy enough to know whether they’re all Xmen or not (and not it’s not relevant and I don’t care). Aaaaanyway, I was going somewhere with this. Wolverine has this special move in this game (think Morale moves if you play WAR – don’t think if you play WoW (you might hurt yourself)) where he sort of ports back and forth around the screen in rapid succession, slashing the play doh (bet you’ve never heard that one before eh?) out of all the bad guys on the screen. As one of my friends could attest, I loved playing as wolverine, in fact I pretty much only ever played him and Deadpool (drop bombs!).

Where was I?

Oh yes, Killing spree, it made me think of Wolverines special move. I have to say, I wasn’t entirely disappointed. It’s a weird feeling in an mmo, sort of hopping around in a disjointed manner. These games normally make your character so… solid, consistent, there. It’s only fair right, means the other guy can hit you back.

After trying that move once or twice though, I quickly realised I can’t actually be bothered to play the game. Yes I am one of those people who gets lured back with the promise of shiny things, but can’t actually be bothered to put any effort into it. So, with a lack of shiny things, I log out.

On the plus side, they finally made mounts/pets into “spells” rather than items in your inventory, and provide a separate space for you to store Battleground tokens too. Why has this taken so long to implement?

So, onto Warhammer. I’d been feeling semi-jaded with this game, due to mine (and my friends I suppose) inability to choose a “side” and stick to it. I think I’ve finally settled on Ironbreaker now anyway. At least until I change my mind again. I find as he levels up I’m enjoying PvP more and more (post on that to come tomorrow) and grinding mobs is a joy with 100 grudge, as he becomes a little power-house. I’ve also just switched to sword and board rather than two handed, and I seem to be enjoying it a lot. The knockdown and swipe makes things a lot more fun. So I’ve progressed swiftly from 13 to 15 today. I’m hoping for another level or two tomorrow.

This could be slacking period over, for now.

If you’re not immediately aware of who is in the picture above, then punch yourself, now, hard. This is of course Tumble, the genius creation of Nintendo, who first graced us with his presence in the glorious Mario Party 3.

For those not familiar with the Mario Party concept, you pick a character and play a board game within a computer game, think the Matrix, except it didn’t turn crap after the first outing. So you roll the dice, move around the board and at the end of each round play a funny mini game.

To serve as a little background to anyone unfortunate enough to know of Tumble and his craft, he acted as the host character in Mario Party 3. As you can see, he’s basically like Toad, except that his head is a die. Now stop and think about this for a moment… He’s the host of a virtual board game where you TAKE TURNS AND ROLL A DIE and his HEAD IS A DIE. I assume the subtle genius Nintendo employed here is not lost on you. He appears to have no discernable body of any sort, but I can assure you bodies are over rated, and this never held Tumble back in life.

From the moment I first saw his cute little head, and marveled at the appropriateness of it, I was hooked. Tumble is my hero, my muse, my vision of self actualisation. Tumble is everything I can hope to be in life. The joy I get from hearing his freakishly high voice scream “CHANCE TIME!” at me can only be rivaled by… well, it can’t be rivaled… That’s sort of the point, he’s awesome.

Disappointingly, Tumble doesn’t seem to have featured in future Mario Party games, though I believe he made an appearance on one of the Game Boy versions.

Why did you do this to me Nintendo? How could you possibly favour any other character over Tumble. What could possibly be better than Toad with a DIE FOR A HEAD!?

Other notable characters in Mario Party 3 include the Genie Mushroom guy (with watermelon coloured bottom half?) and the Millennium Star. The Millennium Star is like, the prize giver I guess? when you do well he rewards you with stars. Notice his disapproving frown, and flamboyant moustache, which he wiggles in a mesmerizing fashion.

I’m considering starting some sort of Tumble fan club. This character needs to be back in the public eye. I’m entirely serious.