Saturday, January 30, 2010

MMORPG, the Inexplicable Creature from Planet Spazz!

As some of you may know, I recently was asked to do a City of Heroes arc for their new Guest Author program, and I lovingly crafted a story of Nazis, zombies, robots, werewolves, rock and roll, and cheap plugs for my comics in a little adventure I called "A Little Night Music." Since some of you folks may not be regular CoH players (and dammit, why aren't you?), I thought I'd run some screen shots from the five missions that make up my arc. And if you DO play CoH but haven't played these yet, you might want to wait. Hey, this gives me the chance to say...

SPOILER WARNING! Woooot! Woooot!

I should mention, by the way, that these pics were taken by a number of my fellow CoH forumites, and a swell bunch of eggs they are, including Aliana Blue, Gibson McCoy, Lazarus, Golden Girl, and a few by yours truly. Thank you folks, for all your efforts, and your terrific screenshots. Let's take a look, and bear in mind that most of these can be enlarged by clicking on them.


First up is super-strong she-wolf of the SS, and Der Fuhrer's former girlfriend, Evil Brawn.



And here's Brawny getting her giant clock cleaned by Golden Girl.


Here's GG again, taking on the dreaded Greco-Robots.





Here we see a group shot of the Fifth Column doing that voodoo that they do so...well, slimily.



The developers were kind enough to join in on some missions with the player base, and here we can see Dr. Aeon and team laying the smackdown.



Here's GG once more, taking on those electrical creations of "light-canthropy," the Wolf Blitzers.



This one shows the rescue of young Jimmy Preston (you may remember him from my issues of the CoH comic book).



These creepy SOBS are zombie gourmets known as the Bone Appetits.



And here's the undead ayatollah of rock and rolla, Bloody Holly.





The next couple here are shots of Bloody's minions, the lethal Fright Attendants, and the fearful atomic powered Boooo Rad-leys.






Now a few more shots of the Greco-Robots. Man, I didn't realize how intimidating a big group of these things would be when they're comin' at ya!






Next up is the corpse-raising Li'l Dead Riding Hood and her "pets."




Next is the scariest torch singer of all, Caba-Rage, both before and after she activates her power.





Finally, the archvillain of the piece, the legendary Nachtmusik, seen here with his "liebchen," and using his dream powers.



Anyway, that might give you a slight taste of what the story feels like, but if you get a chance (and CoH offers a FREE 14-day trial if you'd like to give it a try), check it out. I think you'll dig it. I sure had a blast making it. And my characters are animated! How cool is that???

Man, I'm such a fanboy.

And proud of it...



6 comments:

NuclearToast said...

Normally I hate spoilers, but knowing your characters, I just had to see what baddies you'd invented. Can't wait to see them in person!

Troy Hickman said...

Thanks, Toasty. Everyone seems to like the writing on the arc. A few folks have thought the villains were too tough in spots, but most players haven't had too much trouble with them. I'm going to have to get better at game mechanics.

Jason Newcomb said...

Trippy!

Snorii said...

Looks awesome, I'll have to check this one out. Did I miss the Arc number somewhere? I've been away from the game for a little while - are guest arcs treated differently than architect stories?

Troy Hickman said...

If you just type "hickman" into the search you'll get it.

Slickriptide said...

Hey, Troy.

I went into the Architect for the first time in months, and saw that your arc was up.

I have to say that it was one of the most fun I've had in the Architect. I soloed it on normal (inasmuch as any lvl 50 Illusionist can be said to "solo" anything) and it was challenging but not overwhelming.

My only complaint was that I started ghosting through the big maps due to the length of the story.

I also think there should have been some lemonade in there; but then, it wasn't Citadel's dream. *heh*

Nice how you worked Common Grounds in there. ;-) Overall, big thumb's up.