Too Legit To Quit (MC Hammer's Last Words)

This just in: The CEO of BP has announced that the idea of him stepping down has crossed other peoples' minds, but not his. So there.

We will have a new Ajax Telegraph shortly, this one about Zentra, a new aged herbal treatment for insomnia and bad vibes. Not that there's really anything new about it.

In the mean time, a pair of product reviews I was too tired to do last time.
Darrell Lea Soft Eating Strawberry Liquorice

I didn't know the Australians made anything, other than flat beer and boomerangs. You can imagine my surprise when I found a package of 'Australia's Favorite Liquorice' at the same place I generally shop for Pez. Could an island full of the descendants of criminals be wrong? I had to find out.

It's damn good--and generous. This is completely unlike any liquorish I have ever tried before. I didn't let the claim of having 'Natural Flavor' (so does mud) distract me. Nor were its lack of artificial colors or flavors particularly selling points, at least to me. (Hil-Gle supports chemicals in food.) This is rope liquorish, segmented. The peices are very thick and have an appealing gummy texture to them.

Apparently Darrell Lea has been at this for a while. Per the back of the bag, a fellow named Harry Lea started selling it out of a push cart in Perth back during the early 1900s. By 1927 he had opened up a store. Ok, so he wasn't an overnight sensation, even by Australian standards. But the candy is gosh darn fabulous.

(Hil-Gle is not a paid product endorser. We normally notice things only for the purposes of kicking them in the crotch and then grinding our heels in... slowly.)

The flavor is mild and vaguely tart. Akthough obviously mass produced, it has a hand crafted feel to it. It's certainly on a par with anything hand crafted that you might find in Lake Geneva or the Dells. I intend to stalk down their other flavors, if I can find them.

Champions Online Role Playing Game

It sucks.

Full disclosure: I am the author of my own superhero role playing game and am thus a tad biased. I never liked Champions as a game in its original paper version form. The thing is a confusing mass of accounting tricks. That said, the people behind Champions are a swell bunch and no one deserves a break more than they do. Moreover, they originated the idea of putting a superhero game on the computer. They have been true industry trailblazers from the start.

It's a pity the game sucks.

I previously played City of Heroes, another online game which was entirely based on Champions. That game was kind of fun. My measure of any superhero game of any kind is whether or not you can make Superman without bending the rules out of shape. To this date, no computer game, online or otherwise, comes close. Other than Wolverine or The Flash, you really couldn't make any known comic book characters in City of Heroes. The game just wasn't flexible enough. You couldn't even make Batman, because throwing things was somewhat out of the question. No Spiderman. No clinging to walls. No Wonder Woman. Characters had problems holding objects much less throwing ropes. No Aquaman, even. You couldn't own a car. All of the heroes commuted to their adventures via public transportation. And the less said about the bowling around corners style AI the better. What you wound up with was a game populated by characters who looked like they stepped out of the comics, but who played like they were all cut from the same mold. In superheroes, it's really all in the nuances and City of Heroes didn't have any.

You essentially had four character types. (They claimed several more.) All of your characters either beat things with their bodies or shot off powers at range. Ported in was the D&D cleric class, which had no real place in the genre. If you worked up a toon to 50th level, you could get this utterly useless dual form squid thing.

It had its moments, but it was basically Evercrack in Spandex.

The new Champions game is by the same design team as City of Heroes. Given that this is their second crack at this, and that they have had years to hone their craft, and are now finally working for the people they had made a fortune from ripping off, you would expect them to do a bang up job. This is just not the case.

There's no there there. Whereas City of Heroes had its own style, Champions has monotony. Other than making automated graphic routines more visually interesting, they did nothing to improve the character types. Surely the "Champions Mythos" must have added something to the game? It was always a rip off of 1950s DC Comics, perhaps the least interesting era in all of comic books. It's semi-fun for old men like myself to pick out the dated references, but I don't see the average game player getting much out of it. Is the AI better? If everything now universally charging you can be considered better, yes. Are the fundies better? Actually kind of a step down. Are the zones more interesting? No. From what I saw, Champions has neither the depth of visual design nor plot variety that City of Heroes had. Beyond the tutorial are two starting areas which are both bland and yet depressing. All fun, all sense of wonder, all science fiction swashbuckling thrills are exiled and replaced by Road Warrior in the Desert or Road Warrior in the Snow type starting areas. Is it easier to solo? No. In fact, there's a paucity of door missions. It's like you and several other people are waiting in line to pounce on monsters as they arrive at a bus stop. You will spend more time waiting for other players to get out of your way than you ever did in City of Heroes. Are the character types more interesting? They've replaced the time that your City of Heroes character would have spent panting to recover with putzing around attacks that do no damage. You can have a character who both shoots things and hits people with a club. Still no thrown weapons that return to your hand. No Thor Hammer, no Captain America Shield, no Spidey webs, no boomerang, no lasso and a strange paucity when it comes to selections of firearms and sci fi stuff. You have eighty goofy ways to fly--including underground mud swimming--but still no cars. Still no ability to really customize the way a power looks. If anything, the characters are now more alike than ever. You can mix and match a bit more, but its still either hit things or shoot things. There isn't even as much variety as there was in City of Heroes. Unlike City of Heroes, there are no bases. All in all, its a downgrade.


I don't think the thing was ever really ready for release. Now that its out, the design team is splitting its attention between this and another project. In the end, that's what stagnated City of Heroes. If there's one thing the designers proved in their last efforts it's that they are not so good that they can do two things at once well.

On top of that, it's boring. It's the game I had before, only less--and with new confusing controls. Sending this pig off without an actual printed manual was no bonus, either. It took me a week to get through the tutorial. Maybe I am stupid. Maybe my brain cells have all fallen out my ears. That could be a problem on my part. The lack of effort and creativity I see is, however, not a product of my imagination. If you're going to do something, do it right or at least try hard. The people at Cryptic Studios have done neither.

For shame.