By Nathan Grayson on December 4th, 2012 at 12:00 pm.
The Marvel universe’s mastery of POWBIFFS, WHAMZOTTS, and SHAWARMASLAMS is well-documented, but devout fans obsess over its skin-tight shenanigans for far greater reasons than that. Admittedly, I’m not much of a comic book reader, so – based on a new story trailer for Gazillion’s promising-looking Marvel Heroes MMO – I can only assume that reason is dinosaurs. Or maybe story, but that’d just be silly. Watch the superhero world’s most writerly of luminaries discuss their tale for the ages after the break. Then join me in hoping that this ends up a legitimate feature.
So that sounds ambitious. But then, so does anything that plans to leverage 8000-some-odd characters over the course of multiple years. Given that Marvel Heroes is an MMO, the key lies in how they tell that story. Otherwise, everyone’s just going to ignore it and get on with firing lasers out of their eyes. They’ll have no idea that those are actually congealed tear lasers of their character’s tremendous interpersonal woe.
Having heroes trade in-character quips back-and-forth, meanwhile, sounds like a fun idea on paper, but I’m not so sure about it. For one, the example dialog was cliched and meaningless, and – maybe more importantly – I myself would probably morph into a hulking green embodiment of pure rage after hearing, say, Deadpool repeat same canned line repeat for the five millionth time.
The BIFFTHWOMPING looks pretty good, though. Also, dinosaurs. Gazillion claims a closed beta is approaching faster than speeding bullet, so you might want to get on with that whole sign-up thing. I, meanwhile, claim to mix my comic universe references intentionally for the sole purpose of making fans upset.
04/12/2012 at 12:15 DutchDrunk says:
Looks marvellous.
04/12/2012 at 13:07 Hoaxfish says:
I’d like DC how it plays first
04/12/2012 at 13:22 Unrein says:
It’s going to be super, man!
04/12/2012 at 13:56 NailBombed says:
Dark Horse it will be.
04/12/2012 at 15:00 The Random One says:
Your puns are so bad I’m feeling nauseous and dizzy. It’s like I have Vertigo.
04/12/2012 at 15:23 Warduke says:
Hopefully this will develop a better Image than most superhero games…
04/12/2012 at 16:54 cpt_freakout says:
Who knows? Maybe it will be a quality Amalgam of gameplay, looks, and social features.
04/12/2012 at 22:23 MacTheGeek says:
This truly is an Epic pun thread.
A Valiant effort on everyone’s behalf.
05/12/2012 at 01:21 P7uen says:
How big is the beta download? I’m in the US, and bandwidth is capped in America…
04/12/2012 at 12:18 DonJefe says:
This trailer made me feel really old. This would have been exciting to me some 15 years ago maybe, but now I just think it looks terrible.
04/12/2012 at 13:00 Unrein says:
DINOFACE
04/12/2012 at 13:05 zbmott says:
You know, I could really go for a shawarmaslam right about now…
04/12/2012 at 14:49 Bork Titflopsen says:
Everybody get up, shawarmaslam now
We’ve got a real jam going down…
Welcome to the Space Jam
04/12/2012 at 15:28 NailBombed says:
Actually looking forward to this…. as a long term Marvelite, I can’t help but be enthused. Wonder if it’ll go on to form a Marvel Villains spinoff – would love to play as Magneto. ‘Sending a man in a suit of armour against a Master Of Magnetism? You Avengers never learn, do you? At least that’ll double as your coffin’.
04/12/2012 at 15:57 Baines says:
Magneto’s been a member of the X-Men for years. Although he’s now running with Cyclops, who is arguably a villain now. (By Marvel law standards, Cyclops is now a villain. Even if the Avengers were largely responsible for the bad stuff that happened in AvX, Scott’s the one who took the fall for going all psycho with power..)
As for the game’s story, Marvel’s big events have been fairly dreadfully planned, coordinated, and written since the beginning of House of M. The two primary factors have been Marvel’s management/editorial and Brian Michael Bendis.
This project being a game does render several of the points of contention mute, though. People aren’t going to really expect continuity beyond convenient nods. Nor are they going to really expect characters to behave like themselves. Illogical moments won’t necessarily be picked apart, because the focus is going to be on playing the game, not paying attention to the story. Etc.
04/12/2012 at 16:13 NailBombed says:
Didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to AVX to be honest… have a read a few issues here and there, and while I can’t fault the artwork, BMB’s writing has been fairly appalling IMO outside of his work on Ultimate Spiderman. Most of my fave Marvel stuff has already been done, like Joss Whedon and Warren Ellis’s Astonishing X-Men, and Grant Morrison’s New X-Men. Also Garth Ennis’s Punisher (which had a decent video game adaptation with the PS2 Punisher game).
I think a lot of Marvel’s best work right now is on the Ultimate line – they fecked it up royally with the Ultimatum event for a while, but seem to be getting things back into order with Jonathan Hickman behind the current Ultimates arc, and Ultimate X-Men is going pretty well also.
04/12/2012 at 20:11 Urthman says:
I’m curious how they’re going to deal with duplicate heroes. If everyone on the server wants to be Spider-Man, will there be twenty Spider-Mans running around? Or will you log on and have to spend a several minutes being told SORRY THAT HERO IS TAKEN RIGHT NOW before settling for Triathlon or The Black Knight.
04/12/2012 at 21:08 Arglebargle says:
Boy, that ‘dialogue’ IS truely cliche, pedestrian, and awful. Is their target demographic ten years old?
I hope the gameplay is at least decent, as their writing and story are certainly suspect, given this trailer.
04/12/2012 at 21:25 Warduke says:
Every trailer I see looks like a bit of a click-fest. I hope there’s more to it than clicking and motion comic cut scenes.
08/12/2012 at 08:52 adonf says:
Wow, Charles Xavier really got fat
28/02/2013 at 07:01 ericzhu says:
After watching the Blade and soul video ,I think Blade and soul is so amazing.Just as the bns news said, the game style is so beautiful.The game players will be attracted by the balde and soul artworks.