Tag: Marvel

Disney Pulls The Plug On Marvel Heroes

It was announced a couple of days ago now that the free to play Isometric MMO, Marvel Heroes will no longer be supported by Disney as they have "...ended [their] relationship with Gazillion Entertainment...". Of course this quote from Disney doesn't outline any detail toward the situation but does go on to say that Marvel Heroes will "...shut down".

Sad news for those of us who enjoyed the Diablo-esque ARPG for sure but not a huge surprise to those who've kept close tabs on the game its projects. Gazillion have been keeping up with updates and new content related to the newest Marvel movies and TV shows for as long as Marvel Heroes has been around. That support suddenly stopped a short time ago and folks started putting two and two together to make the assumption that there was, at the very least, a serious problem.

In fact servers will shut down on December 31st and in-game purchases are being removed now. That means that for rest of its existence the game will be 100% free to play. R.I.P. Marvel Heroes. You had a decent free to play formula and pretty dang fun game play. I will personally mourn my own Captain Marvel. Together we irradiated and captured countless criminals and villains via her near limitless celestial powers. You will be missed.

NonStiq: Just Who is This Nightwatch Guy Anyway?

Alright so the first thing you've got to know about me is that I'm not a real big graphic novel fan. I have an old collection of comics from my younger days and every now and again I'll pick one or two up if they look interesting, but I hardly ever read them. In fact, the only comic book hero I was every really into was Image Comics, Spawn. I have lots of issues of that particular character and I read all of them at one time or another.

So I'm going to throw down some exposition real quick. Spawn came about in 1992. I bought the first issue for the same reason I buy any comic: it had a cool cover. I read that book and I was intrigued. Back in the early 90's Marvel and Image shared a lot of writers and artists and I believe they did so for quite a while. Lots of cross overs took place with various comic companies. spawn-batmanOne of those artists and creators was Todd McFarlane, his mind was the one from which Spawn was sprung. Okay? Good.war-devil

Flash forward to 2016 where I got an invite to head on up to my Sister and future Brother-in-law [Twinstiq's own Cody Hall] 's  place for a small-ish nerd conference that looked like it could be fun times. While there Cody and I went through some of the many comic bins that lined the booths and searched for something interesting. I found some cool stuff by the old standby of "cool cover, pick it up" that I've used when purchasing many times before. One of those happened to be an issue of Spider Man called Web of Spider Man, issue number 100 from May of 1993. wos_100

Here's where all this babbling on about this and that gets interesting. I was flipping through this Spider Man comic with a cool shiny green cover featuring Spidey in a suit of armor when I saw this effing guy right here! nightwatch

"Hang on" I said "This guy looks pretty familiar, like Spawn actually. A lot like Spawn." My Sister happens to also be a Spawn fan and I shot her a text and picture of this guy that Marvel calls Nightwatch. She replies to me "That guy is a copycat." [Turns out he's not exactly but we'll get there in a minute]

From there we were both wildly intrigued by the obvious similarities of these two characters and made it our business to find out just who this Nightwatch guy is. Luckily for me I had this issue of Spider Man and at the end is the origin story of Nightwatch. Convenient yes?

So here's what we know about him:nightwatchcompare

  1. His name is Kevin Trench and he witnessed his future self being killed by terrorists hijacking a plane. He takes the black and red Nightwatch Suit from his own lifeless body.
  2. The Nightwatch Suit, is composed of nanites capable of fixing [almost] any damage to itself and its wearer. The cloak is prehensile, can be used as a separate limb and change forms.
  3. He's African American.
  4. He seems to be stuck in a time loop and sort of destined to meet himself at the moment of his own death.
  5. Came about in 1993

Compare those details with those of Spawn:spawn-1

  1. His name is Al Simmons
  2. He was killed by a mercenary, sent to hell and brought back with very few memories.
  3. He has a red and black, living suit that can heal itself, shape-shift, and protect its wearer.
  4. He's African American
  5. Came about in 1992

So aside from names and few minute details the origins are very similar. One important fact is that they both died. Certainly they look alike: The extra tall high standing collars, the excessively large cloak, even some of the markings and colors.

Powers as well: They can both self-heal. Their suits are both powerful extensions of their bodies able to protect their wearers at all times. They're both physically more powerful than normal humans. Either of them can fade into the shadows and remain hidden as well as perform some pretty similar shape shifting.

There are definitely enough character details to separate the two from being one and the same, but I [and my Sister] had to wonder... Is this a character that Todd McFarlane made before leaving Marvel completely? Did he base Spawn off his initial designs of Nightwatch and Marvel just happened to use his original character later?

The answer is no. Nightwatch was created by Terry Kavanagh and Alex Saviuk and his appearance was later changed so as not to resemble Spawn so closely. His introduction as Nightwatch happened in Web of Spider Man number 99. Costumes of the two characters still shared similar abilities, even if they were explained a bit differently.

Spawn's suit is a living being; symbiotic and endowed with a host of nearly limitless dark powers from hell, including: speed, flight, healing, attack, defense etc. It'll even keep Spawn safe while he's unconscious. While Nightwatch's suit is all about nano-technology allowing for various healing, pain suppression, air filtration and vision enhancement powers. The suit is also capable of creating darkness in a limited area, gliding, and forming into sharpened tentacles. They may sound a bit different, but they can both do more or less the same stuff.

Nightwatch had his own short run series and appeared in various issues of Spider Man, and She Hulk. He was eventually killed off in a heroic way while saving an innocent in a battle called "The Great Game".

So to me, these two still have a bit too much in common to be mere coincidence. Spawn came first but only by a few months and who's to say what transpired? Perhaps someone was watching someone else and received a moment of inspiration. Perhaps it was a little more nefarious than that. Just because one was in print first doesn't mean the idea was first in that particular someone's head, and vice-versa. We may never actually know. But even for a guy who only has a passing interest in graphic novels this was something that made me very curious. I kind of hope to run across Nightwatch again some time.

And by the way while I was doing research for this article I happened to notice that I'm not the only one who ever posed the questions at hand here. I would recommend a quick Google search if you're interested in knowing more.

 

Recommendation: Marvel Heroes 2016 – The ARPG You’ve Been Looking For

Alright well we've all seen free to play ARPG's out there and most of them are too good to be true. They allow you play to a certain level then charge you money to continue playing, or they lock specific gear you need to continue behind a pay wall or some such nonsense that makes an otherwise fun, free game, much less free or fun.

But some get it right. Path of Exile, for instance created and published by Grinding Gear Games, is a great fantasy ARPG. Nothing locked behind pay walls, and donations are made for cosmetic items only if you so choose. All content is free and fully accessible and the support is excellent. It remains one of the best examples of how the free to play model can really work. But let's say you're sick of the typical dungeon crawler, D&D fantasy style isometric Diablo clone ARPG.

Enter, Marvel Heroes. It pretty much speaks for itself but here's the rundown. You'll be a super hero or villain from the Marvel Universe and follow a very graphic novel style story that takes you around the world to see places like New York and the Savage Lands while giving you home bases like Avengers Tower and Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. The story is told through missions as you play of course, but also with some very cool comic book style cut scenes.XavierI've been playing this pretty consistently for a while now and I'm noticing that this another good example of a player friendly free to play model. So let's look at this game a bit and see why it's such a good experience. It's 100% free. You can grab Marvel Heroes on Steam if you have an account, or you can download it right from the source at the official site and soon enough you'll be confronted with a choice of what hero or villain you want to become. When you first start you'll have access to 12 heroes and after the prologue that number increases to 55 and more are still being added. Here's the current list of playable characters.

You'll be able to play every hero or villain until level 10 and then the game reminds you to remember to switch out heroes or choose to "uncap" the current one. They give you one hero for free to level all the way to 60 but want you to play as many as you can so that you can make an educated choice. I tried: War Machine, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, X-23, Juggernaut, The Thing, and Cable, to name a few (there were more) before finally deciding to continue on with Captain Marvel. The rest of the heroes and villains remain playable at any time you wish from just about anywhere in the game. So if you feel like you need a quick change just press "T" and choose a new hero; no need to log out and back in to switch. It's a pretty smooth operation.Marvel and SpiderWomanIt's important to remember that every playable character is free until level 10. I reiterate that because if you grab this game on Steam you'll see some fairly pricey DLC on the list that includes heroes. Those DLC packs include cosmetic items and alternate costumes which you can purchase separately in-game. They'll also uncap that hero for you but the most useful thing they include is a character specific inventory, which would actually be pretty great because inventory and stash space is shared and storage is kind of limited if you're going to play more than one hero. It's also important to know that if you do decide to uncap more than one hero you can do that via the game store with real money, or if you're patient you can collect "eternity splinters" (items that drop off enemies) and use them to purchase your next uncap. They aren't very rare and the game will even provide you with a pack of 400 of them as a login reward and that alone is enough to buy most heroes, they range from 200 to 600 splinters each. The point here is that you only need to spend actual money if you want to.

I've chosen to purchase an alternate costume for my Captain Marvel because it's not expensive to do so in most cases (some cost more than others) and I figured I'd support the title in at least a small way. And like most free to play games Marvel Heroes has deals and sales on bundles of items and the like pretty often.Need a sidekick? Get a team-up hero. The game will provide you with at least one, but all the playable heroes and some extras (like Carnage, Agent Venom and many more) can be purchased as a team-up. They have their own items and skills and gain levels just like you do. Plus if for some reason you need to go AFK for a bit they'll hang out and protect you.

My only real complaint is that I think this game needs a lot of balancing. Now don't get me wrong I know that it makes sense to be vastly powerful what with being a super being and all, but there's almost no challenge at all. It's possible to wipe a out a group of dozens of mobs with the use of one skill. In fact the only times I've been defeated since I started playing regularly are in the "Patrol maps" where everything is stronger and bosses come at you in multiples. To be fair though there is supposed to be end-game content for level 60 heroes that provide a much better challenge, but since I'm only level 41 at the time of this writing I can't speak to that myself. Also co-op play with friends will increase the difficulty of enemies on the map. blastSo there we have it, my recommendation to play a really good, friendly, free to play title with a great model. Marvel Heroes uses Unreal Engine 3 Engine so it runs great while looking great, and there's even a Mac port in case you use one of those things for games.

Our own Yoda0vgs introduced me to this in a sort of trial by fire live stream that we did a few days ago. You can see the video here on our Twinstiq LP channel, skip ahead to around the 11 minute mark to actually see us start playing.

System Requirements for Marvel Heroes are as follows

Windows

      • OS: Windows Vista 32/64, Windows 7 32/64, Windows 8 32/64, Windows 10 32-bit
      • Processor: Core 2 DUO 2.1 GHz / AMD Athlon X2 2.1 GHZ or better
      • Memory: 3GB
      • Hard Disk Space: 30GB*
      • Video Card: Shader Model 3.0 Compatible with 512MB VRAM (Nvidia 8800 Series, ATI HD3800 Series, Intel HD 3000)
    *30GB is required for installation. After installation, Marvel Heroes will require 15GB of storage.
      • OS: Windows 7 64-bit, Windows 8 64-bit, Windows 10 64-bit
      • Processor: Current Generation Quad Core (Intel Core i7, Core i5 or AMD FX Series)
      • Memory: 8GB
      • Hard Disk Space: 30GB*
      • Video Card:Discrete video card with 2GB of VRAM (Nvidia GTX 600 or 700 Series, AMD R9 or HD7900 Series)
    *30GB is required for installation. After installation, Marvel Heroes will require 15GB of storage.

Mac

      • OS: OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion
      • Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo
      • Memory: 4GB
      • Hard Disk Space: 30GB*
      • Video Card: Discrete or Onboard GPU with 512MB VRAM (Nvidia 9600m GT, Intel HD 4000)
    *30GB is required for installation. After installation, Marvel Heroes will require 15GB of storage.
      • OS: OSX 10.10 Yosemite
      • Processor: Current Generation Quad Core (Intel Core i7, Core i5, Xeon)
      • Memory: 8GB
      • Hard Disk Space: 30GB*
      • Video Card: Discrete GPU with 2GB of VRAM (Nvidia GTX Series, AMD FirePro Series)
    *30GB is required for installation. After installation, Marvel Heroes will require 15GB of storage.