Make that 'idiot ride'. · 6:32pm Jan 20th, 2015
A few exceptionally bored people might remember this blog post, where I spent some mostly-wasted words tearing apart the DC Comics version of the infinite run game. And because I have all the Internet impact of a single-signature petition, the game kept right on (infinitely) running and making money anyway. In fact, it did so well that the manufacturer spent several months promising a third stage, just to give people something else to pointlessly spend on.
It was released today. I got the full information about an hour later.
In general, the overall game was given a difficulty boost. Coin paths now wind and jump to heights you can't reach. Obstacles pop up everywhere. The number of enemies on the screen now equals the remaining population of Gotham, which at least means there's no innocents left to save and you can totally leave now. There's fresh stuff to collect, not that you'll ever be able to reach any of it. But the real news is Stage #3. Which is the Batcave.
The Batcave, as you might expect, is a death course.
Doors have electrical arcs passing across the openings. So do sections of the floor. There are tanks of labeled poison placed anywhere there's room, gas cans anywhere there wasn't, and land mines take up most of the rest. The land mines, naturally, explode on contact. So do the gas cans. If you're wondering why, you might also be wondering why there are multiple tanks of poison in the Batcave, but let's face it: we left logic behind a long time ago. And that's before we get to the spike-wheels, bulldozers, and thousands of Batman-shaped robots trying to kill you, all placed along a course which swoops and dives and does its best to make you more dizzy than a drunk blue hedgehog. But that's not the important part.
The important part is the boss fight.
Y'see, if you reach the end of the first stage -- the player I talked to burned off several accumulated boosters just to get a glimpse -- you will see some kind of motorcycle speeding ahead of you, possibly being driven by Bane. (Why did it not hit all the land mines before you reached them? Why is it not covered in spilled poison? Why did the World's Most Supposedly Prepared Jerk not place a password into his defenses so he could turn them off before they killed him? Why is the Batcave sixty miles long?) And clearly you can't catch up to that on foot. Which means you're going to need help. So the robot dinosaur which has been hanging around the cave for the last fifty years or so comes to life and gives you a ride.
I'm going to repeat that.
So the robot dinosaur which has been hanging around the cave for the last fifty years or so comes to life and gives you a ride.
So this is your scene. You are the bat, or the lightning, or whoever you picked as your character today. You are riding on the back of a robot dinosaur, which goes just fast enough to let you keep up with the motorcycle without closing in. And while riding this robot dinosaur, you must make it dodge rockets until an opening presents itself. The playtester never got far enough to find out what happens then because target the size of a T-Rex trying to dodge a rocket, but I'd guess the robot dinosaur head somehow stretches out and bites the motorcycle. Which would somehow keep going because minimum number of hits required.
Video games. Because psychedelics don't grant achievement awards.
To be perfectly honest I wouldn't be surprised if Batman would ride a robot dinosaur in the actual comics to chase after a villain. Actually, I guarantee it will happen eventually.
Am I the only one who thinks that riding a dinosaur chasing a motorcycle sounds incredibly freaking cool?
Ha! lovely review! The game makes about as much sense as Episodes 1,2, and 3.
Thank you, Mr Lucas, for giving up control of your franchise. No one could have done it worse that you.
(Well now that I think about it, there are worse choices.)
You have just described either something incredibly metal, or incredibly mental, and I don't feel qualified to decide whether or not that 'n' belongs.
you know, now we know for absolute certain that videogames can be art.
Only art of the highest, most hermeneutic order can produce something like this.
2735619
And if it happened during an episode of The Brave And The Bold, it would have been fun. Here? Apparently (and reportedly) not so much.
...actually, now that I think about it, one episode did have Bats and Plas on Dinosaur Island. I should probably check the footage for saddles...
2735628
I believe it's more traditional (and potentially cool) to use a Cadillac.
(This has been your obscure reference for the day.)
2735633
Well, the dinosaur is probably at least partly metal, and since the bat isn't holding any kind of remote or operating buttons on its back, the control might be mental...
I could redownload the game and play just long enough to see this in action: it's free from the Amazon app store. It's just that... you know. Land mines. And tanks full of poison. In the Batcave.
But at least the poison's labeled, right?
Sounds just a little overstated, coming from DC Comics.
There are reasons why I go to Marvel for my comic needs.
2735641
>that Cadillacs and Dinosaurs reference
I see what you did there.
And heroes are generally not allowed to ride dinosaurs.
allmystery.de/i/t6f58c3_nazis-riding-dinosaurs.jpg
Apparently dinosaurs have a long-standing cultural association with certain... unfortunate 20th Century political movements. Who knew?
Great. "Everything trying to kill you", the game. It's like the player is a bad guy from the Herculoids being blasted by ten thousand lasers from Zok, a dragon whose leading export is laser.
2735697
At this point we must remember that DC Comics once released an issue with a dimension-hopping nazi t-rex, Tyrannosaurus Reich.
2735769
*weeps for humanity*
*and that's just for that one costume*
I freely give you the win, but I'm gonna post these anyway.
fc08.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/285/f/3/moon_boy_and_devil_dinosaur_by_steven_donegani-d5hm1ff.jpg
witwar.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/arsenic-and-old-lace.jpg
2735683
(Incidentally, both Marvel.)
It probably goes downhill from there.
Psychedelics achievement unlocked: become comic book writer!
2735641
Really, the poison being labeled at all, let alone clearly, feels out of character for Bats.
Joker would label his poison. It might be crudely labeled "not poison" in red crayon with a couple backwards letters, but it would be labeled.
2735949
It gets funnier. They're actually vats of Venom.
...why?
Remember, the video game that saved the medium consists of a plumber making his way through a world of bricks and pipes, fending off irate mushrooms and turtles until he can grab an axe to sever a rope bridge and drop a giant dragon turtle into lava, all so he can rescue the human princess of a different species of mushrooms.
This is, if anything, a return to form. Heck, it's a return to the pre-Mario form of an unwinnable, infinite game where the sole object is to get as high a score as possible (or, in the case of Pac-Man, cause an overflow error and make the game go nuts.)
Even the micropayment system is a new form of "INSERT COIN." An optional one at that. Still annoying, though, especially its influence on game design.
2735999
... I want to run further with this gag, but I don't see how I can.
2736006
But when you're starting your own world from scratch, you're free to be as ridiculous as you like because afterwards, everyone has to accept it as canon.
I mean, telekinetic unicorns. Come on.
Except that the payments aren't so micro.
*wince*
Okay. I need to build up to the full punchline here, and it's not going to be a fast approach. It's just a lot funnier at the end when you understand all the factors which went into the joke...
In the original blog post, I noted the problem of instant death on contact with the first obstacle. (Eventually, you can complete a mission by doing it in ten seconds or less.) Obviously not the most fun thing in the world. This is why a large part of the game is dedicated to getting around that.
Glance back at that posting. See the mention of coins, gems, in-game equipment pictures, and experience? Here's how they work.
The game offers different characters. You get new ones by either buying a virtual card pack and taking your random chance of drawing the one you like, or saving up gems to scoot around the odds and pick directly off the shelf. Characters come in common, rare, and ultra-rare, as do the packs.
The more rare the character, the more you can do with it. Rare characters can take more hits before dying. They can also carry booster items. But even they have to be worked on.
Let's say you save up the 125,000 coins for your first ultra-rare pack and draw Wing Armor Batman. He can take three hits before dying. Big improvement. But there's still room to go up, because on the side of his character card, you get three star icons, with only the top one lit because your WAB is at Level One. Like any good
Pokemonbatjerk, he must be evolved.How do you evolve a character? First, get that card to Level 10 through play. Then, either save up enough gems for a direct buy or coins to get lucky with, and wind up with a second copy of your WAB. Take him to L10, then fuse the cards together. Get the result (who will have more health) to L15. Fuse him with another L15 WAB -- which naturally means getting two more copies of that base card. And then you have a Three-Star WAB. We're all very proud, I'm sure.
Now, there are benefits. I'm using the WAB as the example because he's the only one which my playtester has maxed out. At top tier, the WAB can take five hits, carry three boosters, and gets to break a rule: he can use the double jump feature (necessary to reach the best stuff, or just survive) an unlimited number of times instead of having to pay 150 game coins for each single use. Other ultra-rare top tier characters probably get their own powers, and you won't find out what those are without play or a lot of research, because the game won't tell you. But... you needed to earn all the coins to get him if you were playing the luck route, or gems for a direct buy.
Each direct-buy base-level WAB costs 2500 gems. You will need four copies.
How do you get gems? You started with twenty. You get one for the first boss you defeat during a given run, then two for the second, three for the third, and so on down the line (but very few people are getting past that). You are given tasks to complete in a given week: those are good for 25 gems every seven days if you do them all. There's a small chance of a random award each day for completing a mini-challenge. Watch a commercial (once per day max) for a single freebie. And the equipment cards? There are three types. Collect ten of each, trade them for twenty gems. But they're scarce, and often require things like double-jumping to reach.
So you can kind of see where saving up 10,000 gems is going to take a while, especially as it's hard to earn more than six in a single run. Coins... a good player could collect 2000 or so in a single run, and there are just about daily bonuses from challenges. Really, if you're that dedicated to playing, just keep spinning the wheel: eventually, you'll get four of someone, probably long before you save up the 10k supposed shortcut. Of course, if you're in a rush, you could just buy the gems from the game store...
(Getting close now)
Today's game 'upgrade' introduced five new character options. Three are unlocked through gameplay: you have to find their tokens -- a few hundred of them, at no more than two or three per run at best. They don't come in the packs.
The remaining two also do not appear in the random packs. They are Bane and Gold Armor Batman. (The game claims this armor is for distracting and disorienting foes. The game, as previously established, is kind of stupid.) Those two characters may only be purchased through gem use. There is no game coin option. It's gems or nothing. Each of them, as an ultra-rare, can be evolved to the Three-Star level. This means you're going to need four of that character in order to fully unlock whatever he does.
Bane's direct-buy cost, single copy: 10,000 gems.
So to discover what his abilities are and unlock the top tier? 40,000. And you've already seen how long it can take to build up gems. Complete all the weekly challenges, play casually without dedicating your whole life to it, get lucky with equipment pictures (because they don't have an even distribution)... call it sixty gems per week? At that rate, by the time you unlock Bane, the then-current generation of games will let you cyber-guide his robot body. So maybe you should just buy the gems directly from the game store, then spend those.
Largest number of gems offered, single purchase: 16,000. So you'll need to make three buys.
Real-world U.S. dollars cost per 16k of gems: $99.99.
Plus any local sales tax.
Instant-unlock of all four necessary Bane cards is three hundred dollars. The other road may occupy most of your probable current lifespan.
So maybe you're better off trying out Gold Armor Batman, if only so you can laugh at him. What does he cost, you might ask?
15,000 gems.
Per card.
Again, you're gonna need four.
That payment? Isn't so micro. And I know there are financially comfortable dedicated gamers out there for whom it's a casual purchase just in the name of saying they got a complete set and got to write the online guide... but for everyone else...
Here's your trope. And then some.
2736108
lh3.googleusercontent.com/-XKK3FuGY6SI/Ua5xO_OZxzI/AAAAAAAAXIo/TJHfMPdd74M/w1058-h705/1370132709270.jpg
2735778
Well, I've got to wake up six hours from now, so I won't go into length, but I need to say the following:
DC Comics specializes on completely over-the-top, god-like superheroes, while Marvel specializes on making relatable, balanced heroes.
Consider the following: DC has the Justice League, which is a world police composed of superheroes that live and breath above lowly human law. Marvel's closest equivalent are the X-Men, who, despite all their powers, live in a situation that can only be described as German Jews during the early 1930's.
Another cool comparison would be DC's Batman vs Marvel's Spiderman. Batman possesses two mayor superpowers: first, he is a triillionaire who apparently never needs to administer his fortune and has a personal spending account that could fund the freaking Manhattan Project. Second, he has the incredibly overlooked superpower of apparently being capable of stretching time to unlimited proportions, considering that he apparently has dozens of masteries and grandmasteries on diverse martial arts, and degrees on every single conceivable police science. Now how does Spiderman compare? Peter Parker, in absolute contrast, starts out as a college kid and continues as a wage worker, has no formal training for working as a superhero (he had to learn as he goes), and even has to make his own freaking suits!
Or DC's Superman versus Marvel's closest equivalent, Phoenix. Superman is nothing below godly: the limit of his power is only defined by how much energy he can leach from the nearest star, meaning that he is literally as powerful as he ever needs to be, and is never in risk of losing control. Phoenix, on the other hand, is like a nuke: whenever Jean Grey needs to let the Phoenix out, Jean risks waking up and finding that the Phoenix reduced the world to cinders.
2736167
Oh. Well then. And I thought the pony smartphone game was bad. Similar coin/gem issues, but this is literally orders of magnitude worse. Licensed games are never very good, but I've never seen one that was quite this evil.
2737500
Would you believe the pony app game has gotten way better about this over time? Not only have the gem prices for ponies dropped to a fraction of what they were; they've added more content, including events and minigames to get lots of the ponies that cost gems for free instead.
I mean, it still has issues. It can still barely be called a 'game' at all, mechanically speaking. They still try to trick you into wasting your gems by "speeding up" things with no takebacks or "are you sure?" button after you accidentally click on it. As you will, many times. But provided you're not in a hurry, you can now actually get through the game and build a thriving Ponyville without spending real money at all.
I have King Sombra working as a manager in the Canterlot pizza shop. I'll take that over Batman, I think.
2736167 huh, apparently even Marvel's FTP games are better. Marvel Heroes is Diablo with marvel characters (and fairly literally, Gazillion, the company that makes it is David Brevik's thing) and while they have quite a few ways to get you to spend lots of money, they at least have some restraint. There was recently a deal for 12 heroes for the coming year, much like the same offered last year, and each hero is a differnt character class. You can earn these in game too BTW, it's not super fast, but if you play a lot you'll rack up the currency to get them eventually. This cost a grand total of $99.
For that matter even if you want to stick to spending money on DC products you can get all three lego batman games on steam for less than that, and they're great. Also they're one of the few things DC not crazy dark. I mean some of the villain unlocks in Batman 3 are clearly brave and the bold costume designs. Also it has Music Meister I love him so much. He prances around instead of a normal walk cycle and it's great. Plus Adam West is scattered about the game to be rescued and the bonus level is based on the super campy TV series. Oh and Daffy Duck as the Green Loontern actually has a lot of lines in the game 3, even if he's mostly just a tour guide.
2735697 Actually it's just evil really likes T-rexes. Basically if some sort of evil has the means they will always try to get a T-rex under their control, and because with no ethical constraints they can use things like mind control among other things. The good guys have to actually befriend the dinosaurs, and since most of the time they're wild animals that doesn't work too well.