Super Hero Squad - For the children, of course

[UnSub]

Super Hero Squad MMO starts up the hype train, teaser trailer due out tomorrow.

Two things: it's the first Marvel / Gazillion title, so it'll be interesting to see how it turned out. Secondly, it is a superhero MMO that is letting players handle the IP characters (i.e. so you can be Spider-Man) which is something unique.

[Lantyssa]

With the super-deformed look I just have to state, if I can't play Squirrel Girl or any of their other silly super heroes, I'm not interested.

[Velorath]

Squirrel Girl would be overpowered.

[squirrel]

Squirrel Girl would be overpowered.

You, dear sir, are wrong. She would just be taking her rightful place as a primary figure in the universal narrative.

[Velorath]

[Mrbloodworth]

O.o.


Thats fake right? I'm so out of touch with comics. I hope thats from a WHAT IF.

[Velorath]

O.o.


Thats fake right? I'm so out of touch with comics. I hope thats from a WHAT IF.

It's not fake exactly.  It's from the GLX-Mas special written by Dan Slott as a follow-up to his GLA (Great Lakes Avengers) Mini.  They're written more for humor (although they're pretty well written all around), and while it's sorta in-continuity in some ways it's not the kind of thing that's going to get referenced in an issue of Iron Man.

[Ghambit]

Ummm, that's The Maxx (Brer Lapin) lying there on the ground is it not?

[Trippy]

No it's Thanos, as it states in the panel.

[Rasix]

The TRUE Thanos.

[Goreschach]

Why is there smoke coming out of his ass?

[Lantyssa]

'Cause Squirrel Girl beat his ass down.

[Pezzle]

If they are going that route I wonder how you unlock play as Forbush-Man?

[UnSub]

Trailer suggests core gameplay will be a card-based system.

Also, the Hulk / Wolverine speedball was 

[Trippy]

Also, the Hulk / Wolverine speedball was 

"Fastball special". Turn in your geek card now!

[UnSub]

And after all the time I spent reading Dr Who novelisations to earn it too!

[Lantyssa]

It's not the same if it isn't Colossus throwing him.  The trailer was kind of cute though.  Doubt gameplay will be as interesting as that, but if they could pull off a Battle Chess / CCG it might change my mind.

[NowhereMan]

'Cause Squirrel Girl beat his ass down.

Thanos isn't the only one.

[UnSub]

An early view at PAX East from MMORPG.com.

Every read a preview that sounded like the author was trying to be positive, but saw there was no there, there? SHSO came off better than Fortune Online, but both write-ups were a little... flat.

[HaemishM]

Yeah, he really sounded like he was trying not to say "these games had less meat on their respective bones than Paris Hilton after 2 years on meth."

[Khaldun]

Squirrel Girl is Luke Cage's nanny now.

[UnSub]

Allegedly SHSO has officially launched. Or is in open beta. Or something.

Haven't really played through it that much, but it's open and colourful and free.

[Sutro]

Um, it's pretty awful.

As I own a comic book shop, I felt compelled to give this a whirl. Aside from your starter four characters, there is exactly *one* other character you can play for free... and it would require literally weeks to get to that point. Weeks of grinding one mission plus a random daily one. That's all the content you get, unless you want to run around two towns busting open mailboxes for stars.

It appears that if you pay, you get an OK amount of content, but it's nothing particularly compelling. Combat is click on the thing to throw and throw it at the baddie. Avoid the big sparkling energy balls. Repeat ad infinitum.

There is no conceivable way I could ever be compelled to pay money for this, and I've paid money for FtP games before... but only ones that give me an acceptable amount of gameplay beforehand. Raph's FB game is a good example of this; Free Realms was *this* close to looting my wallet. This? There's like 15 minutes of content before I sat on a park bench as the Thing and took a SS to sum up my general mood about the title.

[Cadaverine]

I'd have to agree, it's pretty bad.  It doesn't even play the theme from the cartoon during the opening sequence.

Took forever to load up after going through the tutorial.  Most of the content you can purchase costs gold coins, which you can only get if you're a paying member, as near as I can tell.   You get coins by using the tickets you collect in the main area to spin a wheel for 10, or 20 silver coins.  There's also 2 40 coin spaces, and 4 others for furniture, or other other consumable items.  With 8 tickets, I made all of about 150 silver, or so.  You also get silver stars from certain objects in the main area, which count as silver coins as well, I think.

There was one mission which was purchasable with silver coins, which I did.  You could buy multiple copies of the mission, so I'm guessing they're single use only, and you'd have to buy it each time you wanted to play that mission.  I don't know for sure, though, as it crashed midway through both times I tried to play it.  The other characters all cost gold coins to unlock, except Silver Surfer, who cost a mere 25,000 silver coins.  There's also some stuff that's only purchasable by Jr. Agents, but that requires you to sign up, and after it crashed on me twice, I said the hell with it.

Other than that, there's a card game, which isn't in yet.  You can also buy furniture, or rooms, for your HQ, but I never get around to that, since I couldn't even finish the mission I tried.

I don't know how they did it, but they managed to make a worse game than SOE's Clone Wars.  I was somewhat interested in this, as my son is a fan of the cartoon, but I'm not going to bother telling him about it.