Three-Letter Acronyms & Four-Letter Words

I can quit playing video games!

Ok, not all video games, just my free copy of City of Villains that I got at SXSW.

I played a few different characters.

The first one I made was one called, Dark Monkey. For some reason rather than try out a completely different class of character, I went for something that was a little closer to my old City of Heroes character, Ruthless Monkey.

I choose the Brute class, these guys are the sluggers, the behemoths that are probably not too smart but can give and take a beating.

I got that character up to lvl 14, which took about a week of playing (at night for a few hours and a couple of days on the weekend).

Then I decided to play a different class. So I tried out the Stalker class. This class of character is exactly like the Scrapper class in City of Heroes, the class of Ruthless Monkey. I made a Katana / Regen Stalker. Exactly like Ruthless Monkey, with the exception of the fact that there is a "Hiding" function, so that you can do assassin's strikes.

I only played that character for about 4 levels, I think I named him Dresdin (i was watching the Dresdin Files at the time).

During my time playing Dark Monkey, I teamed up a few times with players that were playing a class that had henchman.

This looked interesting. The idea that you could have minions at your beck and call, to fight for you and what not. Who doesn't love the idea of having minions or lackeys.

I played along side some characters that had gang members, robots, and army soldiers.

However, when creating my Mastermind character, I opted for Zombies. Zombies are more often than not my favorite characters in video games and comics.

However, I needed a theme. As I wasn't watching any TV shows with zombies I had to be a little bit more creative. So I came up with BunnyMancer. I figured the idea of a cocktail waitress necromancer who has turned zombies into the wait staff seemed creative.

Oh yeah, did I mention you can name the zombies (minions).

The Mastermind class is pretty cool. I mean the game as a whole is still pretty much the same, create a character, defeat various enemies, level up, defeat more enemies, level up. So I am not going to be playing beyond pretty much this weekend.

I had one goal for BunnyMancer, to try out a travel power that I had not used in City of Heroes, Flight. I had used SuperSpeed (like the flash) and SuperLeaping (like the hulk), but never flight.

So last night I made it to level 14 (at which travel powers become available), then I proceeded to explore the area some more, now that I could fly high above the enemy (mind you there are flying enemies too). I ended up taking a boat to another island in the game, an island that they should post warnings about. You need to be level 40 to survive there.

I was killed instantly.

Here are some screenshots from the game.







Laterz

I had heard on the radio that here was going to be an "arcade" setup at the Austin convention center during the SXSW Interactive conference. The name of this part of the conference, ScreenBurn.

I don't quite know what I was expecting. And honestly what I saw was I guess sort of what I thought might be there.

You walk into the room and the lighting is a little dim, some of the most noticeable light was coming from the various kiosks and gigantic flat screen tv/monitors.

However, what peaked my interest and ultimately made me want to get down to ScreenBurn was that someone had walked by our booth with a copy of City of Villains.

Apparently, NCsoft was giving away copies of their games. I had played City of Heroes back when it first came out.

Also, when I first walked in there was a table full of games in front of me. I originally thought that was were I was supposed to get the CoV swag. Nope, it was a table being staffed by profession female gamers (mostly) that were doing a charity raffle for Big Brothers, Big Sisters.

They started to really sell me on the raffle, as soon as they said that they were taking donations, I was sold. Any game I might win would just be a bonus. However, I wish I had a $20 on me at the time, that would have allowed me to just pick any game off the table that I wanted. A ten-spot was all I had.

And to win a game at the 4:30 drawing I had to be present to win. Luckily, my booth mates allowed me to sneak downstairs in the nick of time to have my number be the first number drawn out of the fishbowl. Unfortunately, all of the Xbox-360 games had been given away the day before. But there was a XBOX Spiderman 2 game there. I am sure I will enjoy it.

Anyway, I am installing CoV right now. Probably get it all patched up, just in time for me to go to bed.

It comes with one month free play, so I will probably just play the free month then call it quits.

Laterz