Welcome to day two of this Alternative to E3 2014, replacing day one of the expo itself. I realise that's confusing, but I figure it's their fault for insisting on this "day 0" nonsense in the first place. You'll all be glad to know that today's game -- from the decent, sadly decedent and Infocom-descendant Legend Entertainment -- is a heck of a lot funnier than I am. I might as well not have to worry about the jokes today. Thank you, Legend, for allowing me to even lazier than usual.
Superhero League of Hoboken
Straight out of post-apocalyptic New Jersey (though you can barely tell the difference), it's the Superhero League of Hoboken, an original superhero parody written in-house by Steve Meretzky: a legendary figure within adventure games (on par with Al Lowe and Ron Gilbert, if in talent but not renown) who made his big break at Infocom and became the guy behind many of Legend's earlier Interactive Fiction games. SLoH, in a novel twist from the usual graphic adventures, is also a turn-based RPG of the Dragon Quest kind. The player's team of superheroes are often forced to tangle with random encounters in the ruined New Jersey landscape between key locations, taking down goofy and vaguely satirical monsters that wouldn't be out of place in a Shigesato Itoi joint. We're talking classic 90s humor for the most part, so the humor skews a little closer to The Tick or Freakazoid, helped considerably by the not-so-incredible Superhero League and their meager powers.
But hey, don't take my word for it. I took the liberty of screencapping the amazing intro for this game, which also doubly serves as exposition and a general sense for how the game is played. Check it out:
Part 0: With Minor Power, Comes Minor Responsibility
Oh, I get it. Actually, let's not do any subs for this intro, it's all fairly self-explanatory. I'll see you in Part 1, I guess?
Part 1: The Superhero League of Hoboken: Some Assembly Required
So now we start in earnest. If you recall back to Death Gate, a lot of this GUI should be familiar to you. The arrows are for navigation (the center two for are ascending or descending floors), we have a set of default commands and there's a handy Undo button for dumb mistakes.Even the inventory system is the same, though you'll notice our hero's chiseled physique has replaced Death Gate's magic spells symbol. That icon is used to talk with your party members, and the lightning bolt underneath allows you to employ their powers to solve puzzles.Man, I love the writing in this game already, even for minor shit like this background sign. Periodic table jokes, that's the calibre we're dealing with. The lunchroom it leads to is where we can access the party screen, adding or removing members as we see fit. We can only have four right now, but that number will grow (as will the stock of superheroes to choose from) as we complete missions.The storage is where everything goes when you switch heroes. It stores inventory items and equipment both, because of course this game is also an RPG. You can see on the left what I'm holding, and anything with a plus is currently equipped. You can have up to ten pieces of armor (one for each part of the body, though unfortunately there's no paper doll to make it easier to track) and two weapons, one for ranged and one for melee. The game uses a row system, with ranged attacks only for those at the back, but it's a little strange. We'll get to that in the next part most likely, what with the amount of time I'm spending here.Here's a closer look at our hero, The Crimson Tape. As the protagonist and leader of the Superhero League of Hoboken, he's the only character you're forced to use the entire game. His superpower of creating organizational charts is effectively useless, but he's a good all-rounder stats-wise.We're taking with us the Iron Tummy, as a secondary fighter with a potentially useful skill. Well, maybe. The most I can say is that I'm envious of it.RoboMop's another good brawler and an awful pun, but superheroing can be messy work and we'll need sentient household cleaners out there.Mademoiselle Pepperoni is more of a ranged mage class, and we need someone to fill out the back row as we're already stacked with melee fighters. That superpower though... the endless possibilities.Once they're with you, you can interact with anyone in your party. It's usually Elder Scrolls type commands, like "eat this thing" or "use your power", but you can sass them as well. You can also give items to anyone you want just by using them too.There's a weird museum in the basement, which holds all sorts of Hoboken-focused historical memorabilia.In particular, we have this creepy waxwork Frank Sinatra.For some reason he has a compartment in his butt that houses a Sinatra mixtape. Might as well bring it with us.Aw man, I wanted to ride the train. At least I stole that painting. No idea if I'll need any of this, but the game let me take them, so...Upstairs we bump into our equivalent of the Bat Computer, or I guess the Watchtower if we're going the whole hog with this "Superhero League" stuff. There's various tools every hardworking superhero needs up here: a supercomputer that dispenses missions, a news console and a couple of maps of the area.We actually have to fill in the maps as we explore and, as you can see, it's a pretty big world out there. Each section holds different locations to visit, but the further you go away from HQ the harder the monsters will get. It's an effective way to stop you wandering into territory you don't need to visit yet. The "Chaos" function tells you the strength of the enemies in each sector, once you've added said area to the map.Oh man. Rorie, look away now. (The news ticker doesn't seem to have any purpose, at least not yet.)So each "chapter" of the game is split into groups of five missions. Once I beat these five, which are usually linked in some way (I might need an item I find in one mission area in another, for instance), I'll be "promoted" a class and be allowed more heroes in my group. I'll also get another five missions.Any mission can be accessed for more information including, ideally, where I'm supposed to go to accomplish it. This precarious Limburger Bomb scenario is actually one space away from HQ, but that doesn't mean I'm at the point where I can resolve it. Defusing a bomb made out of a giant block of cheese won't be easy.Dr Entropy, as the introduction explained, is our Dr Doom. In fact, their names are pretty much synonymous. He'll pop up every so often with a new supervillain scheme we'll have to thwart. There's no priority rating for any of these missions, nor an actual time limit from what I can tell, so I'll stop that fiend in the fullness of time. You know, eventually.Oh hey, it might just be we have a hero with us that can help with this. A lot of the game's puzzles rely on the talents of your team, so it's best not to dismiss their skills. No matter how seemingly trivial.
Part 2: We Actually Leave the Damn HQ
Rather than moving straight to the next location, there's an overworld to cross to reach the various locations described on the mission computer. The reason?So we can bump into random encounters. The battle system is relatively simple -- it was purpose-built to be straightforward, so as not to scare off pure adventure nuts. This means the player can usually spam the first two icons (melee and ranged) and dispose of these early monsters. We can also use our powers, but only some powers can be used effectively in battle, and only for certain enemies. For instance, there's a hero that knocks animals asleep, but his power doesn't work so well on humanoids.After defeating the "Terrible Two" beasties and a random lawyer, we get the usual XP and cash rewards. There's a good chance at getting a completely random item too, sometimes ones that can permanently boost stats.While checking in on the injured Iron Tummy, I accidentally get involved in a conversation about Scoville units. What is this, Hot Pepper Gaming?Whenever you reach a critical location on the map, we get this little screen asking if we're sure we want to enter it. It's not often you meet one of these screens and refuse to go in, since we kind of need to explore these places to move on with the game.The marketplace has a cheese bomb in this dilapidated car. There doesn't seem to be anything we can do about it right now. I didn't see a superhero with any sort of anti-cheese powers.There's also stores in any marketplace you come across, though I have no idea what's going on with the shopkeepers. Probably high on whatever it was they just flushed.Every weapon has a simple rating, so it's just a case of switching up whenever you find something with a higher number. Characters automatically equip the strongest weapons they're carrying.Ditto with armor, which you buy from the hardware stores. It's usually a good plan to keep any armor, because there's so much you can equip (you can always sell them too, but you won't earn much).We get into more fights while exploring Neo New Jersey's picturesque ruins. These Hell Chickens can hit pretty hard sometimes.The Supermoms aren't quite as formidable however. The good thing about this game's random encounters is that they eventually run out, similar to Zeboyd's games. It means you can't grind too much, but nor will you have to put up with constant easy monster encounters in low-level areas.Unless you want to leave this particular sector (not advised early on, as the enemies in the other areas are harder), you can purchase a ferry ticket to get to the mainland. As all the other objectives are over on this side, it's a small price to pay.We find the rabid sheep, though again there doesn't seem to be much we can do here. Pour a Nuka Cola out for that poor baby.Now we're getting accosted by furniture, the dreaded Bureau-crats. If your party gets injured, they can rest in any area that provides the option (most places where you have access to your inventory, including clearly dangerous areas like the above and the sheep marketplace). Resting restores all health immediately, including those of fallen allies, but you can only rest so many times until your food supplies run out and you need to return to HQ. It's remarkably kind, and quite elegant.Because I'm a monster, I've OCD completed the rest of this area's map. Certain regions, like water, are currently impassable.Visiting the walled-in city Newark takes us to an enclosed area with a higher chaos level, meaning strong enemies like this Marketoon. Fortunately, most of them just wander off eventually.Radioactive Nixon is a particularly tenacious foe. And yes, he does repeatedly insist that he's not a recidivist.Finally, after scouring Newark and it's strong monster encounters, we find a location we can visit.Actually, it's just a metro station. When the game opens up a bit and we have to go further and further afield for missions, we'll find keycards to use the New Jersey area's color-coded subways. We only have a blue pass, so this grey-stripe (and the red-stripe downstairs) is currently inaccessible.We do eventually find the other location in Newark, where a massive stack of jalapenos await us. The Iron Tummy's up to the task though.The superpower menu is a little... no-frills, but it gets the job done. None of our heroes have "Really Good at Treading Water" as an inherent skill; rather, there are isotopes in the game that the heroes can drink that permanently gives them a weaker version of a new power. With more isotopes, the power becomes strong enough to use, and more effective in battles. They're pretty rare though.I rested at the rabid sheep enclosure (they didn't seem to mind), but I'm running out of supplies. I'll probably need to return to base anyway to go report that successful jalapeno mission. Gosh, this game is silly.So here we are back at base, our stocks replied and our team back to full health. This seems as good a spot as any to give this game a break for a while.
Well, we didn't accomplish much, but there's a few heroes here we haven't used yet. It's possible that completing some of these other missions just requires solving a single adventure game puzzle involving superhero powers. Still, I decided -- entirely motivated by largesse and not my own incompetence -- to not solve all these puzzles and ruin the game for anyone reading.
Anyway, that'll do it for Day 1. No doubt you're all enjoying all this hot new Nintendo coverage and are perhaps wondering if Jeff got attacked by a Yoshi as a child to inspire all this hatred. See you tomorrow for the third part of this feature, with another characteristically odd Legend game to demonstrate.
The Giant Bomb blogosphere is now safe, but... for how long?
