It’s decision time, my friends! Well…actually, it was decision time earlier this week, but that’s the way things go. Either way, I’ve played each of our two submissions a few times, and I’m ready to announce a winner. I had hoped to see more people participate, but I was still really happy to at least see some interest. I’ll review each entry, and then announce the winner.
Reich Around the Clock by Yellow Lantern: This was a fun mission, with the Blitz fighting Nazis and running over hill and dale to punch the soldiers of the Reich.
Nazi Punching can quickly become an addiction
You jump right into the action, with civilians that need rescuing from a blazing fire. We don’t get much set-up, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but knowing next to nothing about the character, I wouldn’t have minded a bit of context or character building. There is a nice variety of encounters, going from that fire rescue to stopping the Nazis from tearing down some homes. Then you’re fighting in earnest, first just soldiers, but then a pretty challenging encounter with a pair of tanks!
Something about this doesn’t seem quite right…
I found this the highlight of the mission, because you’ve only got one attack that can really hurt these behemoths, and it was tricky to maneuver around them long enough to build up the charge necessary to toast them. I thought that the mission was going to end after this encounter, especially considering how banged up I was, but imagine my surprise when I went from the frying pan into the fire. I just managed to defeat the tanks, and all of a sudden, the sky is filled with Eyes of the Reich…and The Blitz without a decent ranged attack to his name!
Alright, this hardly seems fair….
This is where the mission takes a turn for the impossible. I tried a couple times, but couldn’t get past the Eyes. With a little creative cheating, though, I managed to get through to the final encounter where I faced…Blitzkrieg himself! ‘Ol big brain is guarding a bomb that kills non-aryans, which I thought was a nice touch, and you face a pretty desperate fight against him and a passel (gaggle, flock, herd…what’s the term for a group of these guys?) of Killarillas.
Tanks and flying brains weren’t enough, now I have to be pummeled by monkeys?!
All in all, this was a fun, creative mission with a bit of witty dialog and some challenging things to do, but it is also one that becomes downright impossible by the end. The Blitz himself was fun to play, and he had a nice variety of powers. The difficulty and lack of context do hurt it a bit, but the overall effect was still pretty good. I give this one four unconscious Ratzis out of five.
The Test, by John Jr.: Here we have a Superman adventure in which the Man of Steel finds Metropolis under siege by mysterious forces. JJ gives us some simple but enjoyable bits of characterization as Supes uncovers the alien menace in their midst.
Man these guys are ugly!
It turns out that these diabolical spacefarers are testing weapons on the people of Earth because they are similar to the great enemy of their race. I thought that was a pretty neat motivation for the bad guys to have, and JJ makes good use of the built in FF aliens. Of course, Supes doesn’t take that too kindly, and he starts to hunt the invaders down.
Yeah, you’d better run!
The mission ends with a showdown against Praetor, who proves admirably resistant to a Super-thumping. However, these aliens are, in general, fairly ineffective against the Man of Steel. Their shields may stop his heat vision, and they may be resistant to crushing damage, but it still only takes him a few shots to drop them. More importantly, their weapons just aren’t much of a threat to Supes.
Let’s see your shield stop THIS!
That isn’t much of an issue in the first part of the mission, where the real danger is to the civilians you are saving, rather than to Superman himself. It is pretty challenging to get to the aliens and take them out before they can blow the citizens of Metropolis to kingdom come, but when you go after the alien’s leader, there isn’t really much tension to the encounter. This mission had some good characterization, but it needed a bit more in the way of challenge. Still, this was a fun mission, and after having slaved over DC characters for so long, it was something of a breath of fresh air to play a nice, simple adventure like this. There is something rather zen about hurling a car at an evil alien. I give it three and a half hurtling automotive missiles out of five.
The winner by a nose is Yellow Lantern! I want to stress how close this was, as these missions were, in some ways, mirror images of one another. Where YL’s entry was too tough, JJ’s was a bit too easy. Where the first didn’t have enough context, JJ’s had a nice bit of characterization. It was a pretty close call. I hope that y’all enjoyed this contest, I know that I did! I’ll be putting up a page for YL’s entry sometime this week, and I’ll come up with something for JJ too, as a consolation prize. Thanks for playing guys, and I hope you’ll have more company next time!
The Greylands 