Now that I’ve defeated the snowstorm, I’m at last free to explore all of Canada, experience its rich cultures, and meet its people. I am so taken with the land that I have decided to share with you what I learned from my time in Champions Online. If you’ve never taken the time to visit America’s neighbor to the north, then you’re in for an educational treat.
After touring the land, I am shocked at how inaccurate the Canadian Wikipedia entry is. I tried to fix some of the more glaring omissions (they don’t even mention the Velociraptors!) but someone keeps reverting my edits. No doubt it’s one of Dr. Destroyer’s minions.
Anyway, after my journey through Canada I thought I’d share a few snapshots of their more famous landmarks and iconic locations:
The United States is so proud of their amusing little Mt. Rushmore, but it’s nothing compared to the size and majesty of Canada’s Skull Mountain:
A Doom Telescope:
Some sort of haunted Tiberium Fields:
Bigfoot Village:
A good portion of Canada is being terraformed by an Alien race called the Gadroon. I know they’re evil because all space aliens are evil unless they’re superheroes, but I have to say I kind of think the Gadroon have made an improvement here:
Here is Canada’s famous haunted glacial rift:
And here is the terrorist oil pipeline / pollution factory:
While you were learning about the great land of Canada, I upgraded my powers.
I hope for your sake you didn’t read this.
My first job is to look around just outside of base and recover items from the airliner crash. I need the black box, the passenger manifest, and the pilots log, which apparently… fell out of the plane? I was always under the impression that the black box was, you know, attached or something. I guess Canadian Airlines uses their black box as a doorstop. Whatever. Luckily, the items are all about ten steps outside of base and within twenty feet of each other. And intact.
On the downside, the items are guarded by the Hunter-Patriots, who are the predominant terrorist group in Canada. (Viper, the other major terrorist group, is smaller but better armed and equipped.) Their plans seem to be thus:
1) Groups of dudes in parkas will bury themselves in the snow, right outside of the Steelhead base.
2) When a superhero comes along, they leap out of the snow and attack.
3) They get beat up. Yay good guys.
Out on the frozen lake, I have to fight some more Hunter-Patriots. Here is a commander kneeling on the ice, looking at me through his binoculars from ten feet away. I wonder if he’s using them backwards, “Oh! There’s a superhero, but he’s like, way off in the distance.”
I have to beat up a Hunter-Patriots commander, to get him to tell me about couple of supervillains I’ve passed about a half dozen times so far. Once I beat up the super-villains, they tell me their plans, and then I can go thwart those plans by beating up additional Hunter-Patriots.
Back at base, I meet Lt. Fisher. He was out on patrol with his buddies when (and I am not making this up) Mister Zombie attacked and buried Fisher’s squad mates in the snow in an effort to create more zombies. Fisher wants me to go out and rescue his team.
I fly out and dig the soldiers out of the piles of snow just outside of base.
The quest works like this: There are piles of snow. You click on them and wait for the progress bar to fill, after which you’ll either get a zombie or rescue a soldier. The odds of getting a soldier seems to be about 1 in 3. Fighting zombies is kind of time consuming and annoying because of the way the game clears your target when they go down and then begins regenerating their health. You have to defeat them, then stand there for a few seconds and wait for them to fall down, then re-target them and hit them a few more times to finish them off, after which you get such phenomenally low XP that it’s not even remotely worth it.
All of this makes a strong incentive for the player to simply hit & run the snow piles, activating them and then jumping to the next one without even looking to see what pops up. You can clear the mission in about thirty seconds, or you can spend several minutes fighting worthless zombies. This setup isn’t a terrible crime, but it’s disappointing when a game punishes you for playing your character and rewards you for acting in ways that don’t make sense.
Ravenspeaker must have a world-class case of the goosebumps. Beside him is Lt. Fisher, who hangs around base coughing and asking superheroes to do his job.
Next up, Lt. Fisher hands me a bag of wriggling zombie parts. They need to be “ritually cleansed” to dispel the magic on them. Ravenspeaker set up a summoning circle to the south where you can take zombie parts to cleanse them. For some unfathomable reason, Ravenspeaker placed this circle outside of base. Ravenspeaker is about five feet away and staring into space, but apparently he’s still too busy to make another summoning circle inside of base so that mortals can use it without needing to fight armies of terrorists and zombies to reach the thing.
Disgusted with Ravenspeaker’s laziness, apathy, and lack of pants, I take the bag of zombie bits and fly to the summoning circle.
Before I can use the summoning circle, I have to defeat Mr. Zombie:
Wait. You “live” to kill superheroes? An odd assertion for someone named Mr. Zombie. And does fighting superheroes come up all that often? And while we’re at it: Why are you even talking in the first place?!?
Now it’s time to fight a zombie wearing a tuxedo and a top hat in the Canadian wilderness. Who is named Mr. Zombie. And who talks. I make a slight whimpering sound as I sustain 500 points of self-esteem damage.
So I give Mr. Zombie a few pops in the face. Then a few more. Then a lot more. Then I look up and notice I’ve chipped off about 10% his total health. My self-healing powers allow me to keep up with him, but knocking this zombie apart is apparently a long-term project.
Eventually I manage to bring him down. Afterward, I have to run around and do little magical arm-waving gestures around the summoning circle. Then a spirit wolf appears. Then I speak with him, and he nods his head to cleanse the zombie bits.
None of the other zombies I’ve killed have needed this treatment. And I didn’t need to drag Mr. Zombie over here for some cleansing. I don’t know. It’s all very confusing.
Yes, I know things were so much worse back in the Everquest days and this sort of thing used to be the norm, but that’s no reason to celebrate this mess. A few very minor tweaks is all it would take to clear up this traffic jam and let everyone get back to their fun without all the headaches.
Now I have a quest to go to the site of the airplane crash and, if I understand the directions, beat up even more Hunter-Patriots in search of their secret plans. Sure enough, they are swarming the downed aircraft. I don’t understand the strategic value of a wrecked civilian aircraft, but here they are.
I work my way around the site, beating up terrorists and collecting the occasional plans. The Hunter-Patriots have five different schemes they’re working on. I don’t know what their goals are, since having goals would involve characters with coherent motivations, but at least we now have a picture of how they want to go about attaining their goals, whatever they are. Here are the plans of Canada’s most dangerous terrorist organization:
1. Bomb-laden Zambonis
2. Maple-powered Death Ray
3. Questonite curling stone cannons
4. Radioactive Loonie coins
5. Nanite-infused Poutine Gravy
1) If it’s something silly about my character, then I made it up.
2) If it’s something face-slappingly apeshit loco stupid crazy, then it’s part of the game.
In case you still doubt, I offer this screenshot:
Next Time: More Canada! Because fighting in the snowy wastes is what being a superhero is all about!
Published: Aug 18, 2010 01:00 pm