Greetings True Believers – Marvel Super Hero Squad Online Premier Event

Being a resident of California is not without its perks, and being
centrally located within the state I am privy to quite a few of them.
Besides quick access to some amazing beaches, the worlds largest and
most beautiful trees, the giant Sequoias, and the scenic wonder that is
Yosemite National Park, my personal favorite is its close proximity to
San Francisco. While I am not a fan of any of the numerous sports teams
of the City by the Bay, nor am I particularly fond of the infamous
traffic and congestion on its many freeways, there is something about
the city that occupies a special place in my heart and keeps it ranked
among my favorite places in the world.

With all that being said it’s pretty safe to say that I don’t need much
of an excuse, if any, to make a trek up the Bay Area. When our
Executive Editor forwarded me an invite to check out the premier event
for a new MMOG the first thing that caught my eye was that it
conflicted with my “day job” schedule. However, when I saw that it was
in San Francisco, Marvel Super Heroes related and held at iconic comic
book store Isotope, there was simply no way I could resist. From
fueling my wild imagination to inspiring a lifelong love of reading,
few things in life have had the impact on me that Marvel comics did in
my formative years. So even though this is the first of the Marvel
MMOGs, and possibly the lesser of the two that have been announced so
far in terms of anticipation level, I was never the less intrigued to
see what this stylized game that focuses on the younger audience had in
store for us.



Our hosts from Gazillion and Isotope put on a great show for us, and
while there wasn’t a ton of information to be had about the upcoming
title, what was revealed was well worth the trip. The main Emcee of the
evening was Jason Robar, Vice President and Studio Manager for
Gazillion’s studio The Amazing Society. In addition to Jason, there
were several other members of The Amazing Society and Gazillion on
hand, including Jay Minn, Marvel
Super Hero Squad Online's Creative Director.

First up for the evening was an extended look at the games trailer,
which was released last week in a slightly more compact form. The
trailer really sets the overall tone of the game well, and that is one
of fun, action and a lot of humor. When the trailer segued into the
main event, which was of course the first ever look at actual gameplay,
two things became apparent – the trailer and the in game art were
almost indistinguishable and that this game has amazingly high
production value. You may be saying to yourself “why would high
production value be surprising, this is a licensed Marvel MMOG after
all?” And while that may be true, the reason it is surprising is due to
two major facts – this is a web based MMOG and its core audience
probably won’t be old enough to vote.



Marvel Super Hero Squad
Online is, as the name implies, a direct addition to the
existing Marvel Super Hero Squad universe that includes a cartoon,
single player video games and action figures. Given the amazing amount
of success that has been seen in the likes of style="font-style: italic;">Free Realms and to
a lesser extent in Fusion
Fall, it makes sense that this emerging and expanding
market be the first one tapped for Marvel MMOG goodness.

While the team was tight lipped about many of the more specific details
on the game, including business model, PvP and which of the over 5,000
Marvel Universe characters will be included at launch, they assured us
that we would be treated to a much more generous offering of
information at this year’s E3 convention. What we did learn
however is this;

The game is built with the Unity
engine, allowing for a web-based 3D world with advanced physics, object
interactions and AAA quality environments and effects. Humor and fun are the backbone of the
game, with some of the cleverest and most hilarious emotes ever brought
to market. In fact watching the hero specific emote of Wolverine doing
his Edward Scissorhands impersonation on an unsuspecting shrubbery made
me realize that this is what game emotes were really meant to do, bring
your character to life (Thing flopped in the street and made an asphalt
angel, something only he could pull off without snow, Storm made a
floating heart out of electricity, Jean Grey produced a spoon which
she bent with her mind and War Machine unleashed his gun arsenal only
to have scrolling banners emblazoned with Bang! slide out of them in
other side splitting examples) Each player will amass their own
stable of heroes and level them up instead of creating a unique avatar.
The exact mechanics of how heroes are acquired were not revealed. All the classic MMOG combat elements
will be utilized, however most heroes will be able to form more than
one role. One of the best examples shown was crowd control – Ironman,
when surrounded by several robot baddies, extended a boom box from his
suit and the sound got them all dancing long enough to forget they were
in a life or death fight. The game will be instance based, from
the main social areas to the dungeons that make up the mission system.
Players won’t have to lock themselves into a server or a shard and hope
that their friends will be able to find them; rather they will be able
to congregate together freely. The setting will be Super
Hero City, with sub sections being some very familiar environs from the
Marvel Universe and featuring such iconic locations as The Daily Bugle,
The X-Mansion and Oscorp for example. All 5,000 characters in the Marvel
Universe will be available for Gazillion to utilize, giving them the
ability to bring to life everything from the most familiar faces from
recent blockbuster movies to the most obscure personalities that only
the most die-hard of Marvel fans will recognize. Missions will be for 1 to 4 players
and will typically be anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes in length, keeping
the action fast paced and accessible. Players will be rated upon
completion of the missions, many of which are linked and take players
through several areas before they engage a boss. The rating system will
award players based on various elements such as number of times players
have to resurrect, number of combos used, damage done and many more yet
to be determined variables, all of which will result in a rating
somewhere between Silver and Adamantium. Ratings will help determine in
game rewards and other various sundries. Marvel
Super Hero Squad Online is built upon three core elements
– Combat, Community and Collection.

Premier events are always set up in a way that looks to paint any
given title in the absolute best light, but Gazillion could have
crammed us all into a flop house next to a Starbucks and stolen their
Wi-Fi to demo this game and it wouldn’t have diminished the product in
the least. Marvel Super
Hero Squad Online is a fantastic looking game that
distills the core of what playing games is all about – having fun, and
lots of it.



We would like to thank the folks at Gazillion and the team from The
Amazing Society for being such gracious hosts and we look forward to
seeing more about the game at E3. Stay tuned to Ten Ton Hammer for all
the latest and greatest SHSO information.

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