Editor: Matthew Cline. Friday 13th August 2004.
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Editor: Matthew Cline. Friday 13th August 2004.
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 "Wearing Your Undies on the Outside!!! or The Flavour of Vs” I was
always one of those kids that ate all the chocolate in a neopolitan ice cream
container and left the vanilla and strawberry.
Despite this, my mum still insisted on buying neopolitan ice cream
instead of a tub of straight chocolate. Phftt!!!
Parents … who among us can understand them? Anyway,
flavour is a not only a very important consideration for me in my eating habits,
but also in my preferences regarding the games I play. Being
a comic book fan with too many X-Men comics and not enough Batman books, I
figured the release of Vs and its first set, Marvel Origins, needed to pass a
few tests before I just jumped into it. It
had to be a good, challenging game, but it was also required it to bring these
beloved characters to life. I’ve
played plenty of games – card, computer or otherwise – based on comic book
characters and most have failed miserably to convey the atmosphere and feel of
the four-coloured worlds of super-heroics and super-villainy. Vs,
however, perfectly fuses flavour and function to create a game that is not only
fun and faithful to the source material, but is also challenging and
strategically-focused. Before I
go much further, maybe I should better explain this idea of “flavour”.
Just like
Magic, a great many of the cards in the Marvel Origins and DC Origins sets have
flavour text. This is the little,
inconsequential quote that is sometimes found at the bottom of the text box.
It doesn’t have any bearing on playing the game, but it’s there
nevertheless. Is it
important? Maybe.
Maybe not. Different people
will appreciate different parts of this game to different degrees.
What I will wager, however, is that everyone appreciates – at least to
some degree – good flavour text. I
got a genuine giggle out of the flavour text of Have
a Blast! - “Sometimes, you just have to
listen to the little voices in your head… and blow things up.”
while I had to almost suppress a yawn when I saw Dick
Grayson – Nightwing, Defender of Bludhaven – “Nightwing protects
crime-riddled Blüdhaven, located just outside Gotham City.” Even more
important than flavour text, though, is the flavour built directly into the game
play … the stuff that does have a bearing on the game – the card names,
stats, powers and rules. This is
the stuff that makes playing this game feel like you’re participating in a
comic book battle. Firstly,
and this is something I’ve had difficulty getting through to a few of my Magic
playing friends who I’m teaching this game, is that Vs isn’t “personal”.
I’m not attacking my opponent. My
characters are fighting each other and the goal of this game is for one team to
defeat the other. Cyclops doesn’t
shoot off his optical blast into a gap and Sabertooth jump in its path, Cyclops
blasts Sabertooth directly … if Sabertooth can, he might want to get out of
the way or prevent Cyclops from firing in the first place.
The first part is how the game would feel if we were using Magic rules.
These rules make sense when the feel you’re trying to convey is two
wizards duelling and conjuring spells and creatures to kill the other.
The only time a character can “go to the dome”, so to speak, is when
he has no non-stunned characters. No
you can think of this as going after the player, I suppose, but I like to think
of it more as kicking the opposing team while their down or messing up the joint
before they get there. So, I
think the whole system of combat in Vs perfectly fits the flavour of the comics
that have inspired this game. I remember
thinking very early on, however, that there was something wrong with one aspect
of the Vs flavour. We all know that
Wolverine is the best he is at what he does – it says so right on the Berserker
Rage version (flavour text). But,
if that’s so, then why are so many rabid fanboys breaking their backs to try
and get a play set of Sabertooth,
Feral Rage? I found my
answer when I looked a bit further into and thought more about the game. The
four-drop Sabertooth
can stomp the three-drop Wolverine
and stun both the four-drop and five-drop Wolverine (without taking the James
Howlett version’s regenerative powers into consideration), but the two
bigger versions can stun him back. Similarly,
the two biggest versions of these characters – the six-drop Sabertooth
and the seven-drop Wolverine
– will take each other out in a one-on-one fight (again not considering
regeneration). Whenever
Sabertooth and Wolverine get into it in the comics, it’s always a bloody
affair. These guys aren’t playing
tiddlywinks … they’re trying to tear each other’s jugulars out.
And usually neither really finishes up on top.
Sabertooth
is a stone cold, psychotic killer, while Wolverine has been known to exercise at
least a little restraint some of the time.
While Sabertooth is prone to jumping into a fight with his blood up and
fangs bared right from the outset (say turn four), it usually takes Wolves a bit
longer to completely lose it (maybe around turn seven). Wolverine
and Sabertooth are classic archenemies. While
Wolverine usually gets up in tight ones in the comics, it creates a much more
flavourful game to have the two characters in Vs be able to take each other out
– then it’ll be the other elements of the game, such as plot twists,
power-ups and general strategies that will determine the outcome.
If Wolverine
is stat’ed in such a way that it is a foregone conclusion that he will stun Sabertooth
and not be stunned himself, then Sabertooth
is hardly a worthwhile nemesis. I’d
be disappointed. Do you see
where I’m going with this? Whether
it’s Batman and the Joker or Spider-Man and Dr Octopus, it’s important that
the designers ensure that the classic battles that comic fans will inevitably
expect to be replicated in this game are done so adequately.
We don’t
want it to be too easy on the hero … heck it should be horribly difficult.
Spider-Man should have to go through hell and back to defeat his foes
because that’s how it is in the comics (and thankfully the recent films), and
while Batman should be able to thump the absolute stuffing out of the Clown
Prince of Crime every time he can lay his hands on him, the Joker should be so
shifty and elusive that it’s hard for Batman to do it. I think
this goes some way to explaining the often-mentioned phenomena of villainous
teams being more powerful than the heroes – for example the Brotherhood’s
obvious strategic advantage over the X-Men (in the starter, Wolverine, Berserker
Rage rightfully can’t even touch Magneto, Master of Magnetism).
I don’t know if this was purposefully built into the design of Marvel
Origins, but villains in the comic books are almost always more powerful than
the heroes. The heroes are usually
up against it when they take on the baddies and they have to out-think and
out-fight them. While not
an absolute rule, it’s one of the fundamental building blocks of the classic
superhero narrative. It’s one of
the reasons I really enjoy reading superhero comics. So, if we (the players) want the heroes to win, then we will
have to work harder to achieve it. So far,
Upperdeck Entertainment has delivered on my above expectations. I’m kind
of hanging out to see how they handle the whole Superman versus Lex Luthor
contest to see if they can maintain their batting average. Wouldn’t it be great if Lex could access extra resource
points to reflect his reliance on wealth? Of
course, they’d have to do that in a way that wouldn’t break the game. Another
area in which Vs does a great job of conveying the flavour of the original
comics is in character powers. Marvel
Origin’s Bishop is a
good example of this. “Whenever
Bishop attacks a character with range or is attacked by a character with range,
Bishop gets +3 ATK and +3 DEF for this attack.”
Bishop’s mutant power allows him to absorb energy, amplify it and shoot
it back out. Characters who shoot
energy from their eyes or lightning from their hands are best advised to avoid
Bishop because all they are doing is giving him a boost. In
DC Origins, I quite like the idea of Mr
Freeze’s power. “Whenever
Mr. Freeze attacks a character or is attacked by a character, that character
cannot ready this turn.” He
literally freezes characters for a turn, keeping them out of action. Whether
or not these powers make these cards the best ones to play with in a competitive
sense is irrelevant in terms of flavour. My early opinions of the Gotham Knights team in DC Origins
are that Batman is often not the best character that the different recruitment
cost levels (although the seven-drop
has a lot of potential), but if you’re playing for fun and are digging on
flavour your GK deck is hardly going to be missing the Dark
Knight himself. Frankly,
I’d be more disappointed if Upperdeck gave characters abilities and stats that
contradicted the source material (and maybe there are a few existing characters
that do this … if you think there are, post your opinions in the boards). Sometimes
there are even opportunities for a bit of a more direct and obvious crossover of
flavour and function, such as in the text box of DC Origin’s The
Demon, Etrigan – “When
the Demon, Etrigan, comes into play, Endurance eight opponents must pay, To
ignore this should a player choose, All his resources shall he lose.”
I saw the same ploy used with a Yoda card in the Star Wars TCG a few
years ago to similarly good effect (the text was written as the powerful, green,
Jedi muppet would have said it … you could practically hear his voice in your
head as you read it). In
closing, I’d like to quickly give a quick plug to another game that really
delivers in terms of flavour. While more
of a board game (or maybe it should be called a tile game …. but I digress),
Zombies is one of the most simple, fun and flavoursome games I’ve ever played.
At the beginning of the game, all the players start in the middle of town
at the Town Square and then have to fight their way through zombie-riddled
streets and buildings to survive. Anyone who
loves zombie movies will especially like this game. My fiancée hates anything that even smells suspiciously like
a role-playing game, but she loves zombie movies, and playing Zombies feels like
you’ve jumped right into one. It’s
also a great party game. |
