Guest Authors in the Architect - a review

Fyre, Keen, and I took a crack at the guest author AE arcs yesterday. We teamed up Eve Noir (spines/dark scrapper), Keen Stronghold (FF/energy defender), and Vagabond Mage (fire/elec blaster). As an overall comment, this was an awesome trio. We mowed through mobs with very little difficulty. We were laying out a lot of damage and taking relatively little.

OMG its the LOLBAT (4/5)
First of all, I spent most the time wondering if there was an inside joke I wasn't getting. It was obviously a rip on Batman and his rogue's gallery as well as LOLspeak and similar internet memes. That part was funny enough. But I just kept having the nagging feeling there was something I wasn't getting. Still, it was kind of fun, had some silly moments, and the custom mobs and villains were pretty creative. And [SPOILER ALERT] it was very satisfying to beat the daylights out of LOLBAT.[/SPOILER] Total time: just over an hour.

Quest for Magic (3.5/5)
Of the four, this was the only "serious" story arc. Interesting villains and characters. A mix of "enh" and really nice custom villains (the first group was not impressive, but I liked the second one a lot). My biggest complaint about the arc was the feeling of being railroaded. There was stuff going on that I felt Vagz would've caught onto and stuff he would not have done. I don't like when canon arcs do that, and I like it even less when a custom-written arc is like that. Also, the author inserted Statesman into the story which always (to me) just screams "Ooh! Lookit me! My villain is so tough he defeated Statesman!" Those complaints aside, though: very good use of custom maps, characters with some depth, and a fairly enjoyable series of missions. Total time: 1:15.

Mission: Awesome (2.5/5)
Am I the only one who found those Captain Awesome commercials offensive and insulting? Yeah. We get it. He wants the glory and the billboards and the breakfast cereal without having to do all that tedious hero work. Ha-freakin-ha. That said, the missions had a couple of chuckle-worthy moments and the character and contact were given the perfect characterizations for what they were supposed to be. The contact especially was done beautifully (i.e. I really did want to punch his face in). I'd really like to know how the author managed to make Captain Awesome's AI exactly as lazy as he was supposed to be. He powered up his toggles very slowly and attacked one enemy in about every third group. Still, I couldn't get the taste of "awesome" out of my mouth. Ick.