Marvel Midnight Suns: Firaxis unveils the Nico vs. Chthon showdown Marvel fans have been waiting for!

I mean, when one of my colleagues–in this case, a neuroscientist who rarely if ever mentions pop culture–out of the blue brings the show up, in an office where it is far more likely that conversations will center on the glories of curricular development, college administration, or the weather, you know there’s something there.

The free move and shove (unlockable) seems to have frustrating restrictions. You can only use it once a turn. Any additional moves are move only, no damage causing allowed.

However, it seems i can’t use it despite being the only time I purposefully moved in the turn. I speculate using the cards move the character, and use up this free damage shove.

The banter in that game matches the Guardians movies as far as I’m concerned. Having been slowly playing through it for awhile now I think it’s why the Drax jokes in the Christmas special fell flat for me, game Drax has better dialog! The voice acting is really spot on too considering it’s not the movie cast.

Yeah the rules for this seem a bit arbitrary and not well explained.

that is the symbol of the anvil, go upgrade your cards or yard.

I’ve read that the game needs to fully install before you play. If you play it when it’s “ready to play”, you may have major issues. I don’t know if that applies in your case, but it’s the only type of response other than “plays amazing” for PS5 that I’m seeing.

Warning: There is a bugged helicopter rooftop map. with a bug. All shoving points originate from a lamp post instead of the hero’s position. This made the mission very hard to complete (tried 6 times, different teams, lowered difficulty to standard).

Going to reload and do another mission instead

edit:

Also, it saddens me to learn you cannot combo Magik’s AOE Gather with Hellraiser’s Pith of Despair. The targets seem to fall around the pith instead of inside it.

WooHoo, got my first two stars! Thanks for the tips!

One of the things I am unsure about the Abbey is when it is time to put more effort into things. For example, getting the Elemental Rods so I can get the second word of power?

I have run all over the Abbey but have not found the other three but not sure if they appear after a trigger of some sort.

Everything is on the Abbey from the get-go. You’ll know when you are supposed to do something because each of the Blood Gate challenges has a recommended level to do it at. Then each Word of Power opens up more of the map to search for the next set of magical knickknacks to unlock to open the next Blood gate.

All 4 of the rods you can find once you have the Open word, it’s just a matter of running around to what is accessible to you right then.

A “move” action has nothing to do with hero movement that occurs when playing cards. To perform a shove, you have to position the icon for the character such that there is a red circle around the intended target with an arrow pointing up.

Note that much like with using environmental objects, the direction you can shove someone is based on positioning BEFORE you move. You can not freely reposition to the other side of a character, then shove them. Think of a shove as a single combined action where you bull rush straight at someone, then push them. The end location of your character is predetermined.

As to multiple moves, I don’t know yet if you can use them to perform multiple shoves, though I suspect you can. I only know one way to get an extra move (aside from a combat item?) as yet, via Magik’s upgraded portal card, but haven’t used it in combat yet.

Awesome! What team comp?

Heh, I had wondered about that. Maybe gather first, drop the pit behind, then use a slide for a big push?

A couple of covers for Mr. Chick:

I don’t know what’s up with the half and half background. Couldn’t get rid of it.

Hunter, Ghost Rider, Spiderman

Nice. Make sure you have a couple of heal cards on your Hunter to keep GR topped up. Some of the heals have really cool upgrades. Hunter also has some cards that can be used as heals or attacks.

If you end up moving forward with that comp, I definitely think you will want Hunter to lean supportive.

I’ve done a few missions at 3 stars, two at two, and one at, um, one. That one Hunter got KO’d. These missions are often knife fights in phone booths, which is certainly putting a premium on thinking rather than brute forcing.

I plan on Hunter, Spiderman, Blade for the most part. I had to use Ghost Rider because it was his side mission. I will probably lean to Wolverine whenever he shows up. I have been mainly using Hunter for Support.

Deleted and re downloaded worked. Don’t know what happened.

Okay, so things are happening in the story writing that I’m kind of enjoying, and now I’m wondering if I should have taken my Main Player Character more seriously, because I was playing Saints Row – you know, crashing through the storyline like a Pamplona bull with my character carefully engineered for MAXIMUM RIDICULOUSITY – while Firaxis was actually trying to write a Marvel movie. My bad, Firaxis, but I’ll take the story seriously next time around, on my Good playthrough.

So I had a quest to change my haircut, which was a tight buzzcut. I briefly toyed with getting the same haircut as Captain Marvel, who I’m dating, in case I haven’t told you yet. We’re kind of an item. But I decided that was too creepy, too Single White Female. So instead, I took the Glorious Weird Al Locks:

I’m also wearing civilian clothes that might imply I’m a superhero. Pretty sneaky, huh? People see me dressed this way and they wonder, “Does he just support superheroes, or is he actually one himself?” Little do they know, although I’m John or Jim or James Hunter or something by day, by night I become The Hunter:

Because I’ve decided this is my Evil playthrough, I’m going for full-on Dark Points. I’m doing it backwards from other games. Normally, your first playthrough of a game is Good so you don’t miss out on the cool things that non-dick characters get from NPCs: better swords, rumors about optional dungeons, healing spells, free drinks at the tavern, church rep, paladin support, that sort of thing. Then for your second playthrough, you go the evil route to see what fun things you could have done the first time around if you hadn’t been busy making everyone like you. Now you’re free to kick all the puppies and see if the game will let you kill kids and NPC vendors.

Which is what this playthrough is, where I’m committed to taking the Dark Points/Evil choice in every dialogue. This gets me in a lot of arguments with Captain Marvel. I’m getting a ton of -1 Heart penalties when we chat, and plus there’s this new Steve guy who showed up, and he’s also really not into me doing Evil playthrough dialogue options, so even though he’s always all smiles and inspirational speeches and playful armchucks and fatherly “son, just don’ts”, I don’t think he likes me much. I mean, just look at the stink-eye dude is giving me:

In fact, I’m pretty sure he’s jealous of me, because he’s always hanging out with Captain Marvel, and the other day they were sitting in the fireplace area, just the two of them all cozy like, and talking and they both totally ignored me when I was just standing there because I had to ask Captain Marvel where we keep the food in this castle, because I was hungry, but she just ignored me and kept chatting with “Steve”, so I finally just walked away, and went to bed because there weren’t any club meetings that night and I had already petted the skinless dog.

Also, it’s really annoying how everyone calls him “Steve”, like he’s the greatest thing on Earth, when it would be a lot funnier if we called him Mister Rogers and made sweater jokes, but when I do it, no one laughs. Anyway, I had a quest to earn a friendship level with “Steve” and I just flat-out didn’t do the quest and now Carol is all -1 Heart because you don’t like “Steve” and -1 Heart because I said something about “the power of darkness blah blah blah” that she apparently didn’t like and -1 Heart because I accused her of still holding a torch for Marv L., whoever he is, and -1 Heart because I keep asking her who’s handsomer, me or “Steve”, and -1 Heart because of this, that, or the other. I even gave her my best gift, which was a legendary rarity copy of an early X-Men issue that probably would have earned me a ton of Friendship Points with Magik or Peter, but I gave it to her instead because that’s what a boyfriend should do and she only liked it for something like four measly points, which is the same amount she liked the grass-scented candle I gave her.

Also, not to keep going on about this “Steve” guy, but Nico and Magik won’t shut up about how he’s got a nice butt or whatever, and two things. First of all, I don’t mean to brag, but I do about a hundred squats a day because I’m The Hunter and I have to do a lot of jumping and running up staircases and steep inclines, so if we’re talking about anyone’s butt, it should be mine. And second of all, Captain America’s but is NOT all that. I looked just because they wouldn’t shut up about it:

“America’s ass”, my foot.

And don’t even get me started about how Blade keeps dropping little hints about wanting to hook up with Captain Marvel, even though he totally knows I like her and I found her first. I mean, of all the guys here, you’d think Blade would be supportive of the unique challenges I face trying to do an Evil playthrough while Captain Marvel is my girlfriend. And yet here he is with his little passive-aggressive cockblocking comments about “Do I think Carol could ever love a half-vampire?”

So anyway, yeah, the main storyline. Huh. Interesting.

Oh yeah, before I forget, here’s a picture of me earning yet another -1 Heart with Captain Marvel because “I didn’t protect her from Venom’s boss attack”, as if there was anything I could do!

I mean, look at dumbass Blade back there not protecting her either, and does he get a -1 Heart? It’s not easy dating a superhero. Besides, when he put her down, she just did this:

Honestly, it’s not like she needs my help. Anyway, things are going well and the main storyline is looking up, but I wish this “Steve” guy would get his own superhero group instead of horning in on mine.

I mean, get a load of this guy. Sheesh.

I really like the little things this game does. When the Heroes move they do it with their powerset, Spiderman Webs over, Iron Man rockets over it makes the game more fun. Even the gifts, music box with song by the Dazzler, these little touches fit the story and the lore in an immensely satisfying way.

Glad to see @tomchick that you are enjoying the game as I in turn enjoy your enjoyment and the blurbs you produce. I am still trying to figure out what you did about Magic and I watched the New Mutants movie.

I like this post

From your earlier comment, I’m pretty disappointed with the backdrops available for comics covers. They’re mostly splashy abstractions, but I was hoping for more landscapes, cityscapes, and that sort of thing. I guess we have to take those ourself using the ingame camera. :(

Here’s a poster I made to hang in my bedroom, only to discover the bedroom artwork in this game is a mandatory picture of Agatha, Caretaker, and the freaky skinless dog, so I had to instead hang it in the library where I go every night to read arcane books before bed:

But now I’ve exhausted one of the two (2!) cityscape backgrounds.

Also, this image editing stuff could have been a really awesome storytelling tool if they’d let us type in our own text. Right now, that’s a pretty massive limitation, but I’m hoping it’ll be modded out of the PC version at some point. Because as you guys might be able to tell from some of my posts, I’m having a lot of fun with the goofy narrative potential of this thing! But there’s only so much you can do with text like this:

And in case you guys haven’t played with it yet, hit P during one of the scripted battle animations to enter photo mode. Even mid-animation, it lets you get in there to freely manipulate the camera and apply effects. I know good photo modes are a dime a dozen, but this is the sort of game that really pays dividends if you mess around with its photo mode. Here’s Iron Man in the rain.

Nico up close and personal with a Hydra sniper.

Pause at just the right time and you can pics like this:

Not sure if it reads here, but this has a “painting” filter applied.

And this is just a picture of Doctor Strange doing the animation for one of his basic moves. But when Photo Mode paused the action, I just moved the camera to position his face in a circle, changed his expression to “Big Smile”, and voila!, something worthy of a comic book cover!