Well, that whole Marvel’s Avengers thing sure worked great, huh? Who would have thought that following an enormous set of films with a couple of hours of story content spread across a number of characters with a cast that felt like “we have the Avengers at home” the whole time wouldn’t work out? But for this week’s What Are You Playing, I want to talk about all of the good times that I had with the game, all of the things that I found fun.
Sure, in many ways, the game didn’t work as a live service game, putting the lie to the whole idea that everyone could just copy the looter-shooter model Destiny made work and find success. And sure, at low levels the heroes were basically copies of one another. And the only way you’d get to high levels was by investing a lot of time in regular repeated content with all the depth of a birdbath as you made a number go up. And sure, it was ridiculous to just stick with the main film Avengers plus Ms. Marvel when that was going to result in unkind comparisons. But let’s talk about the positives. Starting with
[Bree, I think I was delirious from cold meds when I wrote this, don’t let this go live until I come up with at least one anecdote about this game that’s actually positive, all right? I’m sure I’ll think of something. It doesn’t even have Miles Morales, though, so I’m struggling on this one.]
Bonus question: What’s the weirdest experience you’ve ever had while under the weather?
​Andrew Ross (@dengarsw): Exercise games are getting some attention, maybe a few raids in Pokemon Violet, and I need to rebuild my cash supply in Splatoon 3 since I blew a ton of it after Splatfest!
Oof, the bonus question is hard to answer without getting dark. The least dark one I can recall was having a wisdom tooth issue strike during the final days I was living in Japan. Long story short, whatever medicine I was given during the procedure made me keep falling asleep, which was not supposed to be a side affect, and had made the dentist worried that I’d died at one point. I was only sleeping deeply because I hadn’t gotten any for days.
Andy McAdams: Continuing to meander around World of Warcraft: Dragonflight, and I’m picking up some off gaming in Galactic Civilizations 3 to scratched my 4X/grand strategy itch.
When I had mono my senior year of college, I had a wild reaction to the virus – the lymph nodes in my neck and jaw swelled up, connected and looked like I had a massive tumor. I couldn’t move my jaw right because of the swelling and had absurd amounts of pain as a result. It took a panel of three doctors having a conference call discussing test results and symptoms to decide it was mono, because my mono-spot test kept coming back negative. They all agreed it was one of the most dramatic and unusual reactions to mono they’d ever seen.
Brianna Royce (@nbrianna, blog): No surprise for me – I’ll be in Lord of the Rings Online. Baby hobbit is on her way to Osgiliath, and I’ve been working on some new alts and a lot of crafting.
This might be stretching the meaning of the bonus question, but it was definitely bizarre to (of all things) suffer a severe allergic reaction to my IV’s bandage when I was in labor with baby #1. My life in a nutshell.
Chris Neal (@wolfyseyes, blog): I actually won a housing plot in Final Fantasy XIV, so obviously putting my own little slice of Eorzea together is going to be a primary focus. Other plans include reintroducing myself to the chain blades in Dauntless and continuing to explode rocks for mineable goodies in Elite: Dangerous.
I recall one time when I was very young that an illness caused me to have a super vivid hallucination of a big shadowy spider just clinging to the ceiling and watching me while I lay in bed. That was fun.
Eliot Lefebvre (@Eliot_Lefebvre, blog): Between starting a new job this week and managing to get Covid (now of all times in the dang world), I have had an exhausting week. So I will do some stuff in FFXIV, play some games I got for my birthday, cuddle my cats, and be gentle to myself. That’s the plan.
Some of my sick events have been really weird over time, but probably the weirdest experience I ever had in conjunction with sickness was when my wife dosed me midway through a raid in WoW. I had been up crazy early that day, I felt obliged to go along with the raid, and I felt like hot garbage. So she slipped me some NyQuil and only told me about it after I started feeling drowsy. I was mildly annoyed but she made the right call.
Sam Kash (@thesamkash): I haven’t settled on anything specific yet. I still have Tower of Fantasy rolling around my mind but I’ve also been thinking about Mortal Online 2 for some reason. Can’t explain that one much.
Bonus: I can’t say that I really have had anything weird. I suppose when I’m sick and puking I tend to bust some of the capillaries around my eyes so I end up looking even worse than usual.
Alexander Metcalf, patron: Guild Wars 2. I am so close to getting my skyscale, I’m only [checks achievement progress] a very long way from completion. Gorrik is getting impatient with me.
Bonus: Once I purposefully accidentally overdosed on cold medicine just to get some sleep, during which I hallucinated a long, deep conversation with my then-spouse about the state our relationship. I woke up and discovered this was not in fact a hallucination, and whatever I said made her feel like we were “closer than ever before!” Never did find out what I said…
Every Saturday, join the Massively OP community and staff for What Are You Playing, our roundup of what MMORPGs and other games we’re hoping to play this weekend (with a bonus question or two for our amusement). Tell us what you’re up to! Go off-topic! And don’t forget to have fun!
