Countblah Reviews the Epics from Ultradoug.

[countblah]

Just so you know, in case you didn't, Ultradoug is the man. His epics have spanned five websites, and an awful long time. It's high time I reviewed them.

I will be using a good/bad/ugly rating system, simply:

The Good:
The Bad:
The Ugly.

Let's begin.

[ultradoug]

Waits.

[ultradoug]

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[ultradoug]

Ahhhhhhhhh!

[geddy lifeson]

I sense an awesome set of reviews coming any day now, I mean any week now, or at least someday.

[countblah]

The Legend:

Ultradoug here picks up on some things that I thought had been forgotten in Heroscape.net lore. Specifically, the Sloganizer pages. Some of you new guys may not know this, but Sloganizer was very popular with members of .net, where they would put a word in their signature, and Sloganizer would make a new phrase for it each time their sig was viewed. Like "You can't leave the house without Heroscape". I believe the originator of the whole thing was Niteraider, who used "Glass shatters" as his Sloganizer sig. The problem with it was that my computer = not so fast, and sloganizer was really dragging it down. Badly. Thankfully, that fad didn't last long.

This epic is from the heart of a community, distraught over the loss of .net. A poignant message, really.

The Good.

[countblah]

The Rant:

This Epic has the dubious distinction of making copious amount of fun of people from Truth's gaming group. Not sure if it is making fun of them, or just pointing out that the look like members of the cast of the wonder the cast of the wonder years. Having said that, the best thing about this Epic is that Ultradoug rants somewhat about how Heroscape is assumed to be for Kids...
Kids who knock over massive towers, and who play the basic game. Those who like to do the strategy, those who like to buy lots of expansions, those who will end up carrying the game on their shoulders = Adults. Like Ultradoug, who is an Adult in age only.

The Good.

[countblah]

The Kung Fu:

This marks the beginning of the opening laugh. We don't have the "EPIC" voice at the beginning yet, but we do have the laugh. It will get much more familiar as time goes on. Yes, this is the Kung Fu episode, and it is awesome. No dialogue (not that that's necessarily awesome, or that the epics get much more awesome the less that UD talks), but the lack of dialogue doesn't hurt things too much. The screen resolution is blurry from my end, and I couldn't tell what was going on on the screen, but there were times at which I could tell exactly what was going on. Seeing the old HQ and the old HLD interfaces were super. I miss that. I noticed that the illegal Gencon shirts were on display in this video. Nothing beats showing the shirts that got us all in trouble. Good one.

Still, it was blurry, and I couldn't figure my nonsense out. Lots of the familiar sites, but lots of sites I didn't recognize.

The Ugly.

[countblah]

The Ad:

Short n' sweet. The basic problem: Taelord's bonding is lousy. But, UD, in case you didn't know, Ne Gok Sa's powers don't work on Minions (not unique). Having said that, it is entirely conceivable that the minions would prefer to hang with NGS. Think about it: Costs less, his power is more game-changing (if it works) and so on. It was fun. No big message, no big rant about Heroscape politics, just a quick expose on the state of power structure in Utgar's army.

The Good.

[NiteRaider]

The Legend:

Ultradoug here picks up on some things that I thought had been forgotten in Heroscape.net lore. Specifically, the Sloganizer pages. Some of you new guys may not know this, but Sloganizer was very popular with members of .net, where they would put a word in their signature, and Sloganizer would make a new phrase for it each time their sig was viewed. Like "You can't leave the house without Heroscape". I believe the originator of the whole thing was Niteraider, who used "Glass shatters" as his Sloganizer sig. The problem with it was that my computer = not so fast, and sloganizer was really dragging it down. Badly. Thankfully, that fad didn't last long.

This epic is from the heart of a community, distraught over the loss of .net. A poignant message, really.

The Good.Actually I wasn't the one who first started it. It was a different member (I can't think of his name though) who used "The Apocolypse" (don't care if that's selled right) as the repeated word. I just jumped on the bandwagon. Although that fad didn't get a lot of mileage as everyone moved to HSHQ.com, *glass shatters* still lives to this day!

[ultradoug]

thanks Blah! Alot of that pour screen resultion can be blamed on two factors:

1: I did not know how to use windows movie maker.
2: I had to make my movies 4KB to fit on the free tripodpage! @_@
I finaly resolved both of these as time went on, and THANKFULLY- Youtube showed up and now I can make crazy big moves (size wise and time wise)

thanks Blah!

Sloganizer rulls!

«The blah way of life.»

«Make yourself at home with blah.»

«blah never die.»

http://www.sloganizer.net/en/

WOoT Sloganizer!

«Firstclass epic sweet bane in a jar!»

«Kick ass with heroscape!»

[countblah]

The Clone:

Short. Very Brief. That makes my reviewing job easier, of course, but still, not a lot of meat. I do remember the situation, though. Someone (don't remember who, can't really tell from the screen) took one of UD's posts, and changed, basically nothing from it, and submitted it as their own. UD's a true original, baby! Often imitated but never duplicated!
Seeing the clone troopers and Weird Al at the end was a nice touch. Attactix figures, UD? Still playing? That game was basically the "Set up GI Joe figures and launch rockets at them" game we all played as kids...just with rules this time!

I had fun. Weird Al gets a huge nod in my books.

The Good.

[countblah]

The Death of HQ.

Oh....crap. This is the one that makes me look really stupid. As is fairly well understood by everyone but me, Ultradoug was Penname. I remember posting about that on HLD, and someone said "thank goodness that Countblah got knocked down a couple of pegs". Apparently, I'm a big jackass. Well, back to the review. This hits on a number of important topics, namely the division between HLD and HQ. For those of you who are too young to remember (yes, I'm from .net...represent!) HLD was basically the Heroscape cry room, where people went to sulk about whatever was going on on the main fansite. Because if you can't take the heat, get into the hot lava death.
Whatever else, mettalscape was spoken of, and because of penname on HQ (who was legit, as I recall), I believed Penname on HLD, who wasn't the same person. It was UD, as I recall, and nobody was fooled but me. And for a while, on HLD, it was just me and Penname, and Homba.
Not sure if I understood the direction that the EPIC went concerning Japan, and its role in all this, but nice to see mettalscape coming back. It wrecked me then, and I'm paying for it now.

The Ugly (because of all that Japan nonsense....and for making me look like an idiot on HQ. Thnx).

[countblah]

The Diva.

Anyone else noticed the incredibly one-sided gender slant? The fact that if a girl shows up and plays Heroscape, the room just stops! The dudes on this site don't expect to be throwing down on a game of 'scape with any ladies...so when one does show up...prominently at that, it's cause to stop and pay attention. Of course, knowing how much UD loves anime, it's no surprise that he found that the Heroscape Diva looked like Sailor Venus. Creepy, but no surprise. I'm actually shocked that he hasn't told Truth that he looks like the guy from Inital D, or that Reapersaurus looks like Gohan....or that Geddy-Lifeson looks like a Totoro. Whatever, stan. And Taelord is a total point eater. He still doesn't have a unit that he works well enough with to justify his point cost. And don't even start with Spartacus.

The Good. UD, we have so few ladies here...try not to anime them away! :oops:

[ultradoug]

Geddy-Lifeson looks like a Totoro.
http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f348/coolmondoug/ghahaahaha.jpg
Yep.

[countblah]

The Post.

I remember this conversation, and it's one that has plagued our community for a long time...intellectual property. Recently, we saw someone swipe a custom, and sell it (for actual money, mind you) on ebay...evoking the ire of the community. We were all pissed, and rightly so. But the whole thing boils down to who owns what when it gets posted online. We naturally expect one another to use the customs that we make, and part of why we post the stuff is so that we can get props from our fellow 'scapers. But we don't want it stolen. we want others to enjoy and use the creations, but not steal them, or rip them off. But, what about the creators of the game? Well, pretty sure that most of us would see it as an honor to have our customs become official, but there's always a conflict of interest. Not that we'd want to be compensated, but we'd want some props, like the kee-mo-shee designer got. essentially, one of the more level-headed things I heard about the customs was when an official unit had a similar power to one of Truth's customs (Crippling stare and shield bash, as I recall), and someone said "there is only so much you can do in this game...customs are bound to have some power overlap with some official units".

Having said that, lots of blank screen. Not a lot of animation, or much of anything to look at but text. Gotta bust you for that, UD. Gotta bust.

The Good.

[ultradoug]

I know :/ its not one of the best but Thor liked it back in the day. man the quality is so low! I almost want to go back and fix it, but... I'd much rather make fun of new stuff :D

[geddy lifeson]

Geddy-Lifeson looks like a Totoro.
http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f348/coolmondoug/ghahaahaha.jpg
Yep.

I know I should probably be offended here but I have no clue what this wierd looking thing is...and UD, what's up with placing it over my beautiful little girl?

[countblah]

Geddy, that thing is a Totoro...otherwise known as a forest spirit of some kind. From the anime "classic": my neighbor Totoro. Pretty sure your daughter would love it. Most kids seem to. Very very popular, and I'm kinda surprised that you'd never heard of it...though I shouldn't be. I'd never heard of it either, until I started working at a hobby shop, which sold lots of merchandise from the movie. Including a small cat bus, which vibrated, and bordered on the obscene. But that's a story for another day, or possibly never.

[geddy lifeson]

Thanks blah. I guess since that thing is kinda cute in a way, I do see a little resemblence.

[countblah]

The Promotional:

I thought this one was going to be a rant about Nerak. Turns out, it was a movie trailer for Heroscape...starring the fremont heroscapers group. Something tickles me just right about seeing Truth as Frodo...and the heroscape diva (from a previous Epic) was Samwise Gamgee? Wow.
You know what's funny, the fact that Grungebob made a guest appearance as Maggie on the Simpsons. I'm not sure what that's implying, but he's some kind of baby, and Truth is his father. Reading too much into that, but it's funny all the same.

The Good.

It was funny. Truth is taking some hits.

[countblah]

The War:

For some strange reason, there has been gentle competition between Warhammer and Heroscape for the last little while. There is a natural comparison drawn between them, and UD brings this to the forefront. And what was awesome? The Warhammer squigs being likened to Slimer (I assume). Was that the one? Pretty sure it was. It's also notable that warhammer does tend to have much less of a cartoony, comic book portrayal than Warhammer. Which...sucks.
Chin up, guys. There's a heroscape video game coming soon (not counting the atrociousness that was that memory game from the official site).

The Good.

[countblah]

The toys r not us.

Lots of venom towards toys r us here... and I shouldn't be surprised. I've been complaining about them too, and for good reason. At this time in history, TRU was supposed to be running a demo of Heroscape, and only about a third of the stores were running said demo on the day. They were giving out neraks as well, and it ended up being a bust, almost completely. Almost everyone was ticked about how it went, not the least of which: Reapersaurus. I can recall him being totally pissed about it. We were all expecting mad promos and demos, and to have TRU actually PROMOTE the product they were trying to sell, and...nothing. What a bust. So totally let down. At least they don't pretend to have promos anymore. They just don't have promos anymore at all, which is better than pretending.

The Good