LJ-Cut for those who don't care. And for spoilers!

Resistance! Join the Resistance! All the cool kids are doing it, right? This is the last of the Adventure Packs in CO, and I'm really hoping the Devs learned some lessons from the last two abject failures.

I begin at Harmon Industries, where a new matter transference system is being unveiled. With it, Harmon Industries plans to develop transmission points where physical objects can be transferred from a set transmission point to a set reception point. PRIMUS is on hand, because they're genre-savvy enough to know that there's a good chance this will result in some alien monster or army coming through the portal and wreaking havoc. The company owner, James Harmon IV, has asked for the Invincible Ohm (me) to be on hand as well to keep things under control.

The switch is thrown, and immediately things go awry. The teleportation origin point is hijacked, and shutdown attempts fail because there's a generation point at the other end that is outside Harmon Industries' control. PRIMUS proceeds to lock and load and moves to shoot at whatever comes out of the portal, while Mr. Harmon tries to keep everyone calm. He asks PRIMUS to hold its fire, and asks me to stand by to see what actually comes through.

And through the portal steps ... a guy in a hat and backpack who immediately cowers at the sight of dozens of guns pointed at him. Mr. Harmon calls for PRIMUS to stand down, and approaches the stranger to try and talk to him. The stranger, who calls himself Griz, says that he came from another universe to try and find help. His world is under the tyrannical thumb of First Citizen Harmon, and his resistance movement is doomed if they can't find help. PRIMUS isn't about to dive into a situation it knows nothing about, so Mr. Harmon pleads with me to go through the portal and help.

Eh, why not? This actually brings up a lot of unpleasant memories for my character. He still remembers the time when his home universe made contact with another, and the bad things came from it. Is this the kind of spark that leads to the destruction of this new universe? There's no way to know, yet.

The first thing to do is to escape the Conqueror's HQ (the evil dimensional counterpart of the Champions). Oh yeah, apparently the dimensional gate was created by First Citizen Harmon inside the Conqueror's HQ, and the Resistance broke in to use it. How desperate are you to jump into someone else's dimensional gate to go get help? The point is, the Resistance is trapped inside the facility and can't get out. The Conqueror's army of shark-men-mutants are trapped inside with the Resistance, tearing them to pieces. There's some devices inside the Conqueror's HQ that I use to do some technobabble that causes the shark-mutants to go completely bonkers and attack each other. The shark-mutants tear apart the doors sealing everyone inside the Conqueror's HQ and start attacking First Citizen Harmon's army of Destroids waiting outside. The surviving Resistance members (and myself) sneak away in the middle of the chaos.

The new map is basically a Judge Dredd-ish version of Millennium City, and I have to give the Devs credit for it. The entire city is shrouded under dark clouds, through which the sun can barely be seen. Everything is dark and dreary, with signs of violence and neglect all around you. Propaganda signs are everywhere, most of which feature the words "FEAR" and "OBEY".

When Resistance came out there were some accusations that this was just CO's version of Praetoria, but I don't think this is true. Praetoria at least tried to lie to its people about things, and was originally to be designed around an uncomfortable moral gray area. This new city (known as Multifaria) makes no such pretense, and its basically Millennium City with a goatee. It openly states that if you don't fall in line and do what you're told, you'll get beaten into the ground like a tent peg then dragged off to the correctional facility to get "corrected". In addition to the First Citizen's army of Destroids, there's the Secret Police with their military-grade support vehicles (including hovertanks and aerial gunships and the like). The most overt show of force is the 50-foot high robot enforcers with laser vision walking around.

The Resistance states that their only hope is to rescue someone called "the Old Man", who knows more about the First Citizen's Robot army than anyone else. That said, the Old Man is held under greater security than anyone else in Multifaria, and there's no way they can bust him out with things as they are. So begins a series of missions to weaken the First Citizen's ability to respond to problems. We take down one of his communication hubs, sabotage an ammo dump, blow up the Conqueror jet, spread dissent through the automated propaganda signs, and implant a virus in the Destroid maintenance mainframe. Other Resistance cells rile up the public to get them to revolt, and soon Multifaria's security forces are stretched to the limit without a reliable means of communicating with each other.

One mission that was particularly fun was the Destroid Virus mission. There were a number of the 50-foot robots on hand, and you're told that if they activate you are so dead. The way to deal with them is to attack the power generators attached to them. This causes a power surge which overloads their brains, and causes them to shut down. Things get complicated when two of the Conquerors (Lapis Lazuli and Obulette), who've been on our heels with each attack, finally corner us in the Destroid Maintenance Facility. I managed to upload the virus and the 50-foot robots now treat all entities as hostile. They flatten Lapis Lazuli before she can get to me, but the speedster Obulette manages to corner me. I defeat Obulette without issue, but this leaves me stuck inside a building with nine 50-foot hostile robots outside. I make a break for it and I'm almost vaporized in the process. It was pretty exciting!

With First Citizen Harmon's security forces now in total disarray, we regroup to a Resistance safe-house in the sewers to make plans. On the way we stumble across a group of civilians hiding in the sewers after running afoul of the Secret Police and being branded as traitors. Then water starts to flood the sewer system and shark mutants start appearing. Griz and I fend off the shark-men until he tells me to find and reactivate the pumps to stop the rising water before the civvies drown. On the way there, I'm dodging spy drones that will teleport Destroids to my position if they spot me. Once I reach the pumps I have to activate them while fending off more shark mutants. I was surprised to see that there wasn't a time limit associated with this entire series of events (since we're talking about rising waters in a sealed environment), but didn't think too much of it at the time.

Big mistake.

We lead the civvies back to the Resistance base, and this is where Harmon makes his counter-move. The "civvies" we rescued are actually First Citizen Harmon's Terminator-class robots. They open fire and start slaughtering the Resistance. Griz and I bolt for the exit, with Terminators and Destroids dogging our every step. We seal one of the sewer doors behind us, and use the time to set up mines to block off the tunnel behind us. While I fend off waves of robots, Griz sets things up. Four of the five mines go off, the fifth one doesn't. Griz stays behind to manually activate the last mine, and the sewer is sealed off, allowing me to escape and continue the plan.

With the Resistance almost completely massacred, I have to rely on those few souls still hidden inside First Citizen Harmon's regime to rescue the Old Man. The Resistance smuggles me into the Harmon Correctional Facility, and my contact arranges for a disguise for me. The good news is that I now pass for a convict, and as long as I keep my head down no one will suspect me too much. The bad news is that my outfit doesn't have an active ID tag, and if the robot security drones scan me they'll know I'm not supposed to be there. Once I don the disguise, my power tray is replaced with a different one based on the fact that I have no weapons, just basic hand-to-hand combat. I do have a EMP generator, so if one of the security robots scans me I can blast it and cause it to reboot before it raises the alarm. I have to do this a few times just to get to where I need to be.

This starts a new series of missions where I'm collecting random items so a guy can MacGuyver up some weapons for captured Resistance members. Once I distribute the weapons, I then help a tech-savvy Resistance guy with sabotaging the security cameras (with a modified simon-sez game). That done, the Resistance starts a riot, allowing me to sneak into to cell block B where the super-convicts are kept. I steal some drugs from the pharmacy (with help from a Resistance plant), and drug the food plates of one gang of mutants which is about to start a rumble with another group of mutants. Once I goad the two leaders into a fight, a full-scale super-brawl erupts in cell block B. I sneak into cell block C, the ultra-lockdown block, and my contact tells me to ditch the disguise as security is onto us now.

With stealth out the window I proceed to blast my way through waves of security until I reach the heart of cell block C. I can see a solitary figure held behind multiple opaque force fields. There, the chief warden, Arcana the Super-Sorceress, is standing in the way. She and I go at it, and the resulting fight is long and brutal and resulted in the deaths of a lot of pets (both hers and mine). Eventually, she goes down and I move to free the Old Man.

When I do, he immediately covers his face and retreats behind a set of doors that seals shut behind him. Weird. The doors open again and ...

It's Doctor Destroyer. THE Doctor Destroyer. Albert freaking Zerstoiten, THAT Doctor Destroyer. Anyone who's every played in the Champions Universe (online or otherwise) knows this guy. The most bad-ass of bad-ass villains the world has ever known. Somehow, First Citizen Harmon of Multifaria captured the guy and I just set him loose.

Crap.

This of course explains WHY the Old Man knows more about the First Citizen's Destroid army than anyone else: he built the damn things before the First Citizen hijacked them for his own use.

So now I'm staring into the face of a Legendary villain who's so purple to me its not even a contest. He thanks me for his rescue, and instructs me that I will join him in his quest for revenge against the First Citizen. Then he hits me with this line:

"Why? Because you are a hero. THAT's why."

...nnnng, hate you so much!

So Doctor Destroyer points at the reinforced wall of the prison and proceeds to blast a 20-foot hole through that reinforced wall, and the next four behind it. On the way out, I pass the bodies of a number of poor sods who got caught in the blast and had no clue what was coming.

Doctor Destroyer re-asserts control over his Destroid army, and all of Multifaria becomes a war-zone. The only aspect of the First Citizen's robot army that does not revert to Doctor Destroyer's control are the 50-foot tall ones. Those had technology inside them not of Doctor Destroyer's making. They're all brain-dead husks now as both halves of their robot brain told the other half to piss off and die. Meanwhile, Doctor Destroyer calls out First Citizen Harmon, and the two proceed to engage in Ham-to-Ham combat atop the First Citizen's citadel. Their conversation goes like this:

"Bow before my science, bitch!"

"Screw your science, I got magic!"

While everything in the city is going bonkers, I regroup with the remaining Resistance. In order to break the First Citizen's control once and for all, someone has to destroy the six building-sized magic generators around the First Citizen's citadel. The Resistance doesn't have the kind of ordinance needed to do that, but have an alternative. The brain-dead giant robots have a back-up system that allows for manual control by a pilot. They want me to jump into one of them and destroy those magic generators.

Say it with me now: I. Dig. Giant Robots. You. Dig. Giant Robots. We. Dig. Giant Robots. Chicks. Dig. Giant Robots. *guitar riff* Nice.

So I hop into one of the giant robots and gain a new tray of powers. This is going to be so cool! Right?!

Right?

Not really, no.

This is one aspect of Resistance where I feel the Devs really dropped the ball. I may in fact be piloting a giant 50-foot robot, but some of the combat mechanics are still under the impression that I'm not. Case in point: on approaching the First Citizen's citadel, there's a raised platform with ramps leading up to it. The ramps only go up about 10 feet, so I have a 40-foot clearance to look around see things. I note a group of security forces atop the dais, at about knee height, and I cue up my missile barrage, fired from my massive shoulder-pads, to clear them out.

Except I can't, because according to the game, I have no line of sight.

*facepalm*

If you're expecting a kind of Godzilla-esque rampage with this sequence, prepare to be further disappointed. Outside of specific structures, you cannot destroy anything. Further, if you expect to be able to ignore the teeming throngs of squishy humans beneath you (as I did) prepare to be further disappointed. Apparently, Ultraman can be defeated by hordes of peons armed with shoulder-fired rockets.

After dying a few times in the process of figuring out the rules for this part of the adventure, I make my way to the first generator and beat it into rubble. When I do, a black circle appears on the ground, and pointy things start sprouting from it. This strikes me as a bad thing and I back away. Sure enough, a giant monster claws its way out of the hole and aggros on me. The fight goes badly for me, and while I do win the endless stream of missile-touting peons blows up my robot and kills me again. I resume the fight, and proceed more slowly, dealing with the peon hordes as they appear. The slower pace grinds this "climax" to a crawl but I eventually finish it. My robot blows up again, but this time the game is nice enough to assume that I have the brains to actually bail out. The explosion levels the First Citizen's citadel, causing both him and Doctor Destroyer to fall to the ground. The ruined citadel was covering a massive pit of probably-not-good-things, and the First Citizen starts drawing power from it and focusing it on Dr. Destroyer. Now weakened, he can't hope to win without my help.

So begins the real climax. This fight is long, and I do mean long. Even with Dr. Destroyer helping me this was a slog. Every time we're close to winning, the First Citizen retreats to his pit of badness and returns with new powers. This happens four times before we finally beat him down. His final retreat to the pit results in his evil masters getting annoyed and dragging him down with them.

With the threat over and Multifaria freed at last, Dr. Destroyer promises to return to this universe and conquer it once he's done doing so with his home dimension, and leaves. The surviving Resistance thank me for everything I've done, and consider renaming the considerably-wrecked city of Multifaria to New Detroit or something.

So did the good guys win? Well, kind of. Are we better off? Um...not really.

Despite my griping, this adventure pack was a ton of fun! I would seriously do this again, and intend to because there's a lot of lore I missed out on and I want to go back and see it. Plus, its interesting and varied in terms of what you're doing, and the explanations for why you're doing it make sense. If the Devs would make more content like this I would be all over it.

Stay tuned for Day 12 for the next kind of special content - the Comic Series: Aftershock!

Current Mood: happy

Well, it sounds like later Praetorian content, in the "Congratulations, you won...and helped the bad guys!" sense. ;)

It's really not that much like the later Preaetorian content, but then again it came first.

This mission is one where there is a lockout, on the final battle of Zerstoiten vs. Erzatztoiten (Citizen Harmon, no spoiler, and by the way, guess who Defender's alternate is in this world? States... wait. Right. You get the point.)


There are some amazing easter eggs. First, in the Conquerors' headquarters, you will find several rather amusing displays. Look at them if you get the chance before you go out and agro the rest of the bots.


Second, this mission works well with 2-3 people, with 5, though, it can be a pain in the asterisk.

Obsidian is the female alternate of Kinetic. Her Dark Speed power can be gotten randomly as a device drop. Therefore, there are FARMS for this.
This caused the devs to get rid of the 'snipe' trick - you used to be able to destroy the control consoles before the overseers activated, and thus, survive. No longer.
Now you have to kill the damn megadestroid overseers, which is way too hard. They ARE destructible though, which is a reminder to you when you get to be one later.

The first site is the ammo dump. Except for it always having time to summon a second mega-destroid assistant, you have a cake-walk. Kill the first one, which takes around 4-5 minutes if you have normal damage rates, and then block or avoid the second, and you'll be fine; the second one despawns after a while.

Once you blow the ammo dump, you take the manhole to the secret tunnel to outside the Propaganda Control Building.
Again you can't blow the console up fast enough if you have more than one person or are on Elite, because, too many robot guards. Soloing non-elite, I think you can still blow it up and thus avoid Giant Robot Drama.
With multiple people, one person can zoom inside, take care of the baddies, and reset the controls to Peace N Love while your buddies outside tank the big guys. You can escape them by running back to the safety of the respawn.

The third section, blow up the Conqueror's Jet, is OPTIONAL once you talk to the person there. This is because it is the touch of your off-world, player-character toesies on the asphalt of the roadway that you cross to reach the jet, that triggers the waves and waves of enemies. Stay well clear of them and the heroic humans will blow it up without even setting off the destroid overseer.

Fourth section, the Destroid Recharging Virus, is still quite fun AND it's where you can get the drop for the Dark Speed power. If you want to farm it, you have to do the following: 1) be on elite setting, 2) only defeat Oubliette, NOT the force-blasting Sapphire-alternate, and 3) get the hell out immediately - leave the mission asap.

If the force-blaster DOES die, it'll be game over for farming the instance :)

So, back in the "REALLY DOING IT" world, in the prison, you find that several of the bad guys are some that you probably know from hero-side, and while some are still quite villainous, most are good guys because Multifaria.

The Evil Witchcraft is a total monster to beat with some powersets, even on "fragile" setting.

On to the Zerstoiten-fest. You get to blow up five or six of these giant power posts, and then the building collapses and Citizen Harmon aka Shadow Destroyer fights Albert with you as a sort-of-annoying-pest ... except that you HAVE to do the damage to him.

Best practices: He spits out these shadow-energy spheres. Kill them. They empower him if he touches them and he uses that.

The giant Behemoths of rock: they're hateful, but can be killed for costume drops if you're lucky.

At the end, when you're done, you get a vaguely-similar handshake opportunity with The Griz (who in the mainstream world is harmless, helpful tourist Clayton Grizwold, you meet him first in the tutorial (where his role has been seriously cut back) and then again in Canada where he and his friends find their vacation site overrun by teleiosauruses.

The Griz is of course from the "Darker Apocalyptic" world and thus, like everyone, is BUFFED UP. (This phenomenon was noted in the Disney Channel cartoon "Kim Possible - A Sitch In Time.")

The Resistance mission, the Whiteout mission to a lesser degree, and the Vibora Bay Apocalypse, are my favorite content at the moment.