grim-reaper
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Death kills parents, robs cradle in Sims 4
Here's a tragic – yet heartwarming – tale from The Sims 4, as shared with me by the game's Executive Producer, Rachel Franklin:
Vindictus' grim Pantheum the Executioner offers toughest challenge yet
With a name like "Pantheum the Executioner," you have to figure that this poor guy didn't have a lot of career prospects after graduating video game high school. Perhaps he did pest control a bit, but these days he's "a creature of unimaginable evil" tearing it up in Vindictus. Pantheum is the latest raid boss to come to Vindictus -- and he is no pushover. Nexon claims that Pantheum is one of the toughest bosses in the game and requires no fewer than eight players to take him down. Players can encounter him in the Shadow of Death raid, but they'll need to be on their toes to survive the boss' three phases. If players beat him three times, they'll earn enough currency to purchase a Grim Reaper box with super-rare contents. You can check out Pantheum in action after the jump!
The Perfect Ten: Shapeshifters
Because we are true geeks, last weekend my wife and I went to see X-Men: First Class. Afterward, we got into a discussion about what mutant power we'd pick for ourselves if we had the choice. I was torn between teleportation and quick healing, while my wife wanted to be able to turn into cash to pay off our mortgage. I think one of us is more grounded in the real world than the other. But the more I think about it, the more I was intrigued with the idea of a shapeshifter. To be anyone would give you unparalleled freedom -- and plenty of chances to get into mischief, too. Come to think of it, it's probably best I'm not granted that particular superpower. However, plenty of MMOs do give players the chance to shift between their normal forms and something else entirely. While there are far more than 10 examples that the brain trust over here came up with, I'm going to pick out my favorites to highlight.
The Perfect Ten: Unusual MMO weapons
Swords. Staffs. Maces. Spears. Wands. Bows. Crossbows. Double-crossbows. Hammers. Wolverine claws. Daggers. Axes. Deadly? Yes. Fashionable? Not so much. I mean, really. A two-handed sword is so 1299. Now, a deep dish Chicago-style pizza with the works flung into an enemy's gullet -- that's progressive thinking! Because I'm deeply bored with the usual suspects in most MMO armories, I wanted to spend a day praising devs who said, "Screw it. We're going weird, and we're not going to regret it, even when our bosses call us into their offices demanding why such lunacy ended up in a professional game." So forget everything you think you know about weapons because your pitiful armament has yet to scratch the surface of the wild, wild universe of things that can be used to kill you in game. This Perfect Ten column is sponsored by Grizzly Bear Rocket Launchers, Ltd. after the jump.
The Perfect Ten: Death penalties
Death penalties belong in that tier of MMO discussion topics that is reserved for the most controversial subjects, along with skimpy armor and the New Game Enhancements. Death, as we know well, comes for us all with big, nasty, pointy teeth. But for some reason, we are not fans of it, neither in real life nor in online games. One of the reasons death penalties continue to be a divisive subject is that they used to be brutal beyond belief in MMOs back in the olden days of yore. As the MMO genre progressed, the penalties were lightened and experimented with in an effort to avoid driving players barking mad because of them. So we've ended up with two camps: one group of gamers who campaign for harsh death penalties to make the world seem exciting and dangerous, and another group that campaigns for lenient penalties in the interests of sanity. So today we're going to go through 10 of the most-used types of death penalties in MMOs, starting with the most brutal and ending with the most lenient. Stay for the after-column party as well, as you'll get a taste for this debate in the comments section!
The Perfect Ten: Weird staples of every fantasy MMO
If you take some weird, outlandish, or out-of-the-ordinary item and then saturate your life with it, sooner or later the bizarre becomes the accepted norm. So much so, in fact, that you'd cease to even think about it. I mean, do we ever question those magic boxes known as "microwaves" that mysteriously heat up our foods? Does anyone blink twice anymore when small computers tell us how to drive instead of nagging spouses? What about Carrot Top? Likewise, fantasy MMORPGs have erected trope after trope that we no longer question -- or even notice. Actually, the only time we'd notice one of these is if a game failed to include it. No matter how illogical and sometimes silly these MMO staples are when you think about them, we've been around them so long that we would no more notice them as we would the individual keyboard buttons that we type on daily. Still... you're thinking about them right now, aren't you? Those keys, cruelly dominated by your pecking fingers, pushing them back into place. What a techno-bully you are! In any case, come with us as we count down 10 weird staples that every fantasy MMO seems to include.
The Daily Grind: What was your worst death ever?
Seasons don't fear the Reaper, we've heard. Nor do the wind, the sun or the rain. Nor, apparently, do MMO players. After all, death is just a part of life to us, a daily occurrence in the hazardous occupation of adventuring. Happily, dying is but a hiccup between one existence and the next, and our resurrected bodies are more than ready to head back into the fray. However, sometimes a particular in-game death hits harder than the rest. It could be that you died in a terribly inconvenient spot and had to re-run a large swath of content just to get back to where you were. You might have kicked the bucket in a game in which death holds serious consequences, perhaps in the form of a severe death penalty or PvP item loss. A single death on your behalf could have been the linchpin between a sweet group victory and a horrible, horrible wipe. So what was your worst in-game death ever? What MMO death was so stupid, so disastrous, so laced with negative effects that you wince even to think about it today? Share, and fear the Reaper no more!
Be a Death Jr. grim reaper for Halloween
Sure, Death Jr. 2 has impressive graphics, but you know what looks even better? Real life. Yeah. Real life has amazing graphics that run higher than even PLAYSTATION 3's highly touted 1080p. In addition, real life features some stunning physics and lighting systems that just can't be beat (although the AI sucks most of the time).But one of the big disadvantages of real life was that it never let you play as one of the characters from Death Jr. Well, that is... until now. Smiffy's has just released their new line of Death Jr. costumes, just in time for Halloween. You can pick up just a mask, or you can go for the gold and dress up from head to toe as the grim reaper.You can also dress up as Pandora, or as the priciest, but easily the most awesome looking, Smith and Weston. The game comes out appropriately on Halloween.[Via GameDaily]
