Villain 101 Chapter 3

Welcome, future villains, to Chapter 3 of Villain 101, the continuing exploits of Twilight Dusk, my criminal mastermind in City of Villains. As par the course, the column will be written from two perspectives, one from the viewpoint of Twilight Dusk himself, and the other will be my take on the game so far. Onward!

Twilight Dusk:My latest job for Doctor Creed, that visible-brain psycho, was to interrogate Dr. Geist, a former colleague of his, on his experiments. Normally, I would steer clear of mad scientists, but two things appealed to me. First, Doctor Creed was paying me a ton of cash. Second, I would get to crack some Arachnos heads while earning that load of moolah! Trask, my loyal henchman, informed me that he had found another goon who wanted to join the Twilight Dusk train to riches and power. My new lackey was an ex-bouncer who called himself “Bouncer”. While not too bright, his display of utter bastardness (burning down a pet shop) impressed me. Bouncer was in.

Trask, Bouncer, and I infiltrated Fort Cerberus easily enough. Arachnos has a lot of shiny hardware and an army of goons, but, in my opinion, they get by on their reputation. We quickly found Dr. Geist’s lab where we announced our intention by blowing away the guards at the entrance. My mocking laughter chilled the marrow in the guards’ bones while the sounds of my twin .45s pronounced their doom. After we fought our way into the center of the lab, I came face to face with Dr. Geist. It seems that the good doctor wasn’t even in charge of his own lab as I saw him meekly submit to some Arachnos flunky. It’s a sad day indeed when a mad scientist doesn’t have any balls to stand up for himself in his own lab! And mad he was! That crazy bastard started shooting ray blasts at me, so my boys and me had to pump some cold, hard lead into him. Fortunately, I found his research notes that I could take back to Doctor Creed. Geist’s notes revealed that he was doing experiments on the biochemical processes of Arachnoids, some sort of human-spider mutant hybrid. Totally weird crap! Why do these mad scientists have to screw around with such freakish stuff? All a good villain needs is a ruthless determination and some .45s!

After collecting my hefty fee from the good doctor, Creed told me that he was working on a serum using the blood of the Infected. The only catch was that he needed some guinea pigs to experiment on and he asked me to provide some. He knew of an abandoned warehouse where homeless people lived and suggested that I grab some. I told him that such a job was right up my alley. I’d put those lazy bums to work! Laughing, my gang and I headed out. Once at the warehouse, we encountered little resistance. Some Hellions had staked out the area as their territory, but I explained my position that everywhere was MY territory. They got the idea after Trask, Bouncer, and I whacked a few of them causing the rest to flee. After that, we only had to deal with some Rogue Isles Police. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Why would those corrupt bastards leave their donut shop to help some homeless bums? Once again, my .45s delivered a final solution. My boys and I were howling with laughter the whole time. I loved hearing those homeless vagrants begging me to let them go and crying, “Where are you taking me? Nooo!” I just told them that now they would be good for something and just tossed them in the truck. After delivering them to Doctor Creed, I treated my gang to a little celebration.

A few days later, Doctor Creed contacted me again. It seems that he needed some rare and expensive medical supplies for his experiments. He was willing to pony up a good amount of cash if I was to intercept a shipment of such supplies as they came near the harbor. As I took the job (and the cash!), he told me that the shipping company had hired some mercs to guard the supplies. Some outfit calling themselves Wyvern. I told him it was no big deal and that he would have his supplies by midnight. Afterwards, my gang and I took a tugboat out to the ship and boarded it. We were in for a little bit of a shock.

As soon as we boarded, some Wyvern mercs attacked us. They were using bows! Bows! I couldn’t believe it. I started laughing but stopped when their first shot hit Bouncer in the shoulder. Man, those bastards had a good aim. The Wyvern agents put up a good fight, but they shouldn’t have brought bows and arrows to a gun fight! Their leader was a crazy bastard that was using trick arrows and such. Those guys must have watched too many Robin Hood movies or thought they were Green Arrow. After capping all the Wyvern agents, I had Trask and Bouncer unload the supplies and we then took it back to Doctor Creed. I swear his brain lighted up when he saw the supplies. After he was done rambling on about his experiments, he told me that he had no other jobs for me. After checking around, it seemed that there wasn’t too much work available on Mercy Island so I decided to head to richer grounds – Port Oakes.

Jeffprime:I finish up in Mercy Island and am now heading to Port Oakes. Mercy Island was a good start with a nice mix of enemies and missions. I really liked the Wyvern adversaries. The fact that they used bows was really cool and really reinforced the comic-book nature of the setting. Plus, it looked damn wicked when I started seeing arrows sticking out of my henchmen! As for my henchmen, it was really nice when a second one became available to me. As I tend to play solo, having a couple of extra guys to watch my back really helps. Dark Miasma still continues to be a vital power; allowing me to heal my henchmen as well as myself. Sometimes, it can get hard to keep one of my henchmen alive as that the range of Dark Miasma is limited and, from time to time, one of my goons will break ranks and run up and begin to pistol-whip my enemies. While watching him pistol-whip my foes makes me laugh, it does keep me on my toes trying to keep him alive. I would put some extra slots on Dark Miasma and put in some increased radius enhancements, but I’m still maxing out my henchmen and my Dual Wield powers.

As for the missions, I’m still enjoying them. My favorite so far is the kidnapping the homeless one. Whoever thought that one up is a cold bastard! However, it’s a good villain mission, and a villain’s got to do what a villain’s got to do! 🙂

So far, so good. I’m looking forward to Port Oakes and also trying to figure out what power to get next. I’m trying to decide between Equip Thug or Empty Clips (a rapid-fire attack). I’m leaning towards Empty Clips as that I really love my twin .45s!