Hi guys, and welcome to Game Box; a new series where I look at some of the games I’ve been playing recently since I finally have a console again. First up, I’m coming to be talking about the recent Open Beta for Gazillion Entertainment’s Marvel Heroes Omega.

Marvel Heroes Omega assembles one of the largest gatherings of iconic Super Heroes, Super Villains, and locations from the Marvel Universe in gaming history for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, and Mac.

Set in the iconic Marvel Universe, Marvel Heroes Omega combines the core game-play style of Action RPGs and MMOs with the expansive library of heroes from the Marvel Universe. In the game, players can collect and play as their favorite Marvel Super Heroes (including Iron Man, Thor, Wolverine, Hulk, Spider-Man, Captain America and many others).

Team up with friends and try to stop Doctor Doom from devastating the world with the power of the Cosmic Cube in a story written by Marvel comic super-scribe Brian Michael Bendis.

From moment one, you’re given a gorgeous introduction sequence featuring some pretty good 3D models and 2D animated sections retelling the origins of the more famous Marvel Heroes. A fair few of the cut scenes in-game follow a more motion comic style and while the blend of styles is a little jarring at first, I give the creators credit for trying something different.

The tutorial drops you in the middle of a mission with Captain America and allows you the time to figure out your buttons before setting you against Ultron and his minions. Each of your attacks is assigned to one of the four face buttons and you can bring up a secondary menu by holding L2. It’s an intuitive system to help console players easily access their full range of abilities that’s a staple of MMOs on consoles.

Throughout the tutorial, you’re given the ability to play as Cap, Black Widow and Hulk before they allow you to access the launch roster of heroes. It’s a right Who’s Who of MCU characters alongside more established characters. You get all the ones you know and then you get the likes of Wiccan, Squirrel Girl and Angela, which is cool. Given this is a Free-To-Play game, you’re given the opportunity to try before you buy any of these characters before Level 10 when you have to pick your starter character.

I eventually chose She-Hulk and upon entering the game proper, I noticed a cute quirk this game has. Depending on the characters in the vicinity, there are unique snippets of dialogue from both your character and those of other players. This gives the world a little more connectivity and hearing Shulkie interact with Gambit in the moments in the mission worlds or at the HQ is pretty fun. The voice cast for this game is exhaustive too, bringing in all the voices you’d associate with these characters from various animated shows as well as bringing in actors such as Clark Gregg and Keith David, voicing Agent Coulson and Nick Fury, respectively.

Being a FTP game, more heroes are unlocked through Founder’s Packs of various price points, by using Eternity Splinters or by accumulating the specfic in-game currency to buy them or unlock additional costumes. You can get an additional hero for nothing though, by downloading Daredevil for free and the additional Man Without Fear costume for free if you are a PS Plus member.

You can customise your heroes with character-specific loot drops for defeating enemies and augment their abilities through levelling or attaching Medallions from defeated super villains.

Given the amount of FTP MMO games on consoles at the moment, you could be forgiven for thinking this is just another but the game plays like the X-Men Legends and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance games, taking an isometric view of the action but adds the MMO component and the whole package feels a little like that Avengers Alliance game for its breadth of characters and customisation potential.

If you’re looking for a quick and fun MMO to get into or are jonesing for a Marvel game that isn’t on mobile (that’s me) then I recommend giving this game a shot. Marvel Heroes Omega is currently available for Open Beta on Playstation 4 and will be officially released on June 4 2017. For more details and updates, head over to the official website and be sure to follow the game’s Twitter.

Ow! Owww! Why do you come here if you don’t like the puns?! Oh, right, toy reviews! Welcome back to more from the kingdom of Knighton as we take a look at more of the Ultimate offerings from LEGO Nexo Knights! Bring on the baddies!

This second wave brings more of the lava monster army’s characters in the form of General Magmar and Flama! The packaging is the same as the previous waves and includes all the same kind of features for £6.99 a pop!

General Magmar is the long suffering commander of the lava monster army. I have a lot of problems with his hair piece; it just refuses to stay in! His Ultimate set consists of two bags containing 64 pieces and an instruction booklet.

Once built, this lava monster confirms that all the evil bases follow the same general build barring pieces for exclusive parts.

His default NEXO power is Rock Ripper, which summons this mining rig for Magmar’s back. The spinning mechanism spins smoothly and adjusts for balance very well.

The Mightiness NEXO power gives the not-so-good general a large duelling stick with fists on either end that can also be removed for when he really needs to punch something.

The Whirlwind NEXO powers is described as a storm of axes but in reality, it’s just a pair of small fans. Smaller than the mining saws. That’s kind of disappointing considering the awesome description but hopefully the in-game power you can unlock is more impressive.

Flama is the twin brother of Moltor; forming the Hot’n’Heavy twins. Can’t but feel someone should have taken a second pass at that name but who am I to judge what lava monsters do behind closed doors? Flama comes in a set with two bags of 67 assorted pieces and an instruction booklet.

I really dig all the translucent parts on Flama, it makes the whole lava goop monster thing work. Good choice of parts, design team! Love the basic flame sword too!

Flama’s default weapon is a flaming hammer on a tilting mechanism with the Flame Wreck NEXO power. I do like hammer rig but it makes Flama hard to balance and that’s pretty hard to begin with.

We saw the Slime Blast NEXO power in the Rumble Blade review but here we get a stud blaster which looks odd enough in a world of tech-knight but especially weird with a villain made of magma.

The Ice Dragon NEXO power is an odd choice of power up for a lava monster but it does come with this sick spiked weapon that I guess is a like a throwing stair or chakram? I dunno, it’s pretty weird but the cool kind of weird.

The bad guys for this summer wave of Ultimate sets are pretty cool with a nice variety of weapons and scannable powers to use. Be sure to come back as we armour up with more LEGO Nexo Knights!

The NEXO Knights, as well as having rocking sets revolving around typical knightly themes of jousting, castles and bashing in monsters with a techno-magic twist, also have these entry level sets with ‘Ultimate’ versions of the NEXO Knights characters. We’ll be taking a look at two of those today so let’s armour up!

The Ultimate booster sets are £6.99 each and feature one NEXO Knight character, three NEXO Power shields and assortment of related armour and weapons designed to augment the playability of the other sets. I like to think of them as the Minifigure-scale equivalent of the Bionicle character releases and definitely a cheaper alternative to buying full sets if you just want the NEXO Knights characters.

Beast Master, judging by the media, is a pretty low-ranking goon whose only defining feature is that he wrangles the Globlins. This Ultimate set contains 65 pieces and one instruction booklet.

Once built, Beast Master and his armour pieces are all contained on his own little themed stand which I really dig. It’s a neat storage solution and having multiple character will make a nice little display.

Beast Master’s default loadout has a Globlin-swinging backpack, a drill weapon and the Globlin Attack NEXO Power. I found the swinging mechanism to be a bit stiff and would always catch too easily which probably wasn’t the intended effect. Alternatively, I found you can clip the chained Globlins to the back of BM’s shield.

The second power is the Spirit Vortex, which includes a shield-like piece made to look like swirling mystical energy which looks pretty cool.

The third and final NEXO Power is Dynamighty which… conjures dynamite? Maybe it does, I don’t know, I’ve only managed to scan a couple powers into the free app (which we’ll talk about later) so I’m unsure what all these do in-universe.

Aaron is the NEXO Knights team jokester and resident nightmare fetishist sharpshooter. He’s the laid-back gamer of the group and even uses his shield as a flying hoverboard! His Ultimate set contains 82 pieces and one instruction booklet.

Again, Ultimate Aaron comes with a neat little display for himself and, living up to the ultimate moniker, Aaron looks like he’s rocking a powered up version of his original form with translucent green armour pieces.

Aaron’s default loadout includes an upgraded version of his trademark crossbow, a green energy stud blaster backpack and the Arrow Strike NEXO Power. That is a lot of green… This form is really quite cumbersome and I find it difficult to pose him but he’s got a ton o’ guns so that’s cool.

The Target Blaster NEXO Power seems to revolve around marksmanship and includes a more traditional bow and a night-vison helmet. I imagine this would be for quick, precision strikes against the evil lava monster army.

Finally, Aaron’s last NEXO Power is quite possibly my favourite because it both matches his personality and is utterly ludicrous. The Banana Bombs NEXO Power combines with Aaron’s Ultimate armour and grants him a couple banana blasters on his back with plenty of extra ammunition. Combine that with his cheeky alternate face and Aaron definitely becomes more endearing for me.

All in all, the Ultimate sets I’ve reviewed here are a good representation of the line and I really dig them. They’re nice entry-level sets for the NEXO Knights line and all the characters are present between the two waves (wave 2 coming later in the summer) plus you get 3 NEXO Powers per set which will make strides towards you completing the set of 108 that will be available, which can be used in the free app I mentioned earlier. Speaking of…

I apologise for the poor quality screenshots (this is a really cheap tablet and cannot take screenshots) but I actually took a dive into the LEGO NEXO Knights: Merlok 2.0 game that’s available through the Apple app store and Google play store for free. It’s a pretty decent adventure game and every NEXO Power included in the NEXO Knights sets can be scanned into the game for additional powers, which I did. It’s simple, intuitive and is perfect for any young NEXO Knights fan looking for more playability.

Hey hey everyone! Sorry for the lack of new zer0cast episodes. In case you weren’t aware (which is highly likely), my wife and I are going to be having our third child any day now. At least, I put the podcast on hold when I thought that, but he’s taking longer than we expected to get here. Hence the long break.

There will eventually be more podcast, so don’t worry, the four of you who were worried! The rest of you, start worrying, and then don’t worry.

In the meantime, I will shamelessly plug a game I made for a thing where you are supposed to make a game about fishing. It’s a Twine game, which is pretty much just text and links which form a sort of Choose Your Own Adventure vibe. Some people say these aren’t video games; I say they are. You may find yourself forming your own opinions if you play some of them.

Speaking of playing some of them, why not try this one?

The Void and The Hook

It’s pretty short. I’d be super thrilled if you gave it a shot, and even more so if you told me what you think! Either here or on twitter (@zer0jon) or email (zer0castdoom AT gmail DOT com).

Thanks, and enjoy your time!