While a traditional Adventure Game at its core, it also features a fairly robust RPG-style combat system with equippable gear, level gaining through experience, and a mix of melee and ranged combat. Superpowers are also vital in combat, and function much the way that spells would in more traditional RPG titles. You'll deal with Random Encounters as you explore the wastes, solving the missions doled out to you from Mission Control. Each set of missions inevitably ends in a battle of wits with Dr. Entropy, the League's arch-nemesis.
This game provides examples of:
- 11th-Hour Ranger: Toastbuster and Zaniac, who join right before the last set of missions. They'll be very welcome additions, as they are powerhouses of Brawn and Brains respectively and will help a lot in the high-danger areas.
- Absurdly Spacious Sewer: New York City and Philadelphia each have one underground. And yes, the New York sewers have alligators in them.
- Action Girl: Princess Glovebox and Mademoiselle Pepperoni.
- Alliterative Name: The Caped Cod.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: Oxide Man, who is completely blue.
- Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Starts at four and increases by one every time you complete a set of missions, to a maximum of nine.
- In addition, you will only ever have 3 people in the front line for combat. Some difficult terrain limits this to two, or even one. Everyone not on the front line must use powers or ranged weapons.
- Badass Biker: Princess Glovebox, although this is an Informed Ability due to the lack of actual motorcycles in the game (despite the cover art above showing her riding one).
- Beef Gate: A trio of Steroid Men will attack you if you go too far south. They'll maul a small, lower-level party, but can be easily dispatched later with a stronger squad.
- It's possible, though very difficult, to level up enough and get strong enough weapons to just beat the Steroid Men in the second chapter. This results in massive Sequence Breaking (see below).
- Big Applesauce: New York City plays a big part of the game, particularly towards the second half. The Empire State Building, Radio City Music Hall, the United Nations Building, Carnegie Hall, and Times Square are all worked into the plot.
- Big Eater: The Iron Tummy, of course. And Mademoiselle Pepperoni loves her pizza, and has the body to prove it.
- Bowdlerise: An early mission is another superhero team has stopped fighting crime, because they found a stash of girlie magazines. To get them to stop ogling the ladies, you find and use a ray gun that does this to all the pictures. If you can find a way to avoid being distracted by all the, uh...interviews yourself.
- Can't Drop the Hero: The Crimson Tape, de facto leader of the League, never gets a day off.
- Card-Carrying Villain: Dr. Entropy, of course, who appears to have no other purpose in life than hatching convoluted evil schemes that will hamper the recovery of civilization.
- Chaos Is Evil: Dr. Entropy's theme and stated goal is spreading chaos.
- Character Level: Gaining experience allows your heroes to ascend the scale of heroworthiness. Your whole team, at the start of the game, are Class Ten heroes, making them the bottom of the barrel hero-wise. As you fight and solve cases, your character will level up until they're First Class Heroes. Beyond that, there are awards for getting one million experience on a character, and then two million experience on a character, both of which make your character even stronger, but there's not enough enemies in the game to get to three million experience points.
- The League itself also has levels, though these come automatically at the end of each set of missions. Higher League levels allow more characters in the active party and, in theory, more dangerous missions.
- Chest Insignia: Most of the League has one as part of their costume.
- Chest Monster: Sometimes defeated enemies will leave behind pizzas that might contain extra goodies, but sometimes they're trapped. You have a teammate whose power is to see if they're trapped or not, but won't have a teammate who can disarm them until the last mission.
- Conservation of Ninjutsu: There's a "danger" level in each sector of the game indicating how strong the enemies there are. Because it's a relative constant, the smaller a group of enemies is, the tougher each of them will generally be.
- Cut the Juice: Dr. Entropy's first scheme involves a complex electronic device with a protective force field... and a long, obvious power cord that extends out of the range of the field.
- Cyborg: The Mighty Magnitude, whose head is a computer monitor with smiley-face wallpaper.
- Treader Man is a genetically engineered half man, half boat, due to microchips from a boat ending up in the process. His biography mentions that he cannot see another boat without pondering whether it is, in fact, his father.
- Death World: The end of the game requires you to go to Buffalo in upstate New York. On arrival, your dangerometer explodes trying to measure the danger level, and it's home to the absolute most dangerous enemies in the game: massive damage sponges that also inflict devastating amounts of damage to your high-level party.
- Disney Villain Death: The final mission ends with Dr. Entropy falling down to the streets below and then blowing up. The ensuing Sequel Hook claims he'll come back, but as no sequel was ever made, he's presumably dead for good.
- Disaster Scavengers: Just about everyone, to an extent, and the Superhero Leagues in particular. Part of their job is to reclaim lost relics from the pre-apocalypse days for educational and archival purposes. Of course, this being a Meretzky game, these relics are items like celebrity diet books and the recipe for Silly Putty. And a souvenir rack is an important (gold-plated!) historical relic. Even though no one knows what a "souvenir" is.
- Meanwhile, one mission has you destroying what is probably the last Frank Sinatra recording to complete the mission, but no one really seems to mind that.
- Evil Plan: Dr. Entropy has a bountiful supply of these, each more silly than the last. Genetically-altered trees that drop their leaves again right after you finish raking, a ray that reverses street signs to snarl up traffic, and even the thawing of a cryogenically frozen George Steinbrenner to become the dictator of the wastes. Amusingly, he DOESN'T have a plan put together at the end of one chapter, causing him to leap off of the Statue Of Liberty in villainous shame.
- Expy: Your late-game party member Toastbuster looks more than a little bit like Powdered Toast Man.
- Fish People: The Caped Cod, naturally.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: Powers either work in combat or puzzle screens, not both. There are a couple puzzles that you should be able to solve with attack powers (frustratingly, this includes several of Dr. Entropy's plots), but the game doesn't let you. Like you probably kill dozens and dozens of robots with the Induce Rust power over the course of the game, but when one blocks you on a stairway in a puzzle screen, your only hope is to trick him into drinking a bizarre cocktail of things you've picked up in earlier missions.
- Guns Are Worthless: There are a few conventional firearms in the game, but they're eventually outclassed by other ranged weapons, including something called a
bowel disruptor. - Heart Is an Awesome Power: Despite your heroes having a slew of useless-sounding powers, once you've been playing the game a little while you'll see everyone has their uses.
- Hermit Guru: The Wisest Man in the World, who you need to find in order to learn how to get to Carnegie Hall.
- Holding Out for a Hero: A strange variant. In the course of the game you visit the territory of two other superhero leagues. However the areas where they're headquartered will continue to be overrun by monsters unless your team, the embarrassment of the federation, takes care of it for them.
- The Illegible: One mission involves you getting a letter from a doctor, and as per the usual joke, it's impossible to read. Except to a hero who joins the league only for the duration of a single cutscene, who has the superpower to read doctors' handwriting.
- Improbable Weapon User: Everyone in the League, thanks to the wonderfully bizarre weapons you acquire throughout the game. A modified jet engine, a swarm of trained hornets, arsenic-tipped deer antlers... you name it.
- Improvised Armour: Your heroes will wear pretty much anything for protection, thanks to the game's giant supply of comedic clothing. Who needs traditional armor when you can wear a diamond-studded chastity belt or a mortarboard inexplicably made of concrete?
- Ironic Nickname: Captain Excitement, who is so horribly dull and lethargic that he developed a superpower from it.
- Kleptomaniac Hero: While the League is sworn to upholding the law, this IS an Adventure Game, so you'll still grab every item in sight, even from private property.
- Literal Metaphor: In addition to telling you how to get to Carnegie Hall, the Wisest Man in the World will also let you use his piano.
- Magikarp Power: The Crimson Tape himself. He has a very high Brains score but no inherent combat powers to make the best use of it. However, if you take the time and resources to get him some isotopes - Increase Foe's Cholesterol, Induce Rust, and Cause Root Rot, for example, to cover most of the bases - he becomes extremely effective in battle. This is a worthy investment given that he's always in the party, because you Can't Drop the Hero.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: One of Entropy's schemes involves cross breeding sewer rats and racehorses to develop large, ultra-fast rodents that will terrorize the city. Mercifully, you can put an end to it before having to witness any of the finished products.
- New Powers as the Plot Demands: The Beaver Jaw power, which you get from an isotope and has no other purpose than to solve a single puzzle.
- Non-Combat EXP: The game gives bonus XP for discovering every area on a map (how hard this is varies, since different terrain types have different requirements for being passable) and for completing missions.
- Non-Indicative Name: Captain Excitement. His power? Lulling animals to sleep. His description makes it clear that he was named ironically.
- Old Superhero: King Midas, who was quite something in his youth but is pretty much washed-up when he joins the League. His inability to properly work his Midas Touch (which turns things into mufflers) is used for both comedy and as a surprising puzzle solution.
- Permanently Missable Content: Mostly averted. Running away from combat can result in dropping money, which cannot be recovered, and combat items (weapons and armor), which can, but only at the end of combat in a chest. If you happen to lose a weapon or armor, and then clear all the fights in the game without getting it back, then it's gone forever, though in that case it's also no longer needed, as you've just finished all the combat in the game.
- Player Headquarters: The League has a cozy HQ where you can get new missions, change up your squad members, and restock provisions. Despite being the absolute laughing stock of the Northeast Conference of Superhero Leagues, your headquarters is by far the fanciest of all the headquarters for leagues in the game: the Scranton league resides in an old school, and the Flushing league occupies the mostly flooded remains of Shea Stadium.
- Plot Coupon: You can't attempt the Entropy quest in each set of missions without doing the other four jobs first, as completing each one will provide an item you need to tackle Entropy, or to simply get to him in the first place. To the game's credit, these items tend to be pretty creative and clever.
- Sequence Breaking: There is exactly one point where you can ignore the requirement and complete the Dr. Entropy mission first. In the second series of missions, you have to get past a bodyguard who likes to collect not-quite-spherical objects, in order to get to the roof of an airport control tower. However, if you spend enough time leveling to get past the Beef Gate of Steroid Men, you can get enough Really Good At Treading Water power to swim to another airport control tower to fly an abandoned helicopter back to the first one, and defeat Dr. Entropy. However, this is pretty pointless, as you'll need to finish the other four quests eventually anyway, and the four not-quite-spherical objects have no other use.
- Plot Tailored to the Party: Given the game's comedic nature, a lot of your team members have extremely specialized powers. Such as eating any amount of spicy food with no heartburn, cleaning up any mess, or being able to perfectly refold roadmaps. These, of course, are exactly the problems of several missions you run into over the course of the game. Justified, in that you're likely being assigned missions that your team is best suited to handle.
- Plunder: The party will sometimes discover a pizza box or other weird storage object after combat, which will contain loot, traps, or both. Mademoiselle Pepperoni can use her powers to see if the pizza is trapped before you open the box, and if it is, a dose of the Vanquished Baked Goods power (only available in the last mission) will eliminate the delicious threat. If you don't have those resources available, though, you can still take your chances, or leave the potential loot behind.
- Polar Opposite Twins: Toastbuster and Zaniac, the former being a big dumb wall of beef and the latter being a scrawny madcap genius. Their status as actual twins is highly suspect, though, given how unreliable the source of that information was.
- Power-Up Food: Beef enhances a hero's Brawn score, vegetables boost Health, and fish increases Brains, which makes combat superpowers more potent. These items are in limited supply and tend to be expensive, but they're good investments, especially early in the game.
- Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The League of Hoboken is at the bottom of the federation leaderboards when the game begins. These underachieving heroes have to prove themselves to not only be given more important jobs, but also to earn privileges like a larger membership and cash bonuses. It seems that a new leader whose entire power is to organize things was assigned to this league in a desperate attempt to turn them around.
- Railroading: Rather literally, as you'll need to use the subway system to reach certain areas, and each line requires its own access card of the same color. Certain cards, naturally, will only become available later in the game, either by finding or purchasing them. While Sequence Breaking is technically impossible, sly players could theoretically sneak into high-end areas and purchase elite weaponry, while Save Scumming to avoid random encounters.
- It's possible to avoid the Steriod Men Beef Gate mentioned earlier via deft leveling and careful navigation of New York City and the attached sewers. Eventually, assuming you survive, you can reach various towns that sell the Treading Water isotope, and with enough money and isotope, you can reach most of the maps in the game long before you finish the second set of missions.
- Random Encounters: The type of terrain you're on can effect which type of enemy you meet in any given area. Crafty players will figure out which critters give the most Experience Points and fight their battles accordingly.
- Resources Management Gameplay: After a certain number of fights in each map square, it's cleaned out and you'll no longer have random battles there. Meaning there's only a certain amount of money and experience points in the game. Also, each power-up, weapon and armor is one-of-kind. You need to learn to only allocate party slots and power-ups to characters you're absolutely sure are in for the long haul.
- Ridiculous Future Inflation: The unit of money is the kilodollar.
- RPG Elements: Combat is turn-based: your entire team will act, and then the enemy team will act. You can use melee attacks, ranged attacks, or superpowers (spells). Defeating enemies will provide experience points, and enough XP will increase your Superhero Class, which starts at 10th Class and maxes out at First Class. Increasing your class level increases your stats across the board. There's also random encounters.
- Rule of Funny: While the combat in the game is numbers-based and requires some decent strategy, the messages detailing the attacks of friend and foe alike are utterly ridiculous. Yes, that enemy is a Cy Young Cyclops... a beefy cyclops inexplicably wearing a baseball uniform that throws brushback pitches at your head. And when you defeat him (often by charging the mound with your weapon of choice), his manager decides he's all through and sends him to the showers.
- Run the Gauntlet: The last combat encounter of the game has your Superhero team defeat one of every enemy in the game over the course of three consecutive battles. With 42 total combat enemies in the game, and no ability to rest between battles, it's surprisingly difficult. Running away at any point in the three battles means you'll have to start all over again.
- Running Gag: Tons, as per Meretzky's style. The longest-running one is on the chatterbox, which runs a series of stories about dogs biting men in the Weehawken area (or vice versa), wondering whether 'the Weehawken area' is a geographic location or a euphemism. It escalates to the point where Cerberus actually appears and starts biting people in the Weehawken in Acapulco, and the news ticker starts wondering if Acapulco is a euphemism. Thankfully, this is only a side joke and not something the League actually has to handle. There are also themed enemies which have stronger brethren as the game goes on. (The lowly Albino Wino eventually gives way to the Albino Rhino, and then the dreaded Albino Dino, for example.)
- Saved by a Terrible Performance: King Midas' power in his prime was to be able to turn anything into a muffler. By the time he joins the League, however, his power is wildly unreliable. This is actually to your benefit, though, as you have no need for mufflers (there doesn't seem to be a single working car anywhere in the world) but the items he creates via misfires wind up being very useful as puzzle solutions, armor, and Shop Fodder to pad your wallet.
- Scary Jack-in-the-Box: Dr. Entropy is one.
- Sequence Breaking: Starting with the third set of missions, when you get Treading Water Man, it's possible though difficult to reach certain areas long before you're supposed to, if you can find enough isotopes to give enough members of the team the Really Good At Treading Water power to 50%. While it is by no means easy*, doing so gives you access to every area in the game by bypassing the aforementioned Beef Gate above. Accessing the later areas gives you access to much stronger equipment and level grinding*, and making any future combat trivial. As missions are all puzzle-based, this does not affect the progression of the story at all, however.
- Sewer Gator: The sixth mission requires the League to defeat fifteen Alligators From Hell that can be found in the New York sewers.
- Squishy Wizard: The brainier members of your squad (who excel at combat superpowers) tend to have lower health and toughness, making them ideal for the back of your squad. This can be remedied to some extent with vegetables and strong armor pieces, but those are in limited supply and are best given to your front-line fighters. Hilariously, The Crimson Tape, i.e. you, has relatively high Brains stat (good with powers) and lower than average Health, Brawn and Toughness, which is thematically appropriate, but also means that Tape is going to get the stuffing kicked out of him a lot until he levels up.
- Status Effects: Subverted. Instead of the bog-standard effects your characters can get like being petrified or poisoned, members of the SLH have to worry about becoming paranoid or getting a rash.
- Straw Feminist: Mademoiselle Pepperoni. This trait is actually useful when solving a certain puzzle.
- Superheroes Wear Capes: Even though no party members can fly.
- Suicide Attack: Many enemies in the game have one, with a name befitting their character. (Lawyers will Sue, for example, while a Bureau-Crat will Spew Red Tape.) It does a fair bit of damage to almost everyone in the party.
- Super Not-Drowning Skills: Being able to swim (er...being Really Good at Treading Water) is the primary power of two party members, and something you have to drink scientific isotopes to give other characters.
- Super Serum: The heroes can drink isotopes to gain secondary superpowers. These are permanent, though, and don't seem to have any ill effects.
- Super Zeroes: Pretty much the game's entire premise, at least on paper. A guy called Robo Mop that can clean up big messes, for example, doesn't seem like much of an asset. Of course, there wouldn't be much of a game if the League was completely useless, so all of your goofy abilities actually prove to be quite useful as the game progresses. Having to deal with a avalanche of hot peppers when your League happens to have a guy called The Iron Tummy seems a little contrived. Or, perhaps, Mission Control only assigns you jobs that your team is ideal for...
- Take That!:
- One of Dr. Entropy's master plans involves bringing George Steinbrenner back to life to help him destroy the world.
- If you look at the isotopes that give heroes extra powers, the game will say they look drinkable, "but so does <random unsavory beverage>". Like "It looks drinkable, but so does Coors beer."
- The Tease: Princess Glovebox, who enjoys riling up her male teammates with a good Double Entendre.
- This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: No matter how strange or silly a superpower is in this game, there will be a quest that requires it, or an enemy that is weak to it. Except, strangely, for Create Organizational Charts, the superpower of League leader The Crimson Tape. Unless you consider his organizational power to be doing the things the player's asked to do, like choosing squad rosters, doling out power-ups, equipping his teammates, deciding battle strategy, etc.
- Unwinnable: Unlike most such RPG's, the player's resources, including money and experience points, are all very finite in this game. A player who doesn't know what to expect can screw themselves over very easily.
- Video Game Stealing: One-Armed Bandit enemies will sometimes steal some of your cash instead of attacking you. Since money is a finite resource in the game, this is often the more painful choice of the two.
- Villain: Exit, Stage Left: Entropy almost always manages to escape after you foil his latest scheme, using methods as absurd as a talcum-powder bomb or a poorly-made horse costume. Even if you do catch him, he just busts out of containment in time for your next batch of missions.
- Weaponized Exhaust: One of the weapons is a "Modified jet engine".
- We Buy Anything: The pawn shops you see in most towns, which both buy and sell a strange assortment of random items. They'll purchase all but the most useless junk you can find, other than weapons and armor, which have their own stores.
- What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: The main character (you) is the Crimson Tape, with the ability to create organization charts and data in thin air. This ability is useful exactly zero times, but it does qualify you to be the leader of the League, if only because you're obviously very good at getting things and people organized.
- Professor Prescription has been rejected by dozens of leagues who don't think much of his power: the ability to read doctors' handwriting. He shows up just when you have an illegible doctor's note to read. He later successfully signs on with another league.
- A Winner Is You: The ending is a single box of text. And then the credits.
- Witch Doctor: The town shamans, who can be hired to heal your ailments like paranoia and the hiccups. They practice a strange mix of witchcraft, voodoo, and basic pharmaceutical use.
- World of Snark: A Meretzky staple.
- You ALL Look Familiar: Every town, vendor, and store is completely identical, other than building layouts and potential quest items. The game lampshades this, of course.
