The Player Blackout: A Superhero LitRPG Adventure

Capes Online, Book 1

By: Lucas Flint

Narrated by: Joe Hempel

In 2043, Capes Online is the biggest, most popular VRMMORPG in the world. With over one billion active players and counting, gamers can become brave Heroes or cunning Villains, their every choice determining their alignment. Everyone wants to play this game and almost everyone does.

Except for 25-year-old police officer Nyle Maxwell, who can't log out. Killed in a car accident on his first day on the job, Nyle gets his mind uploaded to Capes Online to save his life. But the one way mind-to-game upload process means Nyle can never return to his physical body in the real world. Nor is he allowed to contact his friends and family outside the game or else he risks deletion by the secretive government organization that put him in the game in the first place.

Things get even worse when a villain known as Dark Kosmos takes over Capes Online not long after Nyle's arrival. Trapping all of the players in the game and cutting off all contact with the real world, Dark Kosmos targets Nyle for death.

Now Nyle must become a true superhero and save his fellow players from Dark Kosmos while adjusting to his new digital life. All of which would be much easier if he didn't have a hyperactive sidekick overly fond of puns or if he even wanted to be here in the first place.

©2019 Lucas Flint (P)2019 Lucas Flint

A mix of AI, and VRMMOs

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

TLDR; LitRPG, but in a world of Superheros. Think more Marvel/DC less Tolkien.

A change of pace from other VRMMOs. (Slight Spoilers) The Main Character dies and is offered the chance to live again in a VR world. He's basically a test subject for a new type of tech. This offers some new perspective, he's not just stuck in that world, he doesn't exist outside that world anymore. There are some fun existential aspects of that, I would have liked to see more of that, and maybe we will in a later book.

Overall we get a decent LitRPG, with a change of venue, and a fun cast.

Lots of Potential

Most LitRPGs novels lock the hero in the game at some point to add tension to the story. The Player Blackout does it a little bit differently. The hero here is a small-town cop who died on his first day on the job. Why he is chosen for an experimental program that uploads brains into a gaming system is one of the mysteries of the story that we are trying to resolve. It’s that connection to the outside world (in this case a real-world mystery) that I really like in LitRPGs—stories where in what happens in the game matters in some way to life outside the game. Of course our hero, Winter, can’t get into the outside world anymore but that doesn’t lessen his interest in it. So this mystery has large potential for the series and I wish that Flint had spent more time developing it in this opening novel.

Over all, there’s tons of potential in this book, but Flint never fully takes advantage of it. For example, the first third of the story where he really needs to grab the reader’s attention is fairly slow moving. Winter is learning the mechanics of the game, but instead of showing him fighting and investigating as a new super, Flint skips most of this and spends his time showing the problems Winter has rescuing a cat from a tree. I’m sure this scene was supposed to be humorous, but it just didn’t work for me. The only other thing of interest that happens in these opening chapters is that Winter learns that a villain named Atmosphere knows his real world identity (which is a secret because his inclusion in the game is part of a top secret government experiment).

I should point out that it was quite obvious who Atmosphere was from the first time his name is dropped, and that his identity doesn’t make any sense. Clearly Flint understands this and has wrapped it into the larger mystery of who arranged for Winter to be downloaded into the game to begin with.

The pace picks up quite a bit when a new villain takes over the gaming world in an apparently unplanned revolution. Dark Cosmos cuts the game off from the outside world so that none of the players can log out, meaning that eventually, unable to eat, the bodies of the players will starve to death. Dark Cosmos offers the players two options to save themselves—kill him (which he claims is impossible) or bring him the low level Winter. Naturally the entire gaming world (pretty much) decides to go after Winter.

This is a great threat that I think Flint should have done more with—harrowing chases, etc. Instead Winter reaches the villain hide out really easily. Here we get some good action as he fights his way to his ultimate confrontation with Dark Cosmos. This last third of the book is by far the best. Yes, Winter continues to be dumb—defeating opponents and then forgetting to finish them off so they can recover and threaten him again, but the overall plot begins to advance. But even here Flint misses a major opportunity to knock his book out of the park. Dark Cosmos has been collecting players (heroes and villains) so he can torture them (because he’s…bad). When Winter needs a distraction at the end of the book, having those players go after Dark Cosmos in a massive powers battle would have been awesome and the (pretty good) battle Flint gives us for the ending could have still been worked in around the army of players trying to bring down the bad guy.

The ultimate ending also left me wanting more. No real progress is made resolving the big mystery of who put all of this in motion by arranging for Winter to be put in the game. Also, apparently no one expects the gaming company to suffer any serious consequences from having almost killed a few million players across the globe by losing control of their gaming system. I would expect every government on earth to start investigating/regulating the company. And I would suspect that a huge proportion of its gamers would never log on again. Saying they have good lawyers to fend off the civil suits seems to me to be a totally inadequate way of dealing with the ramifications of the book.

All of that being said, there’s a lot of potential in this story and Flint’s writing improved the deeper into the novel I got, so I have a lot of hope that the next book will keep getting better.

I got this book free from Audiobookcodes.com in exchange for an honest review.

enjoyable

Narrator was a little slow and the dialogue was a little repetitive but overall awesome book. Story was good and I'm definitely going to do book two.

like the final stretch in a marathon

when I first started listening to this book two things became apparent.1, the author wanted to make sure you knew how Winter's stats looked like after level ups. And 2, the narrator really only has 2 settings. between getting occasionally lost in dialogue as the narrator goes from person to person with barely an inflection in his voice , to having winter scanning everything with a heart beat( giving the listener an autobiography of the target) it was definitely a bumpy ride. this redundancy didn't however, detract from my general enjoyment of the book. what really got me and made me not want to continue in book two was how in the later half( about 8hrs in) the writing started to get incredibly sloppy to the point where "smart" characters acted like morons. aside from that, I was intrigued by the mysteries that Mr. Flint put out( just wish he kept the consistent quality to the end).

Awesome New LitRPG Series

The Player Blackout: A Superhero LitRPG Adventure Capes Online, Book 1 is written by Lucas Flint. The story is set in 2043, Nyle Maxwell is a police officer killed in the line of duty on his first day. His consciousness is digitally uploaded to the worlds largest and popular VRMMORPG in the world, Capes Online. Nyle is part of a government program called Second Life he is unable to contact anyone from his past life without repercussions.

The story holds the listener’s attention as Nyle is learning to become a hero in the game and exploring the world of Capes Online. Dark Kosmos takes over Capes Online just after Nyle's arrival in the digital world. The villain traps all of the players in the game and cutting off all contact with the real world. People in the VR gear will die in a few days if the can not log off. Dark Kosmos targets Nyle for death offering all trapped players a choice of 2 world missions, the first is kill/capture Nyle and bring him to Dark Kosmos. The second is to defeat Dark Kosmos. The stakes in the game become real for everyone.

The narration is provided by Joe Hempel. Mr. Hempel brought his strong skilled vocal quality to this audio production. He created some truly enjoyable moments with his skilled performance in this large cast of characters. The production quality of this audiobook is also the highest quality. I heard no problems during the entire performance. There were not any detectable flaws that I was able to hear during the entire performance such as loops, breaks, or buzzing. The production was crisp and clear. Secret Identity Books delivered an excellent audiobook production. I highly recommend this audiobook. I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

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it was ok

i love the good vs bad and the system of the book but the MC gets on my nerves like hes never played a game before not really knowin whats going on.

Well written, fast paced and fun LitRPG!

The Player Blackout: A Superhero LitRPG Adventure, Book One, by Lucas Flint is a really entertaining, fast paced and fun LitRPG. I've read my fair share of LitRPG novels and I have to say that Player Blackout really kept my attention throughout. This book felt a little more on the young adult side, with the story being fairly basic in terms of depth and complexity, though it was still a really enjoyable listen. Nyle is killed on the job as a police officer and his mind is uploaded as a character in Capes Online, a MMORPG. As he learns the ins and outs of his new state of being, things go astray in-game. Nyle and his trusty sidekick, along with a few other heroes that join his team, set out to defeat Dark Kosmos and find out what or who is behind holding the world of Capes Online hostage. If you like LitRPGs and think that the summary sounds like something you'd like, I'd definitely recommend this story. It was just a fun, easy listen and I can't wait to read the second book in the series!

Joe Hempel was a great choice to narrate this novel. His voice really gave life to the story and characters. The only complaint that I have, which has nothing to do with the actual narration, is that Nyle's stats updates that are in the book quite often throughout, don't translate well to audiobook. It was annoying, well, pretty much all of the time they were presented in the book. Still, it was annoying but not a deal breaker at all. I was voluntarily provided this free review copy audiobook by the author, narrator, or publisher for an honest review.

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Good not great

The story is good...not great though. The narration is very annoying. The narrator has a constant whiney voice that gets tiresome really fast. There are times when the main character is almost as whiney as the narrators voice all the time, but overall the speech patterns and tone of the narrator are a major turn off. Think of listening to Steve Urkel telling the story and you wouldn't be far off.

Fun LitRPG with a superhero twist

This book was a lot of fun! I'm a huge fan of superhero stories and enjoy the occasional LitRPG, though I've found lately that the medieval settings across many series tend to blur together after awhile. Not so here! This reminded me a lot of playing some of my favorite superhero games, which was an added bonus to the fun. I loved the wide-open feel of Adventure City, and while I can't say I'd like to be *uploaded* to something like this game, it would be awesomely fun to play in VR.

I found the characters all intriguing and decently well-rounded. Winter was fun to watch level-up, though he didn't necessarily do much more personal development than getting used to the game. Which was fair: it's a game! I'm hoping for some more personal stuff in the books ahead. The mysteries interwoven throughout the storyline, with both plot and characters, show a lot of promise, and I love that they weren't all concluded in book one.

I did have a few cringe moments at the viciousness of some of the violence directed at the female players. Some of it was really hard to listen to, and very disproportionate to violence against male players. It didn't get me enough to make me put it down, but if that's a trigger for you, you might want to skip past a few parts. That was the only sour thing for me in an otherwise great book.

Overall, though, I really enjoyed this! I'm already listening to the next book and loving it, too. I'd definitely recommend, though with the caveat about triggers.

I received this book for free at my request and very happily left this review.

Fun read

This is a cool book that reminded me of an updated RoboCop. Lots of twists and turns, interesting characters, and a crazy amount of action. Definitely a fast-paced read.

Parents: the language is moderate, omg several times, no Fbombs. Several allusions to rape and sexual tension/attraction, but no action or descriptions of such acts. Lots of violence but this is an RPG about hero’s and villains.

Highly recommend if you enjoy RPGs or just gaming in general!


—I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.