City of Heroes / Villains Review

City of Heroes / Villains

State: Final
Website: http://www.cityofheroes.com
Developer/Publisher: Cryptic/NCSoft
The Pitch: City of Heroes® brings the world of comic books alive in this massively multiplayer 3D online universe.

 

Performance

 

City of Heroes ran pretty much exactly how you’d expect a 4 year old MMO to run on current hardware; very well. I was able to run it with everything maxed out and with Antialiasing on. It was smooth and responsive, with no noticeable framerate dips.

 

Unique to City of Heroes/Villains

 

Theme.This is pretty obvious. Currently, it is the only MMO available that puts you in the cape and cowl of a superhero or villain. Not only that, it makes you feel heroic or villainous.

Character customization. Still the leader in the market in offering you the ability to tweak and customize your character in a near-limitless way. Seriously, I think I spent nearly as much time creating characters as I did playing them. It offers a truly stunning array of options, enough to guarantee that you will never see a clone of yourself running around the world – if you spend some time working at it and if you don’t choose from one of the presets.

The Good

 

Heroic / Villainous! I mentioned how the theme is different from your standard fare. However, this extends beyond simply a re-skin of all the characters and the area. The game does a great job at making you feel like you’re playing a superhero or villain from a comic book. You get to watch cutscenes in some of the instanced areas and many of the NPCs you encounter will have a comic-book style text bubble over their heads, telling you their thoughts… in very comic book fashion, no less. They’ll utter things like “Fresh Meat!” or “For Justice!” It puts you in the mood (if you like that sort of thing) of playing a caped avenger.

Enhancements and Inspirations. Enhancements are permanent upgrades to your powers. Inspirations are temporary buffs that you collect as you adventure. These, for me, are the driving force for exploration and discovery in the game. They’re the ‘loot’, so to speak. Discovering new ones and finding out how they enhance your abilities was great fun.

Excellent map/radar/quest tracking. This was super-easy to use, out of the gate. As soon as you’ve taken a quest, it shows up on your radar. On top of that, it shows up right onscreen in yellow text, displaying your distance to the target. It’s pretty much impossible to not know where you’re supposed to go to meet a contact or to complete a quest.

 

The Bad

 

No loot. For me, this is a pretty big deal. Some people might argue that that’s what the Enhancments and Inspirations are. I suppose that’s true.. but I like finding new gear, be it a cloak or sword.. or possibly in this case, if it were a cape or cowl or new glaives. A ring of power, say. Nope, there’s none of that. Perhaps there’s stuff similar to your regular loot in the upper levels, but there’s definitely none that you’ll run across as a newb.

Flying. I know, this should be under ‘The Good’, right? Well, not so fast. I know you can fly in this game, which is pretty cool. And very heroic and all. But you’re going to have to play it for a while before you can. Apparently around level 14 or so – which to be fair, isn’t that high – you learn how. That’s not awful, but I was hoping to be able to fly right off.. So I was disappointed.

 

Summary

 

City of Heroes is a polished, unique MMO. If you are tired of bashing rats or killing just one more Dire Bat of Evilness, check this game out. Besides having no elves, you can be a hybrid zombie robot ninja (yes, you can). And who hasn’t dreamed of that?
Download value: [rating: 7.5] (7.5)