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City
of Heroes: The Review
Do you have
a flaming desire to wear spandex? Want to fight crime by day
and thwart evil doers by night? Are you an avid online gamer,
tired of storming the elven stronghold?
If
you answered yes to any of the above questions, then NCSoft
and Cryptic Studios have a new game for you. City of
Heroes is the first massively multiplayer online superhero
role playing game available and it is here to take your
world by storm.
For
gamers with MMORPG experience, City of Heroes will
seem very familiar. Create a character, choose a few abilities,
grab some friends and have at it. Where CoH sets
itself apart from the rest of the MMORPG lot is that is
remains tightly focused on fun and adventure rather than
time consuming aspects the bog down games like Dark Age
of Camelot and Everquest.
You
begin the adventure by creating your own comic book style
character. CoH offers hundreds of costume options
to make each character a unique creation. You'll also have
a variety of powers to choose from. Mind control, radiation,
fire, ice, electricity, hand held weapons, artillery, healing,
hand-to-hand combat, and more are available. Pretty much
every power you can think of that is found in modern comics
is represented.
Once you've got your tights on, you'll
enter the world of Paragon City, a metropolis recently ravaged
by an alien invasion that is trying to put itself back together
with the help of its super powered citizens. From the moment
the game begins, you'll be fighting crime in its various
forms from purse snatchers working your way up to archvillains.
You won't have to spend thousands of hours fighting swamp
rats and baby cubs to advance your character.
Combat is fast and fun. With such a variety
of powers, each crime fighting team that you join will be
different from the last. Players can accept missions from
their contacts throughout the city and then tackle them
together. Again, the emphasis is on fun and adventure, not
20 minute horse rides to wait in line to fight a group of
evil trees.
The interface is very user friendly and
should be easy for even a first time player to quickly get
the hang of. It may actually feel stripped down to an experienced
player, but there is still a ton of customizing and tweaking
you can do to your character to pass the time, if you choose
to.
Unlike
Star Wars: Galaxies, the game feels packed with enemies
to fight. You'll be able to wander around in the safer areas
of town patrolling the back alleys or travel easily to areas
of town that have been overrun with gangs, undead, fascists
and cults. There is never a shortage of things to do.
One
of the major gaps in online role playing games is that between
the hardcore game and the casual gamer. Cryptic has addressed
that with a "sidekick" option that will temporarily raise
the level of a lower class character to one near their mentor..
This
means that even if you are level 35 and your friend, who
rarely plays, is only level 10, you can still play together
and not worry about one of you not having fun.
Cryptic Studios is clearly on the ball,
not only in the production of the game, but also on their
server support. Bugs are quickly addressed and the "3 day
head start" that they offered to people that bought the
pre-order disk was the smoothest game launch I've ever been
a part of.
The
only downside to CoH, aside from the standard $15
a month playing fee, is the lack of anything to do once
your hero reaches level 40. In Dark Age of Camelot,
you could take your character into battle, storm castles,
zerg trolls, etc… Right now, there is nothing like that
in City of Heroes, but with an expansion pack called
City of Villains on the horizon, that problem may
be addressed soon enough.
Also, there is the possibility of major
events generated by Cryptic Studios. For example, at the
end of the beta test, a few hours before the servers shut
down, Cryptic had huge space ships fly in above the buildings
and transport down aliens that eventually killed everyone.
It was AWESOME and shows that there are still surprises
that we have yet to see.
City
of Heroes is a must play game for comic book fans and
fans looking for a more enjoyable online adventure. Have
I mentioned the game is fun?
A
little trip through the tutorial...
City
of Heroes
City
of Heroes Subscription Card
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