City of Heroes
Well I got hold of a copy of City of Heroes — completely legitimately, I hasten to add. It’s my first MMOPRG so perhaps my expectations are different to someone who’d been playing something like EverQuest, but personally I’m very pleased with it. Sure, it doesn’t have a craft system or a player-run economy or anything like that, but it’s just pure fun. Character creation is fantastic, with vast amounts of costume to choose from, all in customisable colours in vast combinations. While my primary hero Eldhrin has lightning-decorated flared trousers, the first hero I created has a skintight blue spandex suit with a very silly headdress, and a tail.
So once you’ve gone past that, the atmosphere within the game is great. Virtually everybody currently playing seems to be very polite, heroes help each other out if they see someone getting into trouble, people are usually willing to team up to tackle the tougher missions, and just walking/running/jumping/flying around the city is interesting in itself, as you’ll come across various muggings, car thefts and so forth to stop — or ones which other heroes are already taking care of. Watching other heroes can be as interesting as doing it yourself, especially if they’re playing a different archetype to your own, or with substantially different power sets.
Archetypes are much like classes in a traditional RPG. You can be a Blaster, which is what Eldhrin is. Blasters aren’t all that tough, but they get all the long-range high-damage powers, so are a bit like having an AK-47 but only a light flak jacket.
Other classes include the Scrapper, who gets in close and dispatches enemies with high-powered melee attacks; the Tanker, who is similar to the Scrapper but deals less damage, being capable of withstanding vast amounts of it instead. There’s also the Controller, who’s very weak offensively but gets access to various powers allowing immobilisation, incapacitation or outright mental control of enemies (getting them to kill each other appears to be quite amusing); and finally the Defender, who specialises in powers which enhance, heal and augment other heroes.
Needless to say, the weaknesses of all these types mean they work best if you combine into a team with a number of other heroes of different archetypes. Taking a couple of Scrappers, a Blaster, a Controller and a Defender as I did earlier today and taking on a mission suddenly becomes a very different experience to doing it solo. And it’s a lot more fun. The game adjusts the difficulty based on the team attempting it, so it never seems too easy, but certainly many missions are much more suited to team-based play than soloing, especially as a Blaster.
Anyway, that’s about enough of that — if you want to know more, the reviews are rapidly appearing online now. In the mean time, I’ve got a new gallery of screenshots from City of Heroes. That’s available from my main photo gallery — enjoy!