WOW! A monthly fee to play a single player RPG! It's what I've always wanted in an MMORPG!!!
Scores:
Overall Score : 6 (Lower than DOA X2)
Gameplay : 6 (meh…It's okay…like homework is okay, I guess)
Graphics : 9.5* (If your system can handle it...doubt it!)
Sound : 6 (Was that a chicken clucking or a bomb exploding?)
Replay Value : very limited (very boring repeating the exact same quests for each toon!)
Background info: Played for 1 month. Reached lvl 36 with 1 toon. 2 others reached lvl 25. Previously played/playing CoH, CoV, WoW, & EQII.
The Good:
1) Costume creator is fun to play with and VERY deep allowing a wide range of hero types.
2) Uhmmm…did I mention that the costume creator was cool?
3) Allows the use of xbox controller which makes combat fun and easy. But the controller is not fully supported which makes many actions, including ones in combat, awkward.
The Bad:
1) Paying a monthly fee for a truly single player game! Because the game is set up into small instances rather than several servers – there is a disjointed feel to playing the game. Each time you move from one 'zone' to another you must leave the group of people who are questing in your area. This leads to a very strong ME mentality in the game rather than a community feel that WoW & EQII offer.
2) Ridiculously easy combat system - when the buttons respond. There is a lag issue with blocking in the game. Combat even at the higher levels came down to opening with a long ranged attack then rushing in and blasting away with close quarter attacks until mob is dead. Multiple groups attacking you at once? No problem. Just rise and quickly repeat – there were NO cool downs on the main powers I used for my builds. I could spam even the most powerful of attacks and quickly kill any group of mobs 2-4 levels above me.
3) Crafting system feels like it was added a week before release. The drops & quest rewards far outweigh anything you can ever craft which makes crafting pointless.
4) Generic sound effects and voice acting.
5) UI is poorly designed. CO has less items in its UI then WoW or EQII and yet the screen looks and feels crowded with buttons and boxes.
6) This game is a cpu/gpu hog. My system exceeds the game requirements and yet to play more than an hour a day I had to shut all the fancy graphics settings to off. And it was still over-taxing my system.
The Broken:
1) Developers are way too quick to push patches live. 4 patches in the first month. And all 4 have met with serious crash issues from over powered mobs that couldn't be killed to player's heroes disappearing from the list of playable toons.
2) As of Oct 1, the mail system is still unreliable, causing sent items to vanish.
2) Because of a release day patch which lowered the XP from quest rewards, gaps have opened in the game between levels 13-15, 22-25, & 29-33. These gabs start out by forcing the player to take quests 2-4 levels above their own level. This is not really so bad because of the easy combat system. But by level 29 there are NO quests (even 4 levels higher) that are left until one can do level 36 missions. And xp from mobs is too small to even consider grinding.
3) Grouping in the game is done ONLY and I do mean ONLY to complete the 3 maybe 4 quests that can only be completed in a group. Once the quest ends…the group goes its separate ways.
4)PvP will never work in this game. Because of the open build philosophy allowing everyone to have every power, there is no way to balance the game play of PvP. One may think having the power trees open to all players would balance things, but just the opposite occurs. The number crunchers find the flavor of the month power set and run with it pawning everyone else in PvP. The pawned cry foul to developers and the developers bring out the nerf bat and nerf powers across the board in both PvP & PvE.
5)Power Sets are limited at best. My level 36 Lora Croft take off had ALL the gun and melee moves she needed by level 20. I kept picking up other powers, even picked up some fire & ice ones, but I still only used sniper rifle (1 shot kill on mob) & 2 gun mojo (Starter power) for all my combat needs. Out of boredom, I would toss a grenade or use my assault rifle for awhile, but they were never as good as my 2 main attacks.
Gameplay opinion: This game plays like it is in Beta testing for the xbox release.
Overall View:
Unless you are a diehard superhero fan avoid this game for at least 6 months. If, and when, the game lunches on the xbox360 check the game sites and read up on the new reviews to see if the developers have fixed the multitude of problems that still plague this game. If they have fixed them, then jump in and try it…otherwise, let it be and move along. Your wallet will thank you for it.