Now, let me say that City of Heroes is my first MMORPG ever, and might be my last. I've heard from many sources that it's the best MMORPG out there, and if it already has some flaws that keep it from being perfect, I have no desire to play any other MMORPG's since they're almost all worse than this game. Now, onto the review. City of Heroes rocks. There, plain and simple. It's the best superhero game I ever have and ever will play, and I have played Spider-Man 2 (on the PS2). It gives you the most powerful character creation tools ever made by mankind. You can choose your archetype (controller, defender, blaster, scrapper, tanker), your power-sets, and your powers, quickly make a costume, and start beating up thugs in one minute flat. Or you can customize every part of your look, from hair to shoe, and write an origin- and battlecry (which your character screams when you press F10)- for your character on your Hero ID, which you can change at any point in the game. Either way, you can be out on the streets fighting for freedom within two minutes or ten minutes. It depends on how you choose to make your character. But the latest update, Through the Looking Glass, places a store in three parts of Paragon City. This store is called ICON, and for an Influence (City of Heroes' in-game currency) fee, you can re-design your costume. And at level 20, 30, and 40, you can complete special objectives for the owner and earn extra costume slots, which you can use to have variations of your costume for each occasion or even a normal clothes-wearing secret-identity version of your hero! After the amazing character creation, you start off in, like most games, a tutorial. It's unskippable, but it's pretty quick and it gets you to Level 2 before shipping you off to one of the newbie zones, Galaxy City or Atlas Park. In the tutorial, thugs have used stolen drugs to become a bit more powerful and threatening, and you have to run around the zone to talk to a few people before you end up raiding a small building and stealing some documents for the police. Then you go to one of the newbie zones, and start being in the, for the most part, open-ended city. In this city, purse-snatchers are robbing everyone and their grandmother (pun intended), undead surgeons are trying to cut up civilians for body parts to make more undead soldiers with, little-but-poweful wind-up robots called Clockwork are stealing metal from all over the city, and gangsters are trying to break into cars and buildings. The beauty of it all is that there's always a place for you. The newbie zones have level 1-3 enemies, the semi-newbie zones have level 4-8 enemies, the moderate-newbie zones have level 9-16 enemies, the medium zones have level 17-23 enemies, the moderate-pro zones have level 24-30 enemies, the semi-pro zones have level 31-37 enemies, the pro zones have level 38 and up enemies. No matter what level you're on, you always have a place to go where the enemies are ideal for a hero your level. Whenever you want to, you can talk to one of your contacts. Contacts are normal humans who work with heroes. They give them missions, new contacts, and run enhancement (power upgrades) and inspiration (the superhero equivilent of potions) stores. They're everywhere in Paragon City, but you can only talk to contacts that your contacts have introduced you to. There are tons of story arcs. Undead, different gangs, magicians, high-tech Nazi's, wind-up Clockwork... there are tons of stories, and usually you have a choice of which mission you take, which affects which missions you take in the future and which contacts you meet in the future. There are also tons of mission types. Go in a cave and recover jewels from a magician, stop a gang war, stop a Clockwork boss and find out his plans, hunt types of enemies in the streets, stop the undead from stealing corpses from the mortuary via the sewer system... there are finite types of missions, but they are all slightly different in their own way. Plus, with future updates (the next one is coming in September of 2004) on the way, more enemy types, missions, and zones are being added for higher-level characters so that you always have missions to play. Now I'll talk about the most important part, leveling up. You get to add enhancement slots (so you can use more Enhancements for the powers you add more slots to) on odd-number levels, and you get to earn new powers and, past level 6, power-pools. You always feel rewarded for leveling up, and when you get a cool new power, you actually are rewarded. Powers include flight, teleportation, super-jumping, super-speed, invisibility, healing, faster regeneration, attack powers, defensive powers, speed powers, and other things. Every power you have can be enhanced with the Enhancements you earn from victory or buy from stores, but only certain enhancements work with certain powers. For example, Flight Speed enhancements work with Flight, but a Damage enhancement wouldn't work, since Flight doesn't do any damage. The graphics are simply rich. It's an entire city, much like Grand Theft Auto, only you can interact with civilains to hear local gossip, statistics, the game world time, or other things. The textures are beautiful for the most part, the view distance is up there with Far Cry's as jaw-droppingly amazing, the lighting changes with the time of day, and the cool particle effects of the powers are just mind-numbingly beautiful. The sound is also great, with good music kicking in occasionally and great sound effects. The flaws are in the game's nature. Sure, beating up bad guys is fun and all, but after a month or so, its novelty and charm wear off a little bit. But if you're willing to look past the repetitive nature of most of the missions and of most of the combat, you'll find a good game after all. Sure, the game isn't for everyone. If you can't afford to pay a monthly fee, this game isn't for you, and neither is any other MMORPG. But if you can afford to spend time and money on an MMORPG, City of Heroes is worth your time. Even if you're fed up with all the mediocre EverQuest clones being shoveled out of developers, City of Heroes can renew your faith in the genre. Not only is it the best MMORPG out there, but it's an awesome game by itself. If you've ever wanted to be a superhero in a city that's in constant peril, this game is for you. Trust me, you won't regret it. And neither will I, since I'll still be playing this long after the cool new expansion pack, City of Villains, comes out early in 2005. The game is just that good.
I recommend this game for anyone who wants to give MMOs a shot, or anyone whose tired of slow MMOs. Unlike most online RPGs, City of Heroes has a fast play/fighting style that'll keep you interested, and a well paced lev... Read Full Review
How can I make you feel the deep love/hate relationship I have with this game. In almost every way, this is the worst massive multiplayer game to come around in a long time. But, there is so much about it that is just so... Read Full Review
