A heroic sequel that City of Heroes stalwarts love but City of Villains still leaves you yearning for a little more.
Let’s look at what's great about City of Villains and put it into context:
The Positives
City of Villains brings a lot more than a set of new costume changes for regular players, it brings an interesting new dynamic to the game that was missing before. Although CoV has only officially been available for a couple of days (when I wrote this) there is already a great rivalry building between the good vs evil twin axis of the games and for once, it looks as though the developers NCSoft have got this right. City of Heroes regulars thought they were only looking forward to the new content and costumes with little interest in Player vs Player (PvP), for example, but the Hero v Villain central dynamic is nicely balanced. NCSoft have spent many months "tweaking" the offensive and defensive abilities of each hero/villain archetype and now you can see why: Whether you're playing a heroic street-fighter (a Scrapper in City of Heroes) or a mind-controlling villain (a Mastermind in City of Villains) you can be sure of finely-tuned battle that might only be resolved with superior tactics and reflexes on your part or the support of your comrades in arms! And with CoV adding another 5 hero/villain archetypes to CoH's 7 there is plenty of customisable variation to play with. As importantly, NCSoft have been careful not to make the focus on the game the PvP system and PvP can be completely avoided if you'd rather focus on exploration and character development - which in City of Heroes was the complete focus of the game.
City of Villains also continues the fine tradition of truly stunning character animation and effects within the game and nowhere is this more fun than when in the heat of a super-group confrontation or when you take a large team into a villainous enclave to prize out the goal of the mission. Last night I spent some of the best fun I've had for ages simply battling out a 100 yard by 100 yard patch of tatty beach in Warburg, a new PvP area off Kings Row. The fun lasted more than 2 hours as a both teams tried every trick in the book to take control. My own nameless team pulsed with high-powered Scrappers and Tankers while our nemesis had many a wily Controller and Defender tying to lock us in place. Superb fun.
The Negatives
The relatively similarity of many of the mission scenarios - the core game principle of both CoH and CoV is a contact/mission and back to contact dynamic - was a big weakness in City of Heroes and whereas this has been steadily improved, CoV will still feel a little samey to City of Heroes regulars but will probably feel fine - rather than spectacular - for new players. Some of the new-feel scenarios and villainous creatures have also been incorporated into CoH with the latest version (6.0) released at the same time as CoV and also look terrific but more work in this area must be on the cards.
A warning for WoW regulars:
When I first bought City of Heroes, some 5-6 months ago, I also bought World of Warcraft (WoW) to compare it - having played neither before. Without a shadow of doubt WoW is a more refined game with much better attention to detail, story, storyline integration, ambient sound and so on - but WoW is also a lot slower than the City of Heroes/City of Villains game universe and has that strange, cartoony-feel to the graphics. Players coming to CoH/CoV from WoW, in comparison, will almost definitely find CoH/CoV strangely uninspiring right at the beginning - and throughout in terms of story/ambient feeling - but the action, team-play, effects, character design, animation and overall graphic feel of CoH/CoV are, in my option, much MORE compelling than WoW. WoW plays much more like a finely-crafted interactive story whereas CoH/CoV packs a lot more fun and action right at the core of the franchise: the development of your own unique, super-powered hero/villain. This makes the two games as compelling as they need to be (ask my girlfriend!).
Summary
As a life-long fan of super-powered comic-book characters the central hero/villain development core of the CoH/CoV game is an absolute gem that NCSoft should only be encouraged to polish, polish, polish. Yes, the story element could (perhaps should) be redeveloped, the mission scenarios/variation could be improved further (although they're not too bad now) and the intros/cut scenes should be improved (to get new players/reviewers into the game properly) but if you love super-powered comic-book characters you'll love these games. You’ll really feel like stripping off your day clothes and flying out to save (or destroy) the world when you get home at night and having real super-villains (with CoV) and heroes (if you have both games) on the streets definitely adds to the action.
PS My final score of 8.1 reflects the relatively poor scoring areas of sound, value (it is still £8.99 per month/£100 per annum inline with other online MMO games) and overall gameplay but the fun of this game is all loaded into just two of the scoring areas (graphics and overall tilt). The game is also much less fun to play until you know the ins and outs of power selection/development and if you don't start out with a strong hero/villain in mind when you create your first characters. I think this is another reason the game doesn't do so well with professional reviewers and why I have marked the game difficulty as Hard and the learning curve as 4 or More Hours. The game is easy to pick up but a large part of the fun is discovering how to make your super-hero/villain as teak-tough as he/she will need to be to succeed - and that takes time but is paradoxically one of the major attractions of the game.