Early last year, NCSoft and Cryptic Studios released a MMORPG that struck out in a new direction. Despite the familiar leveling structure, it eschewed the fantasy trappings of Everquest and Ultima Online for a more four-colour experience. City of Heroes (CoH) tapped into the Comic Book Guy in all of us by allowing players to create their own superhero. The incredibly detailed character generation system and the feeling of power that it invoked for even starting players made it one of the most enjoyable games of 2004. Unfortunately, a sense of repetition set in for many players and CoH subscription numbers dipped. CoH has an evil twin, though, and City of Villains (CoV) allows you the opportunity to step into the psyche of a depraved criminal mind, a thuggish legbreaker, or a lead-melting pyromaniac. Whatever your villainous bent, read on for my take on Cryptic Studio's City of Villains.
- Title: City of Villains
- Developer: Cryptic Studios
- Publisher: NCSoft
- System: PC
- Reviewer: Zonk
- Score: 8/10
Every story has a beginning, and your villainous career begins in Paragon City's prison system. The 'Zig' is normally a maximum security prison, but thanks to the spider-themed soldiery of the enigmatic Lord Recluse it is on fire and you are busting out. After doing a few quick shakedown activities that explain the controls and combat to you, you're smuggled out of the facility and begin your life as a criminal on the streets of the Rogue Isles, a lawless pirate archipelago far from the safe streets of Paragon City, the setting of City of Heroes. While initially you'll be working for Lord Recluse you'll eventually have the option to join up with a number of other groups. In the meantime, you'll find yourself fighting against a menagerie of fellow villains, all of whom are trying to muscle in on your chance at the brass ring of archvillainy.
One of the elements that set City of Heroes apart when it launched last year was the complex character creation system it shipped with. Even at launch it was possible to create an extremely elaborate costumed crime-fighter. Several body shapes and accessories made it possible to create anything from a hulking strongman to a sickeningly cute cat-girl. Since the game's launch new additions to the system, like capes and the ability to change the proportions of body areas, has only added to the system's versatility. All of these improvements and even more textures have been incorporated into the City of Villains character creator. New elements includes monstrous textures like wolf heads, scarred and disfigured facial textures, and even (for the pirate in all of us) hook hands and peg legs. The new elements are terrific and I've had numerous friends spend time at my PC just creating characters, with no interest in actually playing the game.
Once you're on the street and looking tough, you'll start getting a better feel for the role you chose during character creation. Characters fall into one of five archetypes, and although four of them are similar to what you'd find in City of Heroes they're all different enough to feel fresh. The Brute is the front-line melee fighter, but while CoH's Tank is meant to take damage the Brute is better at dealing it out. In fact, the more damage he takes and inflicts, the more powerful he becomes. This is actually a good general rule with the new archetypes: CoV characters really adhere to that "the best defense is a good offense" rule. Stalkers fill the high-damage output role, with the ability to cloak themselves for a critical first strike being their signature power. Dominators are all about controlling the battlefield, with powers designed for crowd control and damage over time. They also build up strength as they go, and unleash it in a flash of light with the 'Dominate' power. While Dominating they do more damage and their holds last longer, a powerful element in a boss fight. Corrupters are long-range and buff/debuff specialists, with the ability to suck an enemy dry of health very quickly once they've begun taking damage. The final archetype in City of Villains is entirely new, and extremely cackle-worthy. The Mastermind is a 'pet class', a character that can summon NPCs to do his bidding. There are four types of minions available: robots, ninjas, mercenaries, and zombies. While the lack of pirates is saddening, Masterminds also generally have access to buff/debuff powers of the Corrupter archetype. In a group they act as a sort of glue, fleshing out the ranks and ensuring that party members do their jobs more effectively. The decision not to use the same archetypes as in CoH was a great one, and more than any other element in the game helps to set the new apart from the old.
The job, of course, is crime. Doin' crime in the Rogue Isles requires connections, and CoV provides those to you out of the gate. While initially you'll just be doing jobs for some two-bit crook in an alley you'll eventually have several contacts, all of whom have tips on thuggery. A great improvement over the CoH mindset is "paper missions". Some contacts only give you missions occasionally; in order to convince them you're worth the effort you have to do some petty crimes first. You find these quick, in-and-out-grab-some-xp missions in the newspaper by checking out the articles. A mention of a valuable artifact sends you on a shopping spree, or an article about the release of a former cellmate has you looking for revenge. Overall the quality of the missions is higher than in City of Heroes, with the violent and petty nature of criminality making your actions a lot more sensical than in some CoH missions. A big complaint I have, though, is the lack of variety in the early missions. While City of Heroes offers you several mission tracks out of the gate based on what kind of character you are, CoV has only one track that very quickly gets old when playing new characters. This is somewhat alleviated by a great improvement: allowing missions to 'count' for more than one character. If you and another player have the same mission, completing it will prompt the other player with the message "Do you want this to count for your mission as well?" This way, groups don't have to be constantly redoing missions to ensure that everyone is on the same page. A very nice addition that partially offsets the repetitive nature of the early game.
Doing your thing alone is never all that fun, and CoV introduces some great new elements for supergroups. Bases are the big draw, allowing organizations of supers to finally have a place to hang their hats. They're as customizable as characters are, and have a host of functional elements as well. Bases link zones, act as hospitals, and allow access to the limited crafting added to the game. They are also mustering points for Player Vs. Player (PvP) action. While PvP has been in City of Heroes for a while in the form of combat Arenas, City of Villains introduces entire zones for PvP action. The results are mixed. Like with any game designed for Player Vs. Environment play (PvE), PvP added after the fact has forced some serious balance tweaks to powers and enhancements. Initial reports seem to indicate that PvP is a good deal of fun, and the clash of fully powered heroes and villains is just as explosive as you'd expect from the pages of comic-dom.
The comic look that Cryptic managed fairly well has been expanded and refined in the level design utilized in City of Villains. The Rogue Isles look terrible, in a good way. Even the first zone, Mercy Island, is a twisted rubble of burnt-out buildings and industrial sprawl. In sharp contrast to the cleanly orderliness of Paragon City, the Isles are dark, dirty, and filled with naughty people doing naughty things. Mission design is much improved over the launch of CoH, as well. CoV incorporates the lessons Cryptic has learned in the last year, and mission spaces are quirky and interesting. Some of them are downright jaw-dropping. My teammates and I spent a lot of time during a mission against the military Council agog about their massive base, which evoked James Bond, WWII bunkers, and Star Trek all at once. Additional minor graphical elements have also been added, like an extremely appealing water effect and sometimes-hilarious ragdoll physics.
Overall, minor elements seem to be what separates City of Villains from its goody-two-shoes neighbor. CoV is a dark and gritty version of Cryptic's first offering, for better or worse. If you quit City of Heroes months ago because you were tired of instance, instance, rinse, repeat, City of Villains may offer you some fleeting fun because of the new setting but probably won't hold your interest over time. On the other hand, if you enjoy City of Heroes you're just going to love City of Villains. The people are bad, the story is good, and there's just as much to see and do in the Isles as in Paragon City. What's more, if you are already subscribed to City of Heroes you can double your content without increasing your monthly fee. One subscription fee allows you access to both CoH and CoV. If you've always wanted to leap tall buildings or find the idea of a world-spanning empire of evil appealing, you can do a lot worse than the world NCSoft is hosting online right now.
Deep down... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Deep down... (Score:2)
Combine the Two (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Combine the Two (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Combine the Two (Score:2)
==>Lazn
Re:Combine the Two (Score:2, Interesting)
It's already been 5 days since I saw my first villain in the level 38 PvP zone -- a level 31 brute. A bunch o
Re:Combine the Two (Score:2, Informative)
You only pay one monthly fee to access both games assuming you have purchased both of them. The monthly fee is no higher than if you purchased CoH or CoV alone.
Re:Combine the Two (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Combine the Two (Score:2)
Re:Combine the Two (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Combine the Two (Score:2)
Now that you've been clued in that it in fact happens every day (and we even tested it in beta), I'm curious as to what your "many reasons" were why it couldn't?
Re:Combine the Two (Score:2)
Well, actually I figured it was quite possible to do (and didn't know that it was already being done) but I thought a bunch of naysayers would respond with, "that would never work because of x" so I thought I'd say it upfront to avoid all that BS. Anyways, pretty cool and kudos to the game developers for building the functionality in.
Beta'd... (Score:2)
Re:Beta'd... (Score:3, Interesting)
The character creation process was the only truely interesting part of the game. The rest was utterly repetetive to the point of boredom. Kill all enemies of type X from location Y. Now do that for the next 10 missions. Now do the same thing with a different enemy type for another 10 missions.
The engine is also horrible. It requires a ridiculous amount of memory (You get tons of swapping on 1GB of RAM, so really you need 2GB), and has insanely low f
Re:Beta'd... (Score:2)
-- Ravensfire
Re:Beta'd... (Score:3, Interesting)
That's Unfortunate (Score:3, Interesting)
That's most unfortunate. I loved City of Heroes, was in the Beta for a week or two before it was released, and played it from release in several different classes. Mostly I'd reach a travel power, and group with friends from the Super Group, but ultimately what drove me to cancel was the lack of variety in quests. I value my game dollars, and full anticipated buying CoV even after cancelling my CoH account, but I probably won't now. I can't reason myself into buying a game that suffers the same lack of longevity as it's predecessor.
Re:That's Unfortunate (Score:3, Informative)
Right now bases are restricted to supergroups, but they're also planning to add "apartments" or per-user (possibly per-character, they haven't said) bases, so there will be loot incentive even for non-teamers.
I think I'll wait... (Score:2, Interesting)
Ummm... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ummm... (Score:3, Funny)
PvP? (Score:5, Interesting)
I am personally waiting for the game that takes into account the player's skill at the game itself instead of having XXX level will beat XXX-1 level, or YYY class will always defeat YZY class. It's idiotic and boring, and brings little to tactics in games of scale.
I am still watching for DarkFall Online as it seems to be the only game that will combine the elements of PvP I'm looking for, but still I'm curious... how does PvP in CoV stack up? I haven't played CoH since there was almost ZERO PvP, but now with the expansion I wonder how the combat system takes into account any type of player skill, or is it just another XXX and YYY game?
Re:PvP? (Score:3, Interesting)
Real life skills (Score:2)
Re:PvP? (Score:5, Informative)
You should check out Guild Wars [guildwars.com]. It's made by NCSoft and the designers of the game designed it from day one specifically for that reason: balanced PVP. There are no uber-leet godly items that give players an unfair advantage. Anyone can create a PVP character that has the same items and stats as anybody else does at maximum level, giving you the opportunity to fight in a fantasy battleground where some kid that spent $100 on eBay isn't going to beat you just because he bought some godly sword of slaying that kills anyone in 1 hit.
PvE content is admittedly a little lacking compared to WoW, but it's a great game and has probably the best PvP experience I've seen yet.
Parent
its called planetside (Score:2)
http://planetside.station.sony.com/ [sony.com]
Re:PvP? (Score:5, Informative)
Also, no monthly fee (since most areas are instanced in a peer-to-peer way, with little server load, so ArenaNet's running costs are lower).
Sorry to sound like an advert, but it is a fun game and appears to fit what you are looking for. (Hmm...maybe *you* are the guild wars plant...asking that question to entice a positive response about the game. Damn, you're subtle).
Parent
Re:PvP? (Score:2)
Anyways.. Guild Wars is not as 'scaled' as I'd like to see in a true MMO. The battles of 30 on 30 that I used to fight in Ultima Online YEARS ago were the best PvP experiences I'd ever had. The fact the game had no levels and that all characters were merel
Re:PvP? (Score:2)
When you say "skill", do you really mean hand-eye coordination and quick reflexes? That's the proper skill for Quake, but probably won't get you far in, say, a Civilization game.
Different game genres ask for different skills. I find that in MMORGs like DAoC and WoW player skill is quite important in PvP (PvE anything g
Re:PvP? (Score:2)
Re:PvP? (Score:2)
...tapped into the Comic Book Guy in all of us (Score:5, Funny)
-everphilski-
Crafting (Score:2)
Re:Crafting (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hmm... (Score:3, Funny)
Judging from the conditions inside and outside the Ziggurat, Arachnos set up them the bomb.
It should be called "City of Anti-Heroes" (Score:2, Informative)
Sadly, the majority of the enemies you face in CoV are *still* villains (I've made it to 30 and only seen 3 total hero groups, and only one shows up with any frequency), and you have lots of missions with goals like "rescue the Wretch" and "stop the intruders", that are passed off as villainous only because you are being paid
City of Toadies (Score:2)
hmm? (Score:2)
I'd love to know what sensical actions are...
CoH(V) (Score:2, Interesting)
It is a pretty game with a nice theme, but that is just not enough. Oddly, the day they upgraded CoH with the CoV content, I could no longer run CoH
Repetition wasn't what killed CoH... (Score:2)
New skin, but nothing new to do (Score:3, Insightful)
For about half an hour.
It became pretty apparent that there is only one mission: Go beat every one up. That's it! Oh, I forgot: You could also find some things by clicking on boxes as you... went to beat every one up. That by itself is fun for a couple of minutes.
Now, EQ and WoW both got dropped by me due to the grind, but there were at least places to explore, puzzles to solve, things to learn... In other words, there were things to do.
City of Heroes had nothing else, excepting the opportunity to look at the (gorgeous) scenery and earn the next superpower. I kept playing after hearing tales of the game play, social interaction, and mission variety opening up after a certain point. I found none. My contacts and missions looked different, but acted exactly the same.
Had there been more social interactions that were relevant to game play, or game play designed to really let people feel in-character... Or any number of things, it could have been better. The entire time I played, I felt like I was playing an engine demo released before their content.
City of Heroes brought to the table the BEST game in years... that gave me no compelling reason to play.
Yeah, but the real question is... (Score:5, Funny)
Not villainous enough (Score:5, Interesting)
My main problem with CoV, and the reason I didn't end up subscribing, was that most missions had me fighting other villains. Sure, villains engage in some in-fighting, but in 16 levels of leveling up a Corruptor in beta, I fought non-villains in exactly three missions:
1.Fought guards in the tutorial mission.
2.Fought heroes in the first mission.
3.Fought guards in the bank heist mission.
Everything else was fighting the same old villains from CoH -- Hellions, Skulls, Lost, Family, etc. Sure, the mission text may say "kidnap" rather than "rescue", but I was only ever "kidnapping" someone from another villain group, and it sure felt like a rescue. Sure, I steal valuable items, but only from other villain groups -- never from museums, offices, mansions, and the like.
It just seemed like a massive waste of an opportunity. There was even a 40+ page thread on the CoV beta forums titled "CoV Just Not Villainous Enough"? That thread never saw a single developer response, and appeared not to impact the game in the slightest.
Which is fine, really, if the developers' definition of "villains" is just "heroes who don't get along". I'm sure lots of people will dig it because of the new archetypes, zones, powers, and PvP potential.
For my money, though, I expected something very different from a game titled City of Villains.
This changes (Score:3, Interesting)
You must have been skipping content also, because there are some other early missions you fight heroes in - I think you're L6 or less when you go to defeat the sea witch, who is the first "hero" sort of enemy (Although she's o
Some CoV thoughts (Score:4, Informative)
Second, the mission system. Street hunting is fine, but several "issues" ago, Cryptic raised the xp from mission completion, to encourage doing story-laden missions as opposed to random street hunting. City of Villains makes this better in several ways. First, newspaper missions: entering a zone you can immediately take "newspaper" missions from anywhere, without needing to visit a contact. Every so many missions, you build enough reputation with a contact to get a "special" mission offer which you have to see them in person to get. But this helps drastically minimize the travelling.
Next, contacts dole out their cell phone numbers a lot faster. In City of Heroes, you had to complete roughly 2/3rds of a contact's missions before you got a Call button for them. In City of Villains, you typically complete 2 missions and then receive their Call button, cutting down drastically on dull travel time, and further distancing CoV from MMOs where travelling becomes a major hassle and upgrading your modes of transportation (*cough* epic mount *cough*) becomes an overwhelmingly important goal simply because the walking is boring. It means the game is that much more fast paced.
Next, CoV missions are usually located in the zone you acquire them in. All newspaper missions are, and MOST contact missions are, unless there's a compelling story reason to have them be elsewhere. (For example, the ominous Aeon corp is located in Cap Au Diable, and so if the mission involves breaking into their corporate headquarters, there you go - but in 26 levels, I've only been sent out of zone perhaps 4-5 times)
Finally, CoV further improves by having a LOT of story arcs. It seems like I'm always doing one. Unlike one-shot missions, story arcs have, well, story behind them. They're more entertaining than one-off missions. If you continue to seek out contacts and work for them, you'll get souvenirs out the wazoo. I'd guess at 26 I probably have at least 15, if not 20 or more. I stopped counting. I've gotten more than one story arc from some contacts. Also, Arcs tend to be a bit shorter, with less "filler" material, whereas in CoH there were a lot of "now, do this" missions which didn't really move the story along very much. In other words, the content is thicker.
Unlike city of heroes, however, your starting missions are currently the same regardless of Archetype or Origin. Whereas CoH content differed for the first 5 levels or so based on Origin, everyone in CoV starts with Kalinda and the same set of missions. Devs have already said new starting content is coming, but... well, coming is not here.
Third, the Archetypes. As Zonk points out, the Mastermind is a unique experience. Overall, however, I think all the Villain ATs have a unique flavor. The least unique is probably the corruptor, which plays essentially like a defender with their power sets reversed. They don't do enough damage to
Re:People who play MMORPG (Score:3, Funny)
Now, people who post demeaning and sweeping generalizations on the internet...
Re:Awesome!!! (Score:2)
Kind of like you just did?
Nice try, but it's a referral link (Score:2)
Hard to believe that buried in the multiple redirects was a referral code. What, were you hoping to make $2.50 from purchases off your posting? And the discount isn't secret...just use a9.com every once in a while and get pi/2 percent off your Amazon purchases.
Mod parent down? (Score:2)