Played on:
Windows
The MMORPG market is currently packed with titles, and it's becoming a very strange genre - the behemoth of publishers, EA, can't seem to find a hit massive multiplayer game, and the little independent studios are finding moderate to great success with their own titles. One such developer like this is Cryptic Studios, who have delivered us the first massive multiplayer superhero game ever: City of Heroes.
This game diverts from many trends in recent MMORPGs, and includes a very unique style and atmosphere that can appeal to more players than one might think. I'm not that big of a superhero or comic book fan, and when I first heard of CoH, I just shrugged. But now that I've played the game, I have to say I'm impressed with the character creation, combat, and other aspects that really help the game differ from every other MMORPG.
City of Heroes runs on a custom engine that can do a pretty good job maintaining frame rates with plenty of polygons going at once. That and the game's excellent stability are about its strongest points; the engine boasts no really major graphics features, nor does it support any snazzy DirectX 9 special effects.
Still, a massive multiplayer game needs to run on a stable, versatile engine, and that's what CoH's engine delivers. The game behaves well with other programs, and it can be run in a window with almost no issues. The only thing I'd like to see is a way to quickly get out of the game - short of doing Ctrl-Alt-Del and ending the task, there's no instant quit (just the 30 second wait that takes you back to the character select screen).
City of Heroes has a very streamlined, intuitive interface that just about any gamer can use and enjoy - novice or expert. When your hero gains new powers, buttons are automatically set up so that you just press a number key to activate them. Every zone has an automap, including the indoor "instanced" missions you set out on. The game also includes a special interface for working with Enhancements (which is the closest thing to items you'll get in CoH), and buying and selling works great.
One thing I dislike is that I can't fully bind all controls to how I want. For example, if I wanted to mimic EverQuest's controls in CoH, I wouldn't be able to set the strafe keys to turn my character when mouselook is turned off, nor can I use the left mouse button to walk forwards as long as mouselook is on. While the controls are smooth and easy to get used to, a few more options would have been even better. At least this game includes a well-behaving first person mode; many games nowadays either have no first person perspective or one that hardly works. I still find that third person is better for this game, considering that you need to watch your character's power usage closely, but I'm always glad to see the option there.
While City of Heroes includes a pretty decent friends list to allow you to track your buddies who are playing, it doesn't seem to include any way to message people that are offline. I've always wondered why so few games can do this right (to date, only Star Wars Galaxies did it in a way I found useful and intuitive). I really hope that sooner or later this becomes a standard thing for MMORPGs to have, as well as fully customizable interfaces.
The chat system works fairly well, with a two-pane window that allows you to split up the combat text and other messages. Everything is fairly well configurable, and the complicated bind system can be used to create some basic macros. A great interface is something that I consider more and more important in a MMORPG as they evolve, and City of Heroes passes the test.
I have to give Cryptic Studios credit for creating a huge game world that feels familiar as a superhero world without actually licensing any major hero franchises. Modern day Paragon City feels alive, and its atmosphere is excellent. The textures look great, and it's not just all cityscape that you'll traverse either; we also get forest-type areas, old abandoned offices, a ghost town, and some other sci-fi-style zones. You'll have to gain quite a few levels to see these places, but they're generally worth the effort.
The selection of enemies you fight is diverse, and they all belong to specific factions that you will be battling with. Here, you won't fight any diseased rats or bunnies - you jump right into fighting gangs, the undead, clockwork robots, and more. At the same time, Cryptic has created enough monsters inside each faction that you won't consistently fight the same looking guy all the way up through level 40.
Let's move onto the heroes themselves. First, Cryptic's character creation system gives you more options to customize your character's look than any other game I've seen. Since you'll never be equipping new armor or weapons, it's important to pick a look that you won't mind staring at for hours on end, and there are enough options here that just about everyone can make a character they're happy with. The massive amount of armor, gloves, masks, helmets, boots, extra patterns and other accessories means that pretty much no two characters will look exactly alike - and that's something few MMORPG developers can truly boast about.
City of Heroes starts you out in a tutorial section which allows you to get the hang of talking to your "contacts" to get quests, fighting enemies, and moving around the game world with little risk. You'll enter a short mission and be able to move into the normal game afterwards - this tutorial is one of the best I've seen, because it really does prep you for the game without overloading you with tons of information at once.
In fact, the whole game does a great job of making sure you don't ever have to commit to too many things for your character at any one time. The biggest single choice you'll make is your base archetype (also known as class in other MMORPGs) at the start - Blaster, Controller, Defender, Scrapper, or Tanker. Blasters do damage from a distance, Controllers can manipulate enemies and even heal friends, Defenders buff and heal friends while dishing out some damage, Scrappers damage enemies with melee attacks, and Tankers are there to take damage from enemies while doing their own bit of damage.
