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E3 2003: City of Heroes
City of Heroes
Developer: Cryptic Studios
Publisher: NCsoft
Release Date: Q3 2003
Comic Book RPG MMO
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City of Heroes - Div Devlin (05-19-03)
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| CoH Booth |
S T O P! Before you read any further know that City of Heroes will have no player versus player combat within the game at launch. If this makes a difference to you, then just scroll down for the next game we take a look at. If not, read on.
City of Heroes is the massively multiplayer online role-playing game coming to us from NCsoft and developed by Cryptic Studios, bringing the comic book action of mutants and superheroes to the PC. Players take on the role of a super powered hero within the fictional Paragon City. The games equivalent of Gotham City or Metropolis.
Paragon City itself has a rich and vibrant history as a center of the game world as “the” all-glowing city of United States, until aliens decimated it after invading from an alternate dimension. Using Paragon City as their base of operations they launched attacks all over the world until Heroes and Villain's joined forces to drive them out. It was a bloody and costly battle, where many of the heroes that once defended the city fell. Or the villains backstabbed them in a double cross when they were busy fighting the alien Rikti. Players enter the game as the new generation of heroes to defend the city. Villains and secret societies have also decided that Paragon City is at its weakest and have plans to despoil what remains of the once great city. It's up to players to maintain the peace and protect it, while rebuilding.
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| CoH Booth Babes |
The background story is actually a lot more engaging and very well written. A great set-up has been established for players to jump right into the role-playing aspects of the game as they create the backgrounds for their hero with excellent story arcs, which aspiring writers will never tire from. The city itself is supposed to be huge with over eight zones with a large grid.
Character generation is going to be pretty detailed where players can choose their origins and how they got super powers. Bitten by a Radioactive Spider, Exposed to Gamma Radiation, you get the general idea. Then you move into an arch-type which is a change from the originally announced skill based system. Arch-types are basically classes that will predefine the way your character appears and what powers he/she will have throughout their crime-fighting career similar to templates. With the templates available players will be able to personalize their hero.
Of the classes available, players will be able to choose from the Blaster, an offensive character who is basically a glass tank or fighter. The Defender who has ranged attacks and is basically the puller. The Scrapper class, which is a mix of the Blaster and Defender classes, that is balanced for attacks and defending. And finally the Tanker class that is built to take tons of damage but cannot really dish any damage out from attacks. From each of the basic four classes, players will get to choose skill sets from a set of powers and sub-powers that can be advanced and added to, through level progression.
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| Don't Mess w/ her! |
It's all about the suit!
Anyone that is going to be a super hero or is a comic book buff knows that it's all about the suit. Cryptic knows this as well, and has made it so that every player has thousands of differences when creating their appearance from basic colors to different combinations and patterns for the head, chest, arms, boots, legs and belt as well as shapes and sizes for their character and costume. No two players should look alike, unless they specifically design themselves to do so. Which would be great for PvP as a villain appears in the opposite costume! Those who don't like to play Barbie dress up, or want to take the time to personalize themselves can spare themselves hours of grief by using a the random costume generator.
Level Progression:
Once within game, players begin patrolling the city to, stop crime. It's all about crime fighting after all. As you adventure within Paragon City you will fight petty villains and establish contacts stopping thugs doing purse snatching, muggings, and bank robberies. As you stop crimes and save citizens they will actively seek you out and thank you for saving them or stopping the crime, which in turn builds up your reputation. As you establish contacts with NPC citizens, reporters or police officers they will issue quests that will take you into the more dangerous zones outside the city proper, to fight the super villains bent on taking over Paragon City drawing players into the games storyline. There will not be an Aunt May to give a quest.
Game Play and Eye Candy…
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| Special Attacks! |
Game play is going to be different and not cater to the stupid with a click-and-forget system. In CoH players will need to manage their attack cycles with power-ups and combinations, while the interface will allow powers and items can be hot keyed so that quick thinking while fighting mobs is needed. If your out of power, expect to become road-kill. If you have too many mobs, kiting works just like all other games in the market. We were told that it's actually more detailed then what we were making it out to be, and we did not get to heavily into combat, the shining part of the game. We want to defeat heroes! The graphics are good and on par with the next generation of games promoting eye candy over substance in a 3-D world. The city is populated with skyscrapers, rapid transport systems (trains), billboards (CoH could be the first game to actually internally advertise Pepsi products!) and huge parks that are all fully detailed.
Final Thoughts:
We've done the RPG Story game before with Earth and Beyond, and went through all the problems of players ganking your mobs, or preventing your advancement through quests as they blocked you. Were hoping that City of Heroes paid close attention as well, and from all aspects they have been watching what other games have done wrong. Plans are supposedly in the works for players to take on the roles of super villains, but no solid details are available. It will not be available at launch and will come after possibly with a PvP server, or an expansion pack.
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| Protecting Paragon from Aliens! |
City of Heroes is going to be the first MMOG in the Super Hero comic book genre with competition coming in the form of Marvel Super Heroes announced last year by Sony Online. The game looks good, and will be a refreshing break from the norm of Sword and Sorcery Fantasy MMOG's. Were looking forward to giving it a more detailed look during beta, even with the changes from a skill bases system.
On the bad side, with no PvP, the game already has a mark against it, when it could be a very interesting game system as players formed up their guilds and fought against each other as heroes and villains. Some of our greatest moments in the paper games were when we played against each other within our gaming group.
[CoH Gallery]
Next Page: Dark Ages of Camelot
Discuss: Stop Villain, for I am a Hero!
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