Hello, Sondor here. This is my first review for City of Heroes, so sorry if it is not your guys’ original format. Hope you enjoy!
I like to break my Review into 5 different sections. Graphics, Sound, Gameplay, Longetivity, and MMORPG-Sense.
Graphics : 9/10
Wow, boy are these graphics good! This is CoH’s strong-point. This game is filled with hundreds of maps for you to play on. Including cities, buildings, caves, mines, destroyed cities, and much much more!! The character models are great as well, and even the effects of spells and attacks are greatly appreciated! A quality I liked about its graphics was even on my Geforce 4, with 255 RAM, the game still played MOSTLY lag free. However, with my new Geforce 6800 ULTRA and 1 GB RAM, the game runs so smooth you cant even tell its online!
Sound : 8/10
Sound was another Strong-point for City of Heroes. There were Beautiful background music that played smoothly (Though some songs seem to be played frequently). I also enjoyed the sound-effects from my magic and attacks as they smashed into my enemy. They came through smoothly too. The only problem is it seemed that sometimes the sound would not stack. A lot of times Id shoot a Dark Miasma(spell) missle at someone and then someone would case heal and Id hear the missle then the heal later. Maybe a bug though, dunno….
Gameplay : 6/10
Look mommy, I’m a hero! Many of us said that as a kid, and wished we could do so, well, in City of Heroes, we can! The character creation system is wonderful with hundreds or thousands of combos to create your superhero. Customize your head, body, arms, shoulders, face, legs, feet, everything! And then paint them all different colors!! In City of Heroes I have yet to see 2 characters that looks the same. The gameplay is pretty repetitive, though. Go to a nearby contact(NPC), and get a mission/quest. (Not to mention most of these were the same) They mostly involved going to a random building, going in, killing a certain number of enemies, and then getting a special item. End of mission. Mostly repetitive. Thats why this didnt score to high.
Longetivity : 5/10
When do I get to do someting new!?!?!? Im tired of killing the same guys over and over!! I dont wanna go in and get an item any more, let me do something new!! This is one of the major flaws of City of Heroes. The game has a Max Level Cap that is very high, and then you are allowed to restart your character as a all new archtype(class)which no one except people who hit the level cap can get! But, I got bored before hitting the max level… Doing the same things over and over gets really boring… 1. Go to contact. 2. Get Mission. 3. Go to Mission Location(Killing some enemies along the way) 4. Run through mission killing enemies. 5. Get the item. 6. Return to contact. 7. Repeat. Ugh!
MMORPG-Sense : 4/10
Compared to other MMORPGs, it seems this games only MMORPG feature is the MMO. Many, many people play the game, but thats about it. No Trade-Skills, no Weapons to buy, No items to buy (Besides Inspirations and Enhancements, which are kind useless most the time), No Armor, and no PvP!(Until City of Villains comes out (No release date)). So overall, this game is MMO, thats it.
Final Judgement : 6/10
When I first got CoH, I was excited. Logged in, created a character, did the tutorial(boring) and went out into the game. I killed enemies endlessly, waiting til I could do something new….That time never came. If you like the standard games with Hack/Slash/Repeat, go for it, though you dont get money (You get influence which is used to buy inspirations and enhancements though), and you dont get item drops. You just, plain, kill.
–Sondor
PS : Please let me know what you thought of the review…