City Of Heroes (PC)
Developed by: Cryptic Studios
Published by: NCSoft

Massively multiplayer online RPGs (”MMORPGs” for those not up on their lingo) have been around for years now, and although we’ve all heard about the infamous Everquest addicts and their widow support groups, for all their immersiveness these games have yet to really break into the mainstream. It could be because of the monthly fees that are charged in addition to the game’s retail cost, or it might be the overwhelming amount of time required to invest in such games that holds people back. Or it could just be that the Dungeons & Dragons-inspired fantasy/sci-fi themes on which all of these games are based have a limited audience out there. Not everyone understands what a dark-elf necromancer or half-ogre berserker is, nor are they overly eager to learn.

But what if you could take the MMORPG concept and apply it to a world that everyone does understand? Then you just might have a hit on your hands, and indeed, such seems to be the case with NCSoft’s City Of Heroes. The MMORPG genre has become a lot more diverse and a lot more colourful with the long-awaited release of this game, which puts you in the tights of a superhero fighting alongside others to rid your city of evil thugs, street gangs, and many, many more fearsome creatures. Taking their experience from managing the popular Lineage series, NCSoft has worked with Cryptic Studios to take what’s good and bad about MMORPGs and streamline it all into a game that is accessible, fun and unique, stepping outside the realm of the typical fantasy schtick for the first time.

Having never really played any massive online games before, I can say that this is a great starting point for newbies to the format, and should attract a slightly different crowd. After all, who hasn’t dreamed of having super powers at one time or another? It’s something we can all relate to, and the game’s biggest strength is the sheer variety of characters that can be created. When it comes to online games where you will be interacting with other human beings, customization and creativity are the key to fun, and City Of Heroes puts a seemingly infinite number of costume combinations at your fingertips. No two heroes will ever look the same, and yet it is quick and easy to generate the hero you want.

When it comes to choosing your hero’s powers, there are no weird-sounding class names and otherworldly races to decipher. There are simply 5 basic hero archetypes: the blaster (long range attacks), scrapper (up close and personal), tanker (draws the enemy hits), defender (medic/healer), and controller (crowd control). Within each of these, you choose from a primary and secondary power set, which are themed around a basic type of power whether it be electricity, ice, radiation, or martial arts. As your player gains experience you can choose more powers from within these sets, and eventually you can take generic superhero powers like flying, super speed or teleportation. The options are so plentiful and so equally cool that you will find yourself wanting to create a few different heroes just so you can fiddle around with different powers. This is not a problem since you have up to 8 character slots to fill up.

The combat system is a combination of turn-based and real-time attack systems. You have to wait for your powers to recharge before you can use them again, and you can queue them up in advance but only up to a few moves ahead of time. In other words, the battle will not proceed automatically, you have to interact and direct your hero at all times. Unlike many RPGs, your character does not feel weak at early levels either. By the time you finish the tutorial and reach level 2, you will have 3 powers and a generic brawl attack as well which already gives you a lot of choices in fights. As you gain levels you also obtain new slots for enhancements to the powers you currently have. Instead of finding loot such as magic items and weapons in the game, you receive “enhancements” and “inspirations”. Inspirations are temporary power-ups to recover health or increase damage for example, while enhancements are more permanent power-ups that improve a particular power you have by reducing its recharge rate or making its effects more deadly.

The graphics for this game are very impressive and a lot more than I would expect from an MMORPG. The effects for each different type of power are top notch, and the environments are detailed and realistic. Although there aren’t a lot of environmental elements you can interact with (you can jump into water and swim, which is cool), it’s a lot of fun just running around and exploring. The city feels alive and real (although admittedly there is a hell of a lot of crime going on) and the gameplay feels like Grand Theft Auto only replacing cars with the ability to fly or jump through streets and across rooftops.

Everything in City Of Heroes is set up to maximize your potential to team up with others, which is a good thing because while adventuring solo is possible it tends to get monotonous after a while. Joining a team is a cinch. With the click of a button you are added to a list of heroes in the area from which others can browse and recruit. It usually only takes a minute before you get an invite. Chatting can be done in multiple channels (ie. locally, within a team, within friends), with a user interface that makes communication so much easier than I expected. Spoken dialogue also appears in speech bubbles above characters’ heads, contributing to the whole comic book style of the game, and allowing you to run into the fray while visually proclaiming your hero’s battle cry! At higher levels you can also form super groups (the City Of Heroes equivalent of a clan, which allows for colour co-ordinated costumes), and also take on sidekicks (which allows a lower level character to play at one level below his mentor, greatly facilitating team-up opportunities for newbies). Perhaps the best thing is that experience points are shared, and that the enhancement system randomly drops power-ups directly into players’ inventories, eliminating squabbles over loot and XP. For the most part, City Of Heroes is a socially friendly place where heroes really do co-operate simply because it benefits everyone.

It still remains to be seen exactly how much depth City Of Heroes has. NCSoft and Cryptic Studios have stripped away a lot of the complexity found in other MMORPGs, which makes a game that is accessible and easy to get into, but may grow tiresome eventually. There isn’t much to the game other than beating up bad guys. You aren’t limited to patrolling randomly through the city (although that can be fun), you are also assigned missions from various contacts that you meet along the way. These missions can over time progress into story arcs that find you working your way up through a crime organization’s hierarchy until you take on their leader. However, on an invididual basis they are rarely any more interesting than “Beat 10 guys from this gang in this area” or “Rescue hostages from here”. The missions are usually pretty short, although this can be a good thing since you don’t need to sit down for 3 or 4 hours to accomplish anything — even if you just jump in for 15 minutes you can do something worthwhile.

The other thing with this game is that it’s such a cool concept with so much potential that you quickly become aware of so many things that could be added to make it even more fun. Everyone can list off a ton of missing elements that a superhero RPG really *should* have, for example, City of Heroes currently has no capes, no real environment interaction, and no secret identities. And of course, no playable villain characters and no hideouts either, although they will be available with the first expansion, City Of Villains. In the end, I think they were wise to limit the gameplay options and focus on releasing a product that is solid and error-free. With the Star Wars Galaxies fiasco fresh in many consumers’ minds, NCSoft stepped up and provided an MMORPG launch without any major problems at all. Personally I haven’t encountered any issues other than a little bit of lag here and there, and that’s a bigger deal than you might think.

One thing holding me back from recommending this game to everyone is the monthly fee, which is rather steep at over $20 Canadian a month. On the other hand though, you do get your first month’s fix for free, and City Of Heroes has also introduced a monthly comic book that subscribers will receive in the mail — complete with stories based on events that have happened in the game that month. How’s that for added value?

As it stands, I’ve certainly come to understand what this whole “Evercrack” phenomenon is all about. These games are highly addictive, for better or worse, because they are immersive, dynamic, and never quite the same every time you fire it up because of the high level of human involvement. I can’t say for sure if I’ll still be playing and paying 2 months from now, but at the moment I’m hooked. If Cryptic and NCSoft can keep adding cool new features and keep providing a hassle-free gaming environment, I predict that I will be their bitch for many months to come. — Sean