Puck’s Blog

I preordered it and have been in the beta for about three weeks and I’m loving the game. I could have just spent the last three weeks making new characters!

Here are a few of my favorites, as listed in my CoH gallery:

Northern Shield, my Canadian themed superhero.

HellyeahBoy, my Hellboy recreation. The only way to get one arm larger than the other was to make it “robotic”, but I think it still works.

Vega Balrog, from Street Fighter. A nearly perfect recreation. When running around in the game, I literally have people turn and watch me run past them and then comment on the design.

Holy Cow. Comedy temporary “live day test” character. Again, I got a lot of comments from other players.

SuperStrongbad. Nuff said.
Ok, so the character creation is fantastic, what else?

The gameplay is fun too. Ok, there’s no crafting, but that makes the entire thing more active. You simply cannot “macro” levelling up. Items? Not like you’d expect in most MMORPGs, but there is “loot” of a type — Enhancements for your powers. Let’s say I have an Energy Blast power. That power will start with one “Enhancement Slot”. I can then drop an Enhancement in that slot that increases the damage is causes, decreases the endurance cost, increases range, or increases accuracy or some other effect of the power. Every odd level you get two more slots to add to your powers. You can pile them all on a single power and then add more enhancements to it, or spread them out.

You’ll also pick up “Inspirations” which are another non-item item. These represent heroic surges of different types. They’re basically one-shot “buffs” or “heals”, increasing your damage, current Endurance or Health or Accuracy for a short time.

How about balance? I’ve tried every single character type and they all have their roles. Some are definitely stronger in combat than others — “Controllers” simply don’t cause (or take) as much damage as a Blaster or Scrapper, but the other effects on their powers totally make up for it.

The missions are varied and — get this — I’m actually interested in the stories presented when you get missions. In Star Wars Galaxies missions came with “story” but after running a few dozen you’d pretty much seen them all. In City of Heroes you learn more and more about the various villain groups in Paragon City. Some missions (especially at lower levels) are easily soloable. Later on you’re probably going to want to group up with other players.

What about those players? I will admit the game suffers from a preonderance of furries and obvious power-fantasy gamers who play “dark demonic ass-kickers” but even they are friendly and fun. With no PVP, nobody has a reason to beat their chest and claim to be better than anyone else. We’re all working together here to defeat evil (and level up) and that feeling prevades grouping.

When you group with real superhero fans the social aspect really shines. The other day I was trying to “pull” a few powerful bad guys away from the main group so we could take them on a few at a time. Our “Tanker” named “Mr. Meteor” stood at the entrance to the room I was pulling them to in a muscleman flex-pose shouting “COME AND GET IT EVILDOERS! FEAR MY HUGE MUSCLES!” A great group, and a lot of fun, despite that one mission being way too hard for our current play level (it is in Beta, after all).

I strongly urge my superhero fan friends to get in on this game. Yes, it has a monthly fee, but if you’ll play the game as much as I think you will, you’ll be buying *less* other games each month and come out saving money.