CoH: A review (sort of)

[kingandy]

Now that I'm back at work and should be working (as opposed to in work at the weekend so actually working), I thought I'd post a few general opinions on City of Heroes. Just so people know.

It's a good game. Very pretty, nicely thought out. I love the character generator; it's very easy to make heroes that look immensely cool (though annoyingly impossible to change later). I like the whole team-up aspect and sidekicks and supergroups - especially the Team Colours part, where you get to exchange any or all of the colours in your costume for those set by the team, though you keep the actual design. It makes for a cool uniform feel while maintaining your individuality.

My main niggle with the game is that, having got used to Knights of the Old Republic, it's annoying that you can't see yourself from the front. In KotOR you can rotate the camera and your character doesn't move until he/she needs to move, while in CoH your avatar just magically spins on a point. Most annoying, in an entirely trivial cosmetic way. And the control system is just different enough to be annoying - I keep forgetting where the "turn" keys are and press "sidestep" instead. Force of habit. Oh, I think the one other thing I don't enjoy is that there's no "select nearest enemy" button - it just seems to "select random enemy that you can see". One more thing: I'd love to be able to pull up Info on people via the console - just the basic details (Known Powers and Bio) that you can get by rightclicking on them, only without having to actually find them. Other than that, all good stuff.

Plus, having no movement powers, I am having to walk everywhere, which sucks. But Danny Wraith will be teleporting himself around by Level 14 (by entering THE WORLD OF THE DEAD), you see if he's not.

As, I suspect, with many MORG*s, there was a certain amount of blurring between IC and OOC - at least there was in the "SuperGroup" I got recruited into by mrssshhh and arwel, I know there's others out there that just treat it as a big third-person shooter and entirely ignore the RPG aspect. The blurring happened because we kept talking in our IC idioms but often discussed blatantly OOC elements. Lots of fun was had by all.

In summary - it's not quite as immediately gripping as KotOR, because the plot isn't quite so personal and progression isn't as fast, but I suspect it'll have much more staying power. Text-based interaction with other actual players (truly the cheapest form of AI) makes for more fulfilling roleplay, even if the responses aren't played out in glorious audio by trained acTORRs. And there's a lot more freedom about what tasks you perform, and when. And stuff. Also I kick ass.

I did eventually create that robot spaceship guy I mentioned - called him The Indefatigable, because it works a little better than The Council. Also people will have trouble spelling it. Hee hee hee. I've only played him through the tutorial, but he should be cool to play with. So now I've got a Mutant Tanker, a Technology Blaster and a Magic Defender ... I have a plan for a Science Controller, so I guess I need to do a Natural Scrapper too. Just to balance things out. Yeah.

* I can't pronounce MMORPG, so I'm not going to type it either.

Comments

[arwel.livejournal.com]

You can move the camera. I think holding down the right or middle button on the mouse lets you change the angle and look at your character from the front.

Everybody needs a robot character, they're just cool. Dark defenders are excellent, they have a nice mix of abilities, debuffs, blasts and heals. I created one when I did Prototype X, but I'll give him a rest for a while given Danny Wraith and Dark Tarot have the exact same powers. He looks so cool though.

Playing a blaster makes you realise just haw hard tankers are. You can't really keep up in the damage stakes with scrappers and blasters, but you can sit there and take damage for your team for ages. Seriously think about getting provoke from the presence power pool for Therm, I'm finding it exceptionally usefull for keeping the attention on Titan Alpha especially since it doesn't seem to cost any endurance to activate.

[wulfboy.livejournal.com]

I pronounce it "ummmmmm - PORG" even though it isn't spelt like that.

I am being lured. If any job pans out i may have to break it to My Beloved that we're getting CoH.