Tuesday 6 April 2004
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Pic of the day: SLAP! That will teach him not to pick on girls with atomic powers, I'd say. (Screenshot from City of Heroes, featuring Atomic Angel.) CoH review 1In this first look at City of Heroes, I will address the most basic questions: What kind of game is it, what does it require, what does it give, and why does it drive people crazy?
City of Heroes is a computer game that is played on the Internet. You
need a personal computer with Windows, Internet access and a graphics
card. Here are the official requirements. (More than this is recommended
for your pleasure, I'd say RAM is a bit skimpy at least.) The game expects you to have the latest drivers for your video card. If the game crashes or behaves strangely, the most likely reason is your driver is out of date. Unlike Dark Age of Camelot, the game is not overly supportive of older versions of drivers. If you are up to date, however, the game is very stable. ***CoH is a "massively multiplayer online game", meaning there are likely to be thousands of people on the same server as you. The most likely number will be around 2000 per server. Each server is a complete city a bit smaller than New York, so it can easily absorb a few thousand people once they spread out. I don't want to be at the train station on launch day, however. ^_^ This type of game is usually called MMORPG, but Cryptic and NCSoft have chosen to tone down the RPG part. Role playing games are often associated with Dungeons & Dragons, elves and dwarves and dice. Not that there is anything wrong with these, but CoH is not really targeted at the elves and dwarves. It is about superheroes mostly. Although you don't need to fly and shoot energy beams from your eyes. Martial arts and assault rifles are just as viable ways of heroing. There are already many MMO games out here, EverQuest being the most famous (while I have until now preferred Dark Age of Camelot). Not all of them are medieval anymore: Star Wars Galaxies was made to appeal to the fans of the Star Wars movies, of course, while Anarchy Online is a more generic futuristic game. However, they have kept many of the traits that worked so well for Ultima Online. EverQuest and DAoC. City of Heroes prides itself in being different, but this is a half truth only. It may not be "EQ in tights" but it does have experience points and levels (here called "security levels" in an attempt to rationalize them in the game. You need to reach a certain clearance level to get access to more dangerous city zones). Loot has become more abstract: Instead of gold you get influence points, and instead of items you get inspirations and enhancements. There are no trade skills, though. Everyone is a hero on active duty. There are only five "classes" in the game, called archetypes, and you can stretch those beyond recognition. But you cannot excel in everything, and so the game encourages people to team up and be social. It is possible to play alone, and it may indeed be better than fighting alongside a bunch of morons, but it generally takes a longer time to advance alone than in a barely average team. Of course, this presupposes that you want to advance fast. I am not sure that is a good idea. The game does grow more varied and complex at higher levels, but you would not want to lose out on the basics. ***For a city game, CoH is beautiful. The cityscape is vividly painted, with a mix of industrial and high-rise areas. Parks are green lungs and there are public buildings and giant statues of heroes who sacrificed their lives for the city in the past. (It has been hinted that exceptional players may once get their own statue in the city. But for now the main carrot seems to be the chance to feature in the City of Heroes comic book, which will be sold at comic dealers anywhere as well as distributed monthly to CoH subscribers.) The game itself conveys the same solid comic book feel with a basis of realism, as if visiting an alternate reality where magic and superpowers actually work, but most other things are familiar. If you've read "Marvels" or "Star City" you will recognize this feeling. It is a believable world, but larger than life: Beautiful and dangerous like the first weeks of love. The game supports very high screen resolutions for those who want that. It is so detailed that even when I use a screenshot as Windows wallpaper, it looks more like a photo than a screenshot unless there is a hero in it. The heroes themselves can be pretty good-looking if they so desire. The game defaults to heroic proportions, which are pretty standardized in comics and rather uncommon in real life. You can make your hero taller or shorter, broader or slimmer, but you cannot change the proportions of the individual parts, which is probably a good thing. I sometimes half jokingly believe that the lack of capes in the game is to show off the backsides, which are probably the best drawn in any non-Japanese game. And unlike DAoC, you can often tell at a glance what gender your fellow hero is even from behind. Good job. But I have a feeling I'm getting sidetracked here... Onward! During fights there are visual effects, which vary according to the powers used. For normal weapons the effects are rather small, while some superpowers have pretty spectacular effects. In a pitched battle where several powers are fired off at the same time, the screen can be momentarily lost to the colored flashes. The sound effects are also distinct and not too corny. Realistic powers once again have realistic sounds, while energy punches, laser zaps etc have sounds that are different enough to let you know when one is used nearby even if you are not looking that way. Very good job on this. But some of the constant effects of defensive auras are really grating on both the user and people around them. I don't mind too much, but there are people who refuse to take a protective power because the sound sets them on edge, and even asks people on their team to turn it off. There is a petition to get these toned down, I don't know whether it will happen. I hope so. Then again, these are powers not meant to be on at all times. The ambient sound is totally realistic and changes with the neighborhood. Compared with DAoC again, this is a lot better. You don't notice it looping, you generally ignore it unless you stop to listen. In contrast, music is poorly developed. This is fine by me, I don't find it all too realistic that superheroes fly with Walkman on. There is a small musical vignette when you enter a new neighborhood (divisions within a zone, with different types of buildings etc). The nature of the music often gives a clue to what kind of neighborhood it is, and whether it is dangerous or relatively safe. The safer areas tend to have a very upbeat intro. But overall, music is almost absent in this game, and I think some people may find this a drawback. Not I, mind you. ***The user interface is exceptionally easy to use, and most of the play can be done either with keyboard or mouse. Each superpower can be assigned to one of 10 slots which can be activated by clicking or pressing the key from your upper row (not the right-hand numeric keypad). Another 10 powers can be assigned to an alternate row, which you get up by pressing the alt key, logically enough. Various information windows can be toggled off and on from a small menu or by pressing their name key, such as C for Chat or M for Map. Even without an instruction manual, I got started with this in seconds. The basics are also explained in the mandatory tutorial when you start playing a character, where you also get some safe practice. Not that much is needed. I don't hesitate to say that this is a user interface I wish would become industry standard. And that's despite playing other games heavily for years. It is simply genial. I originally feared that I would not be able to play the game much because of my RSI (mouse wrist). I am happy to say that this game excels in that department as well. And for good measure, almost everything can be reprogrammed from the options window, and you can program your own commands and series of commands and assign them to keys of your choosing. You want to speak in a different color than the normal? You can program it right there in the chat window, no need to resort to external programs. I haven't used the advanced features much, but they look quite impressive. You can even make your own demo movies while playing. There are commands (which can once again be assigned to keys) that let you start recording. You then play the sequence you want to record. Later, offline, you can use the game engine to play back your exploits to the amazement of family and friends. Uh. Yeah. If you've watched other people's vacation videos you probably have the good sense to not use this feature. But it is there. I hope this has given you an idea of what you get for your money. I have not gone into detail on the character creation and the trillions of possible characters you can create there, much less the actual game play and team play. So watch this space for more details in the future, if any! |
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