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Lasting fun for me

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 11
Date: January 12, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I have been playing this game since May 2004.

Yes, it is "pay-to-play," with a $15 monthly fee. Yes, I am an adult with a full time job, a house, and all the responsibilities that come with that. I'm not a power gamer. And, that is exactly why I like this game so much.

I won't describe the game or gameplay much here; others have already done so. I also won't bother to detail the character creation and graphics -- as others have said, they are fabulous. It's easy to play, with intuitive navigation and controls, which can so easily make or break a game.

Unlike many other MMORPGs, there is no (or limited) commerce system; you don't need the latest and greatest in-game equipment (the biggest sword, the newest armor) to rock and roll. It lends itself well to playing an hour here and there (though I must admit I play more than that) or for much longer stretches. You don't need high level friends and a giant group to go through most missions (at least until you get up into high levels yourself..). This game can be played solo or it can be played (to much better effect, true) with groups.

Yes, some of the missions can be tedious at certain level markers. However, I can also say that slogging past those to see the high level content is worth it.

Another nice facet of this game is that it is not overtly violent. Even though you are shooting or smashing or burning, there is no blood, and you "defeat" and "arrest" rather than kill the bad guys. Sometimes they escape from prison and you encounter them again.

As for the complaints that character archetypes have been ruined by patches...come on, is an amazon review the place for that? It's an MMORPG, by definition it is dynamic, get over it.

I have also had great experiences with in-game and out-of-game support (usually a bugged map, these have been less and less common as gameplay has continued). We even have had great support when it was our-end user error -- GMs have been patient and willing to help when, for example, we missed a spot of the map with the last bad guy to complete a mission. I'm not going to say I've never had a frustrated moment because of map designs or other game issues, but I will say that they have always been resolved to my satisfaction.

Yes, the game does require a lot of processing power, a broadband connection (though you can play with dialup), and a higher-end graphics card.

Please read all th reviews before forming your opinion to bu

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 10 / 13
Date: May 10, 2004
Author: Amazon User

many of the recent posts are quite negative and I feel unjustly so. They were also perhaps written by those who have not had a lenghty experience with the game.

This is quite an entertaining game that has ours of enjoyment in it. Yes, there is a monthly fee but that it expected of all games of this type; anarchy Online, Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, so why should City of Heroes be any different?

I played several weeks and beta and had such a fantastic time that I immediately signed on once the game went live. There is a fantastic online super-hero community nowe alive within this game. I am not a power gamer and never will be. This game is very suitable for a casula gamer ho wishes to log on for a half hours here, couple of minutes ther,e and so on.

As for technical issues, I have not had any. I am sure that otheres have but that's a fact of computer life. I am pretty sure that I am safe in saying that there are far more people who hafve had not technical issues than there are that have.

The character generator is fantastic. The game play is fun, especially in team mode and there are very few negatives.

Asfor the adversaries, yes you do start off with 3 or 4 different bad guys types that you see for the first 7 or so levels but they increase from there and as you go up in level more and more portions of the city are open to yoou which means more and new types of villains.

For some more reviews of the game other than the COH Boards head over to vnboards.ign.com for more write ups on the gameplay, charaacter, villains, and etc and you will see that it is overwhelmingly positie.

Better than playing with knives!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 14 / 22
Date: May 02, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Fellows,

I don't care what walk of life you're coming from this game has enough content to satisfy every gamers dreams! Half Nekid Chicks, totally ripped dudes in tights, Badass elves. You name it! You don't have to have super powers you can have super Bazooka's or super-Flamethrowers, even super blasts of radiated energy exploding from your bloody fists! Actually, wait, that's a super power but still, isn't that cool! And who, who hasn't wanted the ability to fly!? That, my friends, is just the tip of the iceberg. Once you get going in the game, you'll discover the joys of being a SuperHero. There's nothing quite as satisfying as shooting a bolt of concentrated energy right into a scar wretched face of a purse snatching thug, there simply isn't! Unless of course that purse snatching thug was Richard Simmons and you had the power to shoot brown Turkey gravy from your forearms (Ultraman style)! I was running around the huge, beautifully detailed world of Paragon City last night, and ended up chillin' with various super-peeps at cityhall when before I could scream holy chocolate gum-goodies! I saw an "oompah loompah" leading a battalion of super heroes in jumping jacks. Like Full Metal Jacket Style! I've never seen anything so funny in my life! I almost started to cough blood. Forget not being able to customize your character after you created him! You don't see super-heroes in comic books thinking oh, I want the ability to trap criminals with boogers now and presto! Mission accomplished booger boy. Choose your character carefully it usually takes me 30min. to an hour to put a hero together and then yeah, you go through a little tutorial but shoot. You're using a new character afterall, get accustomed to it and then lvl up to hunt down some baddies. 30 minutes tops. Before you know it 3 days goes by, you're not bathing regularly, nobodys calling, and some girl named Rebecca says here's your ring back @!#$%! But hey, every law abiding citizen in Paragon City thinks you're the BOMB! 'Sides that blonde with the shiny, gold, bullet stopping wrist cuffs last night thought you were a stud. I wonder if they do weddings at City Hall too! Expansion pack here we come! Have at it Friends! Paragon city NEEDS YOUR HELP!

If you like MMO"s

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 11 / 16
Date: April 09, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game is very promising. If you like MMORPG's (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) then there is a good chance you're going to love this one.

If you've played other games like "everquest" and find them slow or boring, you'll find this game very action oriented. You take the role of a super hero, fighting crime in paragon city. You might choose fire or ice as your ways of interacting with creatures, mind control, magic, and more. You might choose to play a hero that blasts foes from afar, or one that gets in the foe's face and knocks them across the room.

Flying, teleportation, and other "super hero" skills become available as you level, helping your hero mature into one straight from the comics. All of Paragon City will know your hero's name if you succeed enough and become a star player.

This game has hundreds of hour of gameplay, tons of variety in character creation and power choices, and the perfect 'look' and 'feel' of a super hero game. This will be the DEFENITIVE super hero game on the day this game launches.

If you're an MMO fan looking for something new, or a Super Hero fan who has never tried an MMO, you're going to find a new 'home' here.

Tremendously entertaining

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: May 18, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Unlike the anonymous (and often suspiciously similar) negative reviewers above, I have been playing City of Heroes on a near-daily basis since its release (some three weeks as of this writing). In that time, I have been unable to log in exactly once, and disconnected from the map server perhaps twice. Given that this is a massively-multiplayer game, and one that's less than a month old, that's exceptional stability...which is a good thing, because I'm enjoying the heck out of this game.

After a few years of EverQuest, I gave up on MMORPGs because they required too much work for too little entertainment. CoH brought me back, largely because I can log on for as little as twenty minutes and still *do* something in the game. Admittedly, at the moment there's little to do other than fight villains. However, most of the non-combat activity in other MMORPGs has, in my experience, just been a tedious and time-consuming way to improve your fighting ability. Rather than spend hour after hour of game time searching the mountains to mine the rocks to gather the ore to smelt the metal to forge the sword so you can fight bad guys more effectively, isn't it more fun to just go out and fight the bad guys without all the rigmarole? It certainly is for my $14.95 a month.

As other reviewers have mentioned, character creation is simple and visually stunning. (I do miss capes and wings, but hopefully they'll be available once the developers find a good way to render 20 of them onscreen without destroying frame rates.) The different power sets really *feel* different, and a diverse team of heroes will fill the screen with distinct and appealing special effects.

The controls are very simple and easily customizable as long as you read the manual. New content is already planned within the next month, and there will be more to come in the months ahead (including consensual hero-vs-villan PvP in 2005, for those that enjoy that sort of thing). There's no camping, very little kill-stealing, and (in my experience) more willingness to role-play for its own sake than I've seen in other MMOs. And the "sidekick" system is a *brilliant* addition for letting casual players have fun with their hard-core buddies, regardless of the level difference.

Is the game perfect? No. Missions can get repetitive, but to me that's just additional incentive to gain in power so I can face new kinds of villains. The interface is occasionally glitchy, but I've never had a serious problem in this regard. And I'd love to have the option of sharing my "friends" list across all my characters on the same server.

But in all honesty, most of these complaints are just nit-picking. I've described CoH to my gaming friends as "Everquest, only (A) with superheroes and (B) with all the parts that [stink] removed." If you're at all interested in the superhero genre, and are willing to part with the purchase price, I think you'll be playing this game long after your free month has passed.

Very excellent game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: June 22, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I have been playing this game for over a month now and am enjoying every minute of it. It may seem tedious if you play alone or don't roleplay, but if you play with friends and/or roleplay your character it can be a lot of fun.

To address all the complaints about it having a monthly fee... its an MMORPG... they have monthly fees... stop whining... They continue to support the game and you pay them money so they can do that and keep the servers up... fair trade... There's even a big content addition coming soon called "through the looking glass". Will add new zones, the ability to change your characters appearence a bit in game, fixes, some new villians and other things I'm not even going to get into. You do not have to be rich to afford the monthly fee.. I made MORE than enough to cover it, pay rent, and eat with my crappy university job. If you still don't want to pay a small fee.. don't buy the game...

The graphics card problems I do not have in my Radeon 9700 computer so I really don't know what to say about that.

In conclusion do make sure you meet the requirements on the game. Once your in the game RP and team up... don't just make a character with random letters in his name (saw two of those today) and actually have a story behind your character... Most of all if you enjoy Super Hero mythos (as I do) you will most likely enjoy this game.

Fun, Fun, Fun!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: July 09, 2004
Author: Amazon User

6/22/05 UPDATE - I've now been playing this game for a year, and that is incredible. Usually, I play a computer game for a couple of weeks, then lose interest and that's it for months. Not this one! The interaction with other players is fun and upbeat, the game developers keep updating with gameplay improvements, new character enhancements and story improvements, and keeping it all fresh. This one is definitely a keeper. The company is very responsive to players' input and have made a lot of changes that address specific requests. Great job, Cryptic! You even get a free monthly comic book in the mail that comes along with your account, now being produced by long-time comic book writers and artists. Excellent! Well done, Cryptic. Looking forward to continuing to enjoy this awesome game for a long time to come. Now, if I can only resist City of Villains.....

ORIGINAL REVIEW: I have resisted getting sucked into a MMORPG for years. I resisted Everquest even though ALL (and I do mean, all) of my friends were playing it. "C'mon... everyone's doing it!"... Before that, I resisted Ultima Online. But I couldn't resist City of Heroes. I was just gonna play on my boyfriend's game for a second, just to check it out.... and then.... Now I'm hooked! It's loads of good, clean fun. You feel good about beating up the bad guy and saving the poor victims. I have literally spent hours creating just the right character and enjoyed every minute of it. It is just challenging enough to keep me interested without making me frustrated. As with any game, there are always improvements and additions that could be made. But the company seems very responsive to the players and the first update addressed a lot of suggestions and complaints. I think this game is a real winner, extremely well crafted to begin with and improving all the time! Can't wait to see what they'll give us next....

Best MMoRPG of 2004

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 10 / 14
Date: October 10, 2004
Author: Amazon User

For me the two biggest MMoRPG games that came out recently have been Star Wars Galaxies and City of Heroes. I think that in a battle between the two, COH is a clear winner.

NCSoft has released a nearly bug free game, and they have been responsive to what few issues that did arise from its launch and first two patches.

The key to enjoying this game, in my opinion, is to solo the early levels (1-10) and then to team up for middle levels (11 - 20, and then to alternate between the two in later levels.

I have also found that the community (Liberty server) is far better then what I have experienced in other MMoRPGs. It is easy to find a group of people to team up with, and most people are always willing to help out when needed.

Overall this is an exceptional game, well worth the cost and monthly fee.

If you are interested in this game, or others that I am currently playing, contact me at : www.thefist.org/yabbse This is a forum dedicated to computer gaming and other interests.

Paragon City needs you!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 12
Date: September 02, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I've played a number of MMORPG's before I got introduced to this one, particularly Dark Age of Camelot and Everquest. This one is unlike any MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game, for those who don't know) that has come before. Most other MMORPGs are of two varieties - Sci/Fi and Sword/Sorcery. This one is all about becoming a superhero, straight out of the comics. It is set within Paragon City, a huge unrban area with stunning architecture, ranging from the ultra-modern and clean areas to gritty industrial zones, with everything in between.

After installing the game and starting it up, your first job is to create your character. First, you must choose an Archetype, which basically is similar to choosing a Class in other games. The basic archetypes range from the Blasters, who are all about dealing massive amounts of damage from long range, to the Tankers and Scrappers, who like to show they can deal out damage up close while taking the best shots from the bad guys, to the Controllers, who, instead of directly damaging enemies, instead perform crowd control functions and charm enemies and make them turn against their friends.

Next, one must choose the types and sorts of powers they will use through the game, with choices ranging from fire balls to ice blasts to martial-arts moves, and many more. Of course, some Archetypes are best suited for certain powers more than others, but the in-game help screens provide nice explanation of what types of powers are best.

After that, the fun really begins as you get to choose your character's appearance. Customization choices are incredibly massive, dwarfing any other game's. Skin color, costume color, accents, utility belts, big swords, armor, robot arms, ammunition belts, you name it, and it's probably there (except for capes, but I hear they come later). Once a character levels up, they will even be able to have more than one costume to choose from! Those who really go for role-playing will also have the option to write a short origin for their hero, and create a battle cry for themselves, should they be so inclined.

After doing all this, it is time to choose a server (they are all the same) and get busy! First, you are put through a tutorial level that allows you to learn how the game works with minimal risk to your character. You will gain enough experience in this to get your first level-up and see how your characters powers and abilities grow as your levels increase.

Finally, it is time to get into the main city and get to work! It is pretty easy to solo in this game, especially at the low levels. You can either roam randomly around looking for thugs to kill (they aren't hard to find), or else seek out contacts and obtain missions. Missions are basically tasks involving clearing out buildings of bad guys, looking for a particular enemy to kill, recovering vital information from an enemy-infested computer lab, etc. They are nice and straightforward. A nice feature of the game is that it makes use of "instanced" buildings for indoor missions, which basically means that you don't have to worry about sharing your mission environment with any competitors trying to kill your enemy and accomplish your goals before you do. Definitely an improvement to those who are familiar with "camp-stealing" which is so prevalent in some other MMORPGs.

Another nice change in this game is the fact that hunting for armor and other items to increase your strength is gone. Instead, you can either find or purchase a variety of "enhancements", allowing you to buff up your powers for a few levels. Enhancements are readily available for purchase, plus they drop off enemies all the time, so getting them isn't hard at all. Also, you can get ahold of "Inspirations", which also drop from enemies or can be bought. Inspirations can be saved and used as needed, and they range from self-healing, to temporary damage-increasing buffs, to accuracy increases, etc. Some Inspirations even allow you to bring yourself back to life if you should be killed in action, though you need to use caution when doing this so you don't get killed again immediately by a nearby enemy.

Death penalties in this game are not too harsh at all. You lose a little bit of experience, and that is it. If you don't have the proper Inspiration, or else no one is around to help you, you can choose to be taken to a hospital, where you can recuperate in safetly and go out to the mean streets again.

Getting around Paragon City is a breeze. The city is divided into a number of different zones of varying levels of difficulty. You can choose to travel between the different zones on foot if you want, but there is a cool system of Trams with a stop in each zone which allows for instantaneous travel from one end of town to the other. So, the days of long travel times to get where you want to go are over with.

There's a lot more to the game than what I have put here. There are in-game help screens and a pretty good manual that helps you figure things out. Of course, there are also all kinds of web sites out there where you can get questions answered as well.

Overall, this game is a great way to get on the Internet and have fun with friends, or make new friends, as you don your costume and protect Paragon City from the forces of evil. The first few months of this game have been smooth sailing, and if things keep on like they are, the future of City of Heroes is bright indeed. It is missing the Player-vs-Player element that some gamers really enjoy, but that will change once City of Villians is released in 2005. Enjoy!!

5 Months Later...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 10
Date: October 21, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I've been playing this game for over 5 months now. I jsut can't get enough of it. Yes it can be that addicting. The level of graphics is quite good. There is a lot of the "Oh Wow!" factor, look how they did that! or my thats pretty. the game play is good, the interface works well and new content is being added every 3 months or so. The Developers are responsive to the players in the games online forums. This is a GOOD game.

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