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A massively multiplayer game that's actually fun! (updated!)

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 90 / 101
Date: May 05, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Update: I've now been playing for almost a month. I have one character (Empathy/Radiation Defender) now up to level 20, and a Fire/Fire Blaster at Level 14. The game continues to be at least as much fun as it was in the beginning. Went on my first Task Force mission over the weekend, got to level 20, took Group Fly as the new power at that level which is a lot of fun, etc. I don't quite get what all these no-star reviews are trying to say; this is the best computer game I've ever played. Beyond the first 7 levels or so, the real fun comes in grouping with other players to take on higher level missions and all of the social interaction that happens within a good group. Grouping is very easy and there's no problem finding people to group with even when you don't know anyone. Pretty soon your /friends list will be full.

--

I pretty much ignored this title until recently. I mean, a game where you get to play a "superhero". How childish. How stupid.

How wrong.

After seeing the incredible buzz that this game has gotten in the week or two since release, I actually looked into it and decided to give it a try based on all the positive comments and reviews.

My previous MMOG experience has been limited to a couple failed attempts to get interested in EverQuest (a humorless torture mechanism that will suck the very living soul from your body as it crushes your will to live and tries to push you over the edge toward becoming a homacidal maniac) which I couldn't really get into for some reason.

But City of Heroes sounded like it might be good as a diversion for a while and, sure enough, even after a relatively short period of play I find I'm having as much fun with this as with any computer game I've played.

There are a lot of good things to say about this game, but for me the thing that ultimately matters is that it's actually *fun* to play rather than just being an experience grind to gain ever more levels. Right from the beginning when you find out you can jump high enough to soar over fences, trucks, walls, etc. (though not buildings with a single bound, at least not until later in the game) it's fun running around beating up bad guys, doing simple missions, etc.

The character customization capability is one of the standouts in this game. I don't think I've yet seen two players that were similar enough to each other that you could confuse them.

The urban terrain works very well (and is a nice change from dungeons and hobbits). The skills and character development options are many and varied, making replay or multiple-character play rewarding. And then there's flying.

I haven't gotten to a high enough level yet to get the ability to fly, but you have only to read the descriptions of other players to see that they've managed to capture one of man's oldest desires in a convincing way.

Even if you're not a superhero fan (and I certainly wouldn't have described myself that way) you may find that all that changes once *you* get to be the superhero.

G.

City of Heroes: Fun For a Month

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 75 / 103
Date: June 28, 2004
Author: Amazon User

City of Heroes is perhaps one of the greatest massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) you'll ever play - for the first week or two anyway. After this brief introduction in online gaming bliss, you'll probably keep playing, mostly for your buddies you meet online or with the "supergroup" of super heroes, battling increasingly tougher groups of bad guys. That may last another week or two. After this period of time, which lasts generally around a month (give or take), you finally realize that, as it stands currently, City of Heroes is inherently boring and you decide to cancel your subscription.

This rollercoaster ride begins after you purchase the game at the local store or just pick up a CD key online through NCsoft's own website. After installation and a little bit of patching, you get to character creation - frankly perhaps the coolest character creation setup, not just in online games, but also in computer game history. Generally, you can generate any kind of superhero or super heroine, granted with some exceptions (seriously overweight heroes are not possible). Sure, there could probably be a few more costume and hairstyles, but you can spend way too much time creating your character. Thankfully the creators at Cryptic allow you to have a bunch of characters per server, so you can really mess around with a huge variety of character types.

The fact that the development of each character represents a lot of time and effort cynically explains the reason why Cryptic has allowed so much leeway in the number of character per server. Each superhero gains experience through the defeat of enemies and completing missions assigned by various agents - when you get enough experience, you visit the local big-time superhero and level up. Superhero abilities split into different primary and secondary power disciplines, like scrappers, blasters, tankers and controllers. Depending on the level gained, you get an extra ability, or power pool slot, or enhancement for any particular power.

Generally the passage of advancing from level to level is somewhat negatively referred to as "grinding" - in City of Heroes, grinding above level 20 can be quite long. I mean, really long - so long the game funnels you into grouping just to gain meaningful experience points. Moreover, because there isn't a lot of room to experiment with which powers work best with what, you could make it to a high level and have no idea where you're going with the character. You'd rather not delete the hero since you spent so much time with it; you'd rather just create a new one.

The other thing you gain while doing missions or good deeds are influence points - the game's monetary system - and inspirations, which are instant enhancements that last for a short period. You can use influence points to purchase enhancements or inspirations from a variety of NPCs and vendors around the city zones, consistently upgrading your powers as you go along.

Missions boil down to going to a certain interior location and defeating a bunch of enemies or finding a bunch of enemies in a specific area of the city to defeat. That's it. In fact, you can really just sum up City of Heroes like that: run around and beat up an array of increasingly difficult foes. However, there's nothing of substance left. There is no accomplishment that you really did something. Run through Perez Park and defeat just oodles of bad guys - they'll just pop back in a few minutes anyway.

Sure, you team up with your friends, enjoy the rather excellently balanced and varied combat system, form impromptu groups in the most dangerous areas of town, run around and help the innocent civilian on the street, and generally act silly with the millionth iteration of your favorite superhero, but right now there is nothing else to propel you. You get an extra enhancement at this level, one extra power the next. The bad guys get tougher as you branch out into different areas of the city. Big deal.

On the plus side, the manual is quite descriptive and helpful, the box comes with a city map, the graphics and sound effects are quite good, and there's always the potential for something new. However, right now there are no supervillains per se, no player-controlled bad guys, no complex mission types, and no real reason why you'd want to play this game beyond a month or two except maybe to have fun with some close friends. When will that get boring? Will a game with a monthly subscription still be worth it to you?

Still playing it

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 23 / 23
Date: June 30, 2004
Author: Amazon User

City of Heroes: If you didnt exactly like Everquest, or SWG, and are tired of L33T kids/adults broadcasting junk all game then City of Heroes is for you.

My History: I played Everquest for 2 year, was an early Beta tester for Planetside and played that for 3 months, was an early Beta tester for SWG and played that for 3 months. My typical playing style is 1-2 hrs 4-5 nights a week. 80% soloing, 20% grouping in game.

Character setup: I thought that SWG had a great character setup, but COH matched and exceeded it in many areas. There are at least 20 different aspects of your character to set up, with each aspect having many many options. In fact one of my few complaints about this game is having to scroll through the 80+ chest embelems when designing a character. This is also when you choose your characters power family. For those that say this game is just for soloing, I say you've never played some of the more defense or support based power sets, and if you are doing ok soloing, then with the support/defense type characters in your group you can defeat more baddies with less downtime.

People who dont like this game seem to be expecting Everquest: the Superhero version. You want loot? What sort of loot should your super hero be collecting? Did you see batman picking up armor from his latest defeat? No. What you get instead of drops, are more powers. So instead of the +18 sword that you hoped would drop you get XP that helps you to your next power say "Flame thrower" or if you were hoping for that +20 defense chainmail armor, may be you choose your next power to be defense based. Same difference, you just cant sell the powers on e-bay.

There is no commerece, or I should say none has come up of yet. The only drops are enhancements (which can be permanantly attached to your powers to boost them in some way) and inspirations which are consumable temporary heals and buffs. Let me say crafting, to me, holds no interest, commerce, to me, is actually annoying. I earn enough money in the game to buy the enhancements I need to strenghten my powers to keep playing and move into new areas, where there are new baddies to fight.

People who do not immerse themselves into the character they have created will not have fun, the game can come across as repetitive, but only if you dont enjoy the environment and the variety of bad guys that you fight (which is ever expanding)...

There is a monthly subscription cost (like every other MMO game)and NCSoft has already released the first big enhancement patch which includeded
1) allowing for multiple costumes on a single character
2) 2 new higher end zones
3) 5 new story archs (so more missions)
4) fixed many bugs including mission bugs

That is what your $14.95/month gets you (along with hours of gaming)

Also just for the record Ive experienced no server down time (and I only play weekends and evenings so peak times) and no major lag.

This game has occupied my time since April. I usually buy a new game every other month (so thats about $50 every 2 month, so instead I spend $30 for 2 months of City of Heroes... I think thats a reasonable price for the quality of this game.

Awesome

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 28 / 32
Date: May 06, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Bad Stuff:
1) Your character appearence does not change. I know a lot of people like getting new swords and helmets and whatnot in other games that make your character look different but this does not happen in COH, there is no equipment looting in this game.

2) No PvP. Ok, a lot of people consider that a plus but it's a shame to have human-player Super Heroes and no human-player Super Villians to go up against.

3) Pay-to-play. Worth mentioning, this is a Massively Multiplayer Online Game. You play with a great variety of people and that doesn't happen for free.

Good Stuff:

1) Character creation gives you a TON of options. In a week of playing on the busiest server I have not yet seen anyone that looks like me. Frankly, this makes your character more unique than in a typical game where all high-level players tend to have the same high-level gear and look very similar to each other. I've made several characters that I don't play just because the character generation is that cool (note: you need to uncheck the "color coordination" button if you want to play around with the colors of each piece of your suit).

2) There is a planned expansion called "City of Villians" which will apparently have optional PvP between heroes and villians, good news for me.

3) Combat is excellent, more more interactive than other MMOG's. In fact, there really is no "auto-attack". Every attack requires a press of a button, some special move you want to do and there's a big variety of special moves. You can't watch TV and fight at the same time in this game.

4) AI is excellent, honostly the best I've ever seen in a MMOG. I don't want to bore you with names and details, but let's just say that when you get to fight the group called "Tsoo" you'll understand that this is some vicious AI that someone put some time into.

5) Missions are fun and maps are excellent. Best "dungeons" I've seen in a MMOG since Everquest, with a lot of detail to them.

6) Instancing. I didn't think I'd like it, but it works well. When you enter an office building on a mission, that is your "instance" of it. Your group joins you there but another group doing the same mission in the same place will enter a seperate "instance" -- you have the building all to yourself. This makes for more sensible missions as your group can clear it from top to bottom, beat the boss and go get another mission without interruption or annoyance by random other people who show up.

7) Great variety of superpowers. Not only does nobody look like me, but nobody totally fights like me either. Blaster is one of 5 available archetypes, so there's lots of Blasters like me. But Blaster has 5 major powersets (pick 1), 5 minor powersets (pick 1) and I'm not sure how many pools of extra abilities (can pick up to 4) plus every individual power can be customized with "enhancement slots" (for an eventual total of 40) -- more damage, more range, more accuracy, etc, pick what works for you.

All in all, a surprisingly strong game.

A Huge Superhero MMORPG (* Beta Test Based Review *)

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 19 / 21
Date: April 21, 2004
Author: Amazon User

As one of those early adopter type folks who bought the pre-release, I was really looking forward to seeing what City of Heroes had to offer. With over a month of playing time in the beta test, this game goes far beyond my expectations.

The game world is based in Paragon City, home of hundreds of superheroes. It's a city recovering from the aftermath of an alien invasion. That threat and others from Underworld types, scientifically spawned undead, fascist organizations, odd cultist groups and super powered street gangs keep the city both dangerous and a fertile environment for many adventures.

The city is divided into almost a dozen areas for launch, each with its own level of difficulty and resident dangers. As your character progresses, you will move from zone to zone to encounter new missions and challenges.

Character creation is simple and actually fun. You choose from 5 different possible origins (mutant, science, et cetera) and then you choose from 5 hero types (blaster, scrapper, et cetera). Then your hero type gives you the option of two power sets to choose from - weapons, claws, spikes, power blasts, fire, ice - almost anything you've seen in comic books. Then comes the real fun part of character creation, designing your hero's costume. The options are greatly varied and amazing. You choose custom colors with plenty of extra little details to differentiate your character. In all the time I've been playing, no two original designs have been an exact match.

As you progress in level you are given the chance to add enhancements to your powers to add extra damage, greater range, better accuracy, longer duration and many more options. You also get to choose and add more powers from your power sets each with an attack or ability related to that particular set. Not too long into the game, you are also given the option of adding a third power set to your character. This again can make your character quite different from many others.

Previous reviews have mentioned glitches (including the black screen problem) that actually have already been solved. On-line customer support has been great with developers and testmasters monitoring the community boards live and messaging with players while servers were being upgraded and problems solved. I expect that this excellent support will be the rule and not the exception.

Heroes are also allowed to create supergroups and temporary teams to tackle harder missions and to work effectively against more difficult villains. You may see people come and go from a team only to be quickly replaced by another character. The different character types work extremely well together to create good, cohesive teams.

There are already rumors of expansions to different areas beyond Paragon City involving the aliens and possible magical zones. As with the comic book genre in general, no location is out of the realm of possibility. This game world seemingly has limitless opportunities for growth.

I will definitely jump into this MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game) with no reservations whatsoever. This is only the third MMORPG I've beta-tested and I can't wait for this one to go live. It will also be the first MMORPG that I've been willing to pay the monthly fee for. If you're a fan of comic books and the superhero genre, give this game a try. You'll be hooked right from the first character you create to completing your first mission.

Since I'm a radioactive mutant I give this game a full five thumbs up! ::grin::

Most excellent.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 17 / 18
Date: June 03, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I'll be the first one to admit that when I first heard COH came out I scoffed. "Superheroes," I stated in no uncertain terms, "will make for one terrible game", and I had dozens of legitimate reasons for hating the game without ever having played it.

Until I played it.

Oh man, is this game fun!

The extent of my MMORPG experience to date has been around a year of Star Wars Galaxies and random dabbling with Everquest. Everquest never caught my attention because of the idiotic camping of the "phat l3wts" and blatant elitism of the majority of the player base, who appear to be overweight nerds who sit in their basement excreting in socks and empty Mountain Dew bottles to allow them to snipe the Sword of Invincibility +300 out from under another nerd who is doing exactly the same thing a thousand miles away. Star Wars Galaxies involved much the same thing, except the macro system allowed you to avoid having to "go" (so to speak) in containment vessels because you could leave a macro running and get all the "phat l3wt" or levels you wanted without even having to sit at the computer. In addition, the technical support and patching on Star Wars Galaxies is atrocious, in some cases leaving horrible problems in the game and fixing minor issues, in other cases fixing a major issue and introducing dozens more bugs.

Not so with City of Heroes, which in addition to having excellent technical support staff, actually accomplishes things with its patches and exhibits the ability to fix issues without breaking ten other things that previously worked perfectly.

As for graphical quality, the game's graphics manage to be cartoony without being -too- cartoony, in keeping with their comic book world, and the effects on your superhero's attacks are brilliantly done.

In addition to everything else, NCSoft is planning to release an expansion next year called City of Villains that will introduce not only the ability to be a supervillain instead of a namby-pamby goody two shoes, but also apparently the missing element in COH, PvP combat.

In short, COH is everything that other MMORPGs like Everquest and Star Wars Galaxies lack: A dev staff that actually knows what it's doing, fun, and a total lack of camping for that ausome Brassiere of Invulnerability or whatever the item du jour happens to be. If you don't want to have to do a number two in a sock or write a long macro to have fun with your game, try out COH. You won't regret it.

My only beef with the game is the lack of capes, which will hopefully be addressed in a future megapatch.

Good game-up till now,

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 15 / 15
Date: June 21, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Expansion packs will decree if City of Heroes (CoH) is a good-average game ora a great MMORPG.

Overall, CoH is very well done:

1) Character Creation is the best I ever saw in an MMORPG. From sizing, to clothing, to colouring...you can choose everything possible.

Unfortunately you get no capes and the voices and sounds you make depend on your gender (there are three possible: male/female/huge male - like the Hulk).
Furthermore, once decided your character, you can't modify him during the game.

2)Classes: at first glance it seems you get only 5 classes, but each can be personalized in such a variety of ways that the end result is that there almost is no one character that is exactly as another.
The classes are:
a) Tanker: withstand mass damage while beating the begeeses out of baddies in melee. Ex: The Hulk.
b) Scrapper: Deal mass damage with a good degree of resistance to bblows. Ex. Wolverine.
c) Defender: heal your companions and use your powers to control and impair high numbers of enemies. Ex. Hmm... difficult... Mrs. Richards (?).
d) Blaster: deal high amount of ranged damage (fire, energy blasts etc). Ex. Cyclops
e) Controller: control your enemies minds, paralyze them, have them battle each other. Probably the most powerful character. Ex: Xavier.

3) Graphics: simply stated...awesome.

4) Gameplay. Very good, but it could be better. Here are pros and cons.
a) PROS:
-There are a zillion of quests. Everytime you quest, you can do it solo or with your group. When you go in quest zones, other players out of your team can't come busting in ruining the party.
-It's intrinsically cool for comic fans to play super heroes in a perfectly rendered comic book city.
-People walk the city, taling to each other, talking to you... each has a name, and there are literlly thousands of civilians. Cars move around. Everything is VERY realistic.
-Power effects are awesome, malking you want more.

b)CONS:
-Gameplay can become repetive after a while.
-Game seems to be missing some basic commands (like DAOCs "stick")
-No objects in the game. This can kill the interest of many players.
-No in game economics.
-No PVP. The expansion City of Villains should address that.

Bottom line.
Buy this game if:
1) You are a comic book fan.
2) You really love MMORPGs and have a lot of time on hand.
3) You like more character building than equipment hoarding.
4) If all your buddies play it (with friends you will have a BLAST).

Let me tell you this

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 14 / 14
Date: June 03, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Ive read many of these bad reviews and I couldn't agree less. This game is fun and the idea is great. I do not play other online MMRPG's because they take too much time and involve to much stuff. This is sleek easy and the combat is excellent. Teaming is great fun and required to progress far in the game. I have already made a lot of friends and formed a Super Group. All Archtypes are needed and serve their purpose. Ive found healers to be the most important yet the rarest of them which is a shame.

You can say it gets repetetive and levels are too similar but the promised June update starts to fix that where we are promised more baddies, more mission levels, private outdoor missions, missions where you can get cpatured and need rescued etc. Plus with City of Villains on the horizan PvP combat is on the way. The game is a great start much better than what I have read about Star Wars Galaxies, and I look for it to continue to evolve and grow into a great piece of entertainment for a long time.

If you want to be a superhero this is the game for you.

What to say, what to say..

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 20 / 25
Date: September 10, 2004
Author: Amazon User

In a nutshell - City of Heroes (CoH) is just a non-stop, addicting, blast.

.... But it stops there.

While first impressions are extremly good for this game, there is a few areas that REALLY need work.

One area is simple.
Grinding.

For those of you that are not familiar of what "Grinding" is, its basically doing the same thing over and over and over again till you FINALLY get a reward (which is usually a level) this game suffers from this horribibly.
The funny part is, the first 18 or so levels, its not a grind at all. The first 10 levels are really fun, and you level fast.. which makes the sense of character development and progress seem "realistic" and "worth it"

Then, you start hitting the 'teens' (lvl 13-19) which suddenly doesn't feel to good. You can still level in a reasonable amount of time (Compared to other RPG's, its not as bad), but you find yourself playing for about 3 hours then looking up at your EXP bar and thinking to yourself "Um, did that thing even move? I have been getting exp this whole time, right?"

Then you finally hit lvl 20. A true milestone. By this time, you have made a few friends, joined a supergroup, and have a good establiment of your role and your strengths and limits.

This is where the game *really* falls off.
When you hit the 20's, if your not a scrapper or blaster - forgot about reasonable leveling time. If your a support character (tanker, controller, defender) you will find yourself playing HOURS upon HOURS in groups and hardly getting a bar for all your work (you need 10 bars to level, so put that in perspective....) The EXP scaling in this game is horrendous.
And worst of all, when you group, your EXP gets scaled *back* so you make less - so if your a support character, you suddenly start looking at Blasters (an AT) to the answer in this game.

And sadly, it is.
Many people call this game "City of Blasters" for this reason. Blasters (and some scrappers) solo (not grouping) EXTREMLY well, because they do insane dmg and have a variety of "AoE" attacks (Area of Effect) that drop WHOLE mobs in 2 or 3 shots. You can continually do this over a long period of time and level.
The downside? Even with a Blaster that can kill everything in its path very fast and efficently, your still finding yourself playing hours just to level. And this is still in the 20's.

Once you hit the 30's, the EXP rate comes to a dead-stop. Nothing moves. You will play an hour and look at your bar and it literally shows no progress. This is a the worst feeling ever in this game.
At this point, you have 2 options:
1. Re-roll your character (basically, start over to try something different)
-or-
2. Be extremly dedicated and have the "I've made it this far, theres no turning back" mentality. And you better have this for the next 100's of hours your going to pour into this game just to reach 50 (which has no real reward).

Another problem remains in serious inbalance. Some characters just dont live up to what there suppose to do.
Like for instance, a Super Srength tanker. On paper, and reading the attacks - this sounds like an awesome powerset. It sounds really "Super Heroish" - and is an instant apeal for most comic book fans.

You start playing your Super Strength tanker and loving it, you level, go to groups, etc..etc..
Then all of sudden, you start to realise something. A scrapper brawl ( a default punch that every character has) does more dmg then your "Jab" power. You then see a scrapper do a "kick" and it does double the damage of your "haymaker" which is suppose to be some "devestationg attack that cripples foes".
The powers in this game don't scale at all. Some powers are made out to be this "awesome must have" power, then you end up getting it and sucks royally.
You find your "Super Srength" tanker to be everything but "Super Srength" - all his damage is medicore and subpar, and theres no point even continuing to play a character like this BECAUSE of the level grind.

So theres 2 problems right there that make this game a serious "lockdown of fun" and instead, it starts to become a job. A routine. MMO games have always had this problem, and I think its a scam on the developers part to keep players "addicted" and "comming back"
Sadly, its working well.

So if you dont mind pouring 100's of hours to make the grand goal of this game (to be the highest level) then this game is for you.

If you have some life and just want to play, this game is still for you, but you will find yourself "re-rolling" every 20 or levels because the game takes to long to advance from there on out.

On the plus side, the game is a blast. The powers have cool effects. The city and character models are really good. The customizable options make every character completly unique (in looks atleast, you will find alot of people with the same powers as you..sometimes the same primary AND secondary)
In issue 2, theres capes and "aura" effects, and more Artwork in missions. Theres a few "clubs" where players can socialise and dance.
Theres alot to this game to offer. Most people complain about "content" but trust me, theres enough content in here to get around. Theres missions, variety of villians to fight, variety of unique zones and hazard zones, and badges, and special task forces and trial missions, etc.

Good game, but has some fundemental flaws that NEED to be ironed-out.

Fun deviation from the Massive Online Game norm

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 14 / 15
Date: July 14, 2004
Author: Amazon User

It seems that Massively Multiplayer games are being released with such frequency now that its impossible to find one that stands out among them...until now. City of Heroes is a fun and quite different spin from the Massively Multiplayer Online formula.

The character creation system is undoubtedly the best character creation system in any massive online game, period. There are so many options to choose from that you may spend hours just creating the character alone! You can choose to have a 2 color scheme or customize the colors for each part of the costume. The face and mask choices are limited but the markings and design are usually what set the people apart from each other. You will see characters that are more than just 'inspired' by existing comic book heroes, but then you will also see very unique designs at the same time.

Despite the many options there are still limits and numbers...even when you think you have the most unique character on the server, you will probably run into several players with similar characters. In fact, one problem I noticed was that many players would blatantly copy the design from another character. I was one of the first characters on launch day on the 'Virtue' server, and received dozens of compliments on my ninja-esque character. Then within the week, I saw at least 8 or 9 people with virtually identical design to my character...everything from the color choices to the designs and clothing/accessory choices. So even in a game with thousands of possible combinations, you will still have lazy, uncreative people blatantly copying each other's designs...one of the game's lowest points.

As for the gameplay, it is fun for a while, but extremely linear. One of the best parts is that unlike other Massive Online Games, you get powers and abilities early on, and continue to get powers at 2 level intervals. Hence, every even-numbered level you will gain a new power of your choice. The subsequent odd-numbered levels will grant you 2 slots for enhancements, which significantly boost your powers, so even the power you get at your lowest level can become one of your most powerful by the later levels. You gain enhancements by defeating enemies, or buying them at special shops with 'Influence' which is the game's currency. You gain influence by defeating enemies and by rescuing citizens from thug attackers. You can even ban together with other heroes and form Super Groups.

The fighting is fun, and grouping is more fun in this game than in any other. It is fast paced, and you don't just sit there bored out of your mind after hitting one button, watching your character hit and miss. You actually control your character through the whole fight, using whatever powers and abilities the character has to fight off the villains. Unlike some other massive online games, namely EQ, you don't have to wait around for hours on end for that one significant enemy to pop up, then argue amongst yourselves about who gets the loot...there are always PLENTY of enemies around in huge groups.

As for 'quests', there are missions you can receive from contacts that you meet through your trainers. These missions are usually specifically tailored for you, and if you consistantly take missions aimed at one super-villain group, you will find that villains will begin ambushing you, and you will eventually fight the super-villain leader of the group. The amount of enemies in the mission varies depending on how many people you group with, usually increasing the difficulty and experience table. There are also massive missions equivalent to 'raids' called 'Task Force Missions' in which a team of heroes work together to fight a series of missions, usually resulting in a battle with one of the super-villains in the game. These Task Forces usually take over 3 hours.

If it sounds great so far, you might want to know about the game's biggest downfall: boring repetition. The game is unfortunately the equivalent of a 'level treadmill' in that there is nothing else in the game to do except fight, fight, fight and level. There is nothing else going for the game, and while the gameplay is alot of fun, and earning those new powers is always a good feeling, the game just becomes too repetetive. It is also too easy...the frighteningly fanatical players who play nearly 24/7 can reach the character's maximum level(40 at launch, increased since the patches) in probably under a week and a half. Once you reach the maximum level, there really is nothing else to do, unless you feel like starting a new character.

You may have noticed I left the 'RPG' part out of Massively Multiplayer Online Game. This is simply because CoH suffers from the same thing all Massive Online Games do...other players usually throw a tantrum and complain about roleplaying. My friends and I were kicked out of groups for roleplaying, which is simply ridiculous. Hence I do not hold the 'RPG' part of Massive Online Games to be fact, since the majority of players seem to think of it as evil. Try roleplaying your character around other players and you'll see what I mean.

Overall, the game is great and is a welcome change from the usual massive online game. Unfortunately for me, I was bored within one month and I cancelled my account. However, in that one month, I definitely got my money's worth. It is probably also the longest time I've spent on any Massive Online Game since I left the abysmal EQ 3 years ago. So, coming from someone who HATES Massive Online Games like this, I highly recommend this game if you are looking for a change. It is fun, at least for a while, and if you find that you truly like the game and want to stay on it, then that's great.

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