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 City of Heroes / City of Villains Overview & Key Features
City of Heroes / City of Villians are celebrating it's 4th Year anniversary.
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City of Heroes® is the super powered MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Play Game), set in an online world where you and thousands of other players take on the roles of comic book heroes fighting to save Paragon City from a rising tide of crime and the plots of nefarious super villains.
Soar high above towering cityscapes, battle gangs of thugs in dank underground lairs, and continue your own ongoing quest for justice on the streets, freeways and back-alleys of this modern metropolis.
· Create, Develop and Customise Your Own Hero: Choose from hundreds of different powers and design your own unique costume.
· Explore the City: Travel the skyscrapers, slums, sewers and streets of Paragon City
· Live the Story: Uncover the hidden secrets of your foes, foil the schemes of criminal masterminds and save the city, the world and even the universe!
· Form Your Own Super group of Heroes:
Band together with other players to fight evil and become the premier hero group in the city!
 City of Villains™ is the standalone sequel to critically acclaimed MMORPG City of Heroes®. Using a staggering assortment of new powers, abilities, and customisation options, players can now experience sinister game play from the other side of the mask. With diabolical craft and guile, players forge new super-powered villain characters in an attempt to dominate the world.
Heroes and authorities of Paragon City will do all in their power to thwart these evil plans of destruction, requiring a supreme effort for true domination.
· Become an infamous villain: Players can advance from low level thugs to eventually fulfil their destiny as legendary arch-criminals.
· Design and build infinitely customisable fortresses of evil: Players repel intruders with vicious weaponry and devastating defenses.
· Heroes and villains collide: Now players can choose to take on the most challenging rivals of all time…each other!
· Features a huge variety of villain missions: Play your part in heists, kidnappings, infiltrations, and more!
· Incredible villain variety: New archetypes, powers, villain costumes, and the deadly new villain group Arachnos!
ISSUE 12: MIDNIGHT HOUR – OVERVIEW & KEY FEATURES
The clandestine organization of mystics, scholars and mages, known only as the Midnight Squad, seeks to rebuild its numbers since the devastating assault of the Rikti Invasion. The Midnighter's hold a secret that could bring the alien assault to an end, but without the help of the Heroes of Paragon City™ it will remain Lost forever.
VILLAIN EPIC ARCHETYPES
Infiltrate the Arachnos organization from within! Upon reaching level 50, Villains unlock two new Epic Archetypes; Wolf Spiders and Blood Widows. They have their own unique storyline and missions, power combinations and costume sets. Branching powersets allow the Wolf Spider to specialize as either a Bane Spider or Crab Spider and the Blood Widow chooses from the Fortunata and Night Widow branches. Each brings with it unique costumes for your Arachnos duties, as well as your newfound role as a Destined One.
POWERSET PROLIFERATION
Using his newly built Resonance Manipulator, the Villain scientist known as Dr. Brainstorm™ has discovered a way to alter the energy strands which connect every Hero and Villain to their powers. This discovery has not only opened the door to new powers for his fellow Villains in the Rogue Isles™, but has also done the same for the Heroes of Paragon City ™! Specifically, new characters of almost every Hero and Villain archetype gain access to an additional primary and secondary powerset that they didn’t have access to previously. Details to come!
HOLLOWS ZONE “GAMEPLAY MAKEOVER”
Significant changes have been made to the Hollows zone to make it more fun! NPC encounters have been rebalanced, including new spawns, new villain groups, mission door improvements, and a mobile hospital has been added to the entrance of the zone. Additionally, Meg Mason, a new contact, has been added to give out repeatable missions.
MAJOR GAMEPLAY IMPROVEMENTS
· Eight configurable new power trays let players customize their User Interface by placing them anywhere on the screen.
· Contact display redesign: Contacts are now listed separately as Active and Inactive, and players can sort contacts by a range of criteria including Name, Zone, and Level Range.
· Inspiration Conversion: Right click an inspiration to convert three of that kind into any one inspiration of another kind.
· Level Up Boost: Upon reaching enough XP to level up (at all levels), one of each type of large inspiration is immediately cast upon your character, and health and endurance bars are immediately filled.
· Chat improvements: Right click on character names in chat window to ignore, add to friends list, invite to team, etc. Drag any item (enhancement, inspiration, salvage, etc.) into the chat window so that you and others can click a hotlink to view the complete info box.
· More Real Numbers: Players can now display stats on powers before they choose them enabling more informed power selection and new temporary powers allow players to display enemy stats.
The Student Zone Review
City of Heroes / City of Villains
I’m sure at some point we’ve all wondered how wonderful our lives would be if we had super powers. Well, now you can experience the life of a superhero (or super villain) in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game “City of Heroes / City of Villains”.
City of Heroes starts by letting you create your very own super character, ready to take on the mantle of defender of Paragon City. The great character creation process gives you a huge choice of looks for your character; you can try and create a replica of your favorite superhero, or go crazy and make something unique and original.
You also have the choice of five separate superhero archetypes during the character creation process – Blaster, Controller, Defender, Scrapper and Tanker. The Blaster is a ranged fighter, specializing in dealing a ton of damage from a distance, though this offsets a weaker melee side. The Controller naturally has control over enemies, with the power to make them attack each other, or freeze solid. They need defence from other heroes, though. The Defender’s main power is the ability to help others by buffing them, aiding the offensive effort, but can hold their own in a fight. The Scrapper is a hardcore melee fighter, paid for by a lack of long distance attacks – one for a player who likes to think with their fists. Finally, the Tanker’s main role is to absorb the brunt of the attacks to a team, whilst using some melee skills.
Once you have an archetype, you can choose how your hero got their powers – was it Science, Mutation, Magic, Technology, or Naturally? Each origin gives different benefits to your hero, and you can use this to either give your character a plausible back story or just have them for the fun of it.
After creating your character, you get a short tutorial, giving a brief overview of all the commands available to you. The control mechanism is fairly intuitive, although some things gave me hassle – but the in game help is always available, and it’s easy to look up a command. The tutorial covers such useful topics as moving from A to B, using waypoints, beating up thugs and gaining enhancements for your character.
The combat system is easy to use, consisting of a bar in which your powers are placed. You press the numeric key corresponding to the power, and it uses it against the foe. The powers usually look very impressive, which makes the combats fun, and makes you feel like your character is actually super. Criminals can be found in context; thugs hanging around, mugging innocent bystanders, for example. Cleaning up the streets gives you a sense of real achievement.
Because this is an MMORPG, you can also play with other superheroes, in groups of up to eight players. Bringing a variety of heroes to the party means they can use their diverse skills to help each other through the story missions, although this method of play isn’t forced – it’s just as feasible to solo your way through a mission (though it does make it harder).
Levelling can be swift, though obviously it slows down as you reach the later levels. Each new level brings new benefits, like new superpowers, and larger amounts of health and endurance. Health is lost by taking damage in fights, and when that reaches zero, you can either wait to be resurrected by a fellow hero, or be transported to the nearest hospital. Endurance is the meter by which you can power your super skills, and it is drained each time you use a skill. All characters have a rest skill, though, that allows them to regain both health and endurance.
Gameplay is unfortunately a bit repetitive, though that is somewhat to be expected for a game like this – developers cannot just generate structured content out of the air at the moment, so you’re stuck with the several mission types available. This is probably one of the game’s few weak points, but it is being addressed by new content packs, breathing new life into the game. Also, the graphics are not the best around, but they’re far from terrible, and the rest of the game is so immersive as to draw your attention away from its faults.
City of Villains is in much the same vein as City of Heroes. Instead of fighting for the forces of good, you’re trying to undermine them at every turn, and become more evil and powerful. Missions are a reflection of CoH’s missions – instead of rescuing someone, you have to kidnap them, for example. There are also five distinct classes for characters, which mirror their CoH counterparts somewhat.
Unfortunately I did not play as much of the game as I wanted to, but from what I saw I can see that a lot of thought and effort has been put into both these games, and the overall game is great to play, evidenced by the large number of players playing the game today.
Reviewed by Max Dymond @ The Student Zone
Provided by The Student Zone (United Kingdom) |
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