(Wow two blog posts within two days, I'm setting a record!)
Okay, so this post is the first of what I'm going to call "Quarterly Reviews" (at least until I think of something better). In each of these segments, I'm going to talk about something of interest me and try and promote it to you guys (kind of a "Professor's Entertainment Recommendations Column", but that name is far too long).
This first post features a game I've been playing for the past few days: City of Heroes. City of Heroes (CoH) is a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) similar to World of Warcraft (WoW). Set in the fictional town of "Paragon City", players create superheroes and team up with other players to fight bad guys and complete "missions". The aptly titled "City of Villians" (CoV) game adds to the experience by allowing characters to create villians instead, and also introduced player versus player combat areas where heroes can duke it out against villians.
The edition I purchased - "City of Heroes: Architect Edition" (~$20) includes both CoH/CoV in addition to a new "Architect Mode" that allows players to create their own missions within the game and play them with others. I've not played the game *that* long, but I've already fallen in love with it. I'm not really much of a fantasy person, but I enjoyed playing a MMO like WoW with some of my friends. Now that I've gotten people into CoH, I definitely prefer it as Comic books/Science Fiction is more up my alley. The character creation in this game is SO much more in depth than any other online game I've played. Be prepared to spend like an hour picking out your Hero's powers and designing his costume.
Not only is the character creation so much better than other games, but the gameplay itself has many advantages over other games like Everquest and WoW. For instance, back when I was playing WoW, if I didn't keep up with the fast-paced leveling of my friends, I'd get left behind and stuck trying to find random groups to quest with. In CoH, there is a "sidekicking" feature that allows higher level players to temporary raise a lower character's level while that character is within a certain distance, allowing lower characters to still be able to fight at the same pace with higher characters. Instead of waiting until level 30/40 to get a faster form of transportation (i.e. "mounts" in WoW), CoH has "pool powers", which include all sorts of cool powers like transportation, super speed, and flying -- which are available at level 14 to a hero.
There is a monthly fee ($15) to play the game, but the Architect Edition I picked up includes the first month with it, which makes it great for trying the game out. And if you don't want to take that risk with it, go to http://www.cityofheroes.com and sign up for the free 14 day demo. Make a hero on the "Justice" server and send me a message ("Scramjet") and tell me you listen to the podcast -- I'll team up with ya sometime. And if you create a villian, also let me know so I can come hunt you down and "bring you to justice".
- Chris
