There’s a new MMO sub-forum over on the Penny Arcade forums. One of the threads derailed into a discussion about City of Heroes and why it sucks or doesn’t suck or something. I wasn’t really sure. In any case, it prompted me to think about why City of Villains didn’t hold my interest for very long. (I have only played CoV, but from what I understand, it’s pretty much the same as CoH only with villains and different classes.)
I loaded the game up on my new computer and played for a few hours the last couple of nights. I don’t have much time, but here’s a quick run down of things that I remember from playing before, and what I rediscovered recently:
- Character creation is still awesome.
- Even though character creation is awesome, it is still not as customizable as I would like. (I can’t make a guy that wears a trench coat and has robotic arms for example)
- There are entirely too many costume options that involve skulls, bones, and chains or barbed wire.
- Performance is still terrible for the graphics quality.
- The user interface is clunky. (This seems to be an issue with many MMO games)
- Super jump is really fun.
- I fight way too many snakes.
- In fact, I fight way too many of the same thing over and over again in the same locations. (Didn’t I just clean out this warehouse? Should I even bother doing it again?)
And actually, this last part is probably my main issue with the game. The game feels incredibly repetitive. Most of the missions seemed to be slight variations on “Go to the warehouse and kill everything inside.”
You may ask how this is different from World of Warcraft or any other MMO. They have quests to go kill tons of stuff, and you end up killing stuff over and over.
I’m not quite sure what the difference is. City of Villains just feels different. Maybe it’s because WoW has larger and more immersive environments including instances instead of smaller, cramped instances. Maybe it’s because CoV’s instances are basically all random rooms and hallways. Maybe it’s the lack of loot that bothers me, or that there are no trade skills or much else to do besides kill guys. Perhaps it is simply because CoV isn’t as polished as other games. I will have to think about it some more.
Tags: city of heroes, mmo games, world of warcraft