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Review: City of Villains
- Title: City of Villains
- Developer: Cryptic Studios
- Publisher: NCSoft
- System: PC
- Reviewer: Zonk
- Score: 8/10
One of the elements that set City of Heroes apart when it launched last year was the complex character creation system it shipped with. Even at launch it was possible to create an extremely elaborate costumed crime-fighter. Several body shapes and accessories made it possible to create anything from a hulking strongman to a sickeningly cute cat-girl. Since the game's launch new additions to the system, like capes and the ability to change the proportions of body areas, has only added to the system's versatility. All of these improvements and even more textures have been incorporated into the City of Villains character creator. New elements includes monstrous textures like wolf heads, scarred and disfigured facial textures, and even (for the pirate in all of us) hook hands and peg legs. The new elements are terrific and I've had numerous friends spend time at my PC just creating characters, with no interest in actually playing the game.
Once you're on the street and looking tough, you'll start getting a better feel for the role you chose during character creation. Characters fall into one of five archetypes, and although four of them are similar to what you'd find in City of Heroes they're all different enough to feel fresh. The Brute is the front-line melee fighter, but while CoH's Tank is meant to take damage the Brute is better at dealing it out. In fact, the more damage he takes and inflicts, the more powerful he becomes. This is actually a good general rule with the new archetypes: CoV characters really adhere to that "the best defense is a good offense" rule. Stalkers fill the high-damage output role, with the ability to cloak themselves for a critical first strike being their signature power. Dominators are all about controlling the battlefield, with powers designed for crowd control and damage over time. They also build up strength as they go, and unleash it in a flash of light with the 'Dominate' power. While Dominating they do more damage and their holds last longer, a powerful element in a boss fight. Corrupters are long-range and buff/debuff specialists, with the ability to suck an enemy dry of health very quickly once they've begun taking damage. The final archetype in City of Villains is entirely new, and extremely cackle-worthy. The Mastermind is a 'pet class', a character that can summon NPCs to do his bidding. There are four types of minions available: robots, ninjas, mercenaries, and zombies. While the lack of pirates is saddening, Masterminds also generally have access to buff/debuff powers of the Corrupter archetype. In a group they act as a sort of glue, fleshing out the ranks and ensuring that party members do their jobs more effectively. The decision not to use the same archetypes as in CoH was a great one, and more than any other element in the game helps to set the new apart from the old.
The job, of course, is crime. Doin' crime in the Rogue Isles requires connections, and CoV provides those to you out of the gate. While initially you'll just be doing jobs for some two-bit crook in an alley you'll eventually have several contacts, all of whom have tips on thuggery. A great improvement over the CoH mindset is "paper missions". Some contacts only give you missions occasionally; in order to convince them you're worth the effort you have to do some petty crimes first. You find these quick, in-and-out-grab-some-xp missions in the newspaper by checking out the articles. A mention of a valuable artifact sends you on a shopping spree, or an article about the release of a former cellmate has you looking for revenge. Overall the quality of the missions is higher than in City of Heroes, with the violent and petty nature of criminality making your actions a lot more sensical than in some CoH missions. A big complaint I have, though, is the lack of variety in the early missions. While City of Heroes offers you several mission tracks out of the gate based on what kind of character you are, CoV has only one track that very quickly gets old when playing new characters. This is somewhat alleviated by a great improvement: allowing missions to 'count' for more than one character. If you and another player have the same mission, completing it will prompt the other player with the message "Do you want this to count for your mission as well?" This way, groups don't have to be constantly redoing missions to ensure that everyone is on the same page. A very nice addition that partially offsets the repetitive nature of the early game.
Doing your thing alone is never all that fun, and CoV introduces some great new elements for supergroups. Bases are the big draw, allowing organizations of supers to finally have a place to hang their hats. They're as customizable as characters are, and have a host of functional elements as well. Bases link zones, act as hospitals, and allow access to the limited crafting added to the game. They are also mustering points for Player Vs. Player (PvP) action. While PvP has been in City of Heroes for a while in the form of combat Arenas, City of Villains introduces entire zones for PvP action. The results are mixed. Like with any game designed for Player Vs. Environment play (PvE), PvP added after the fact has forced some serious balance tweaks to powers and enhancements. Initial reports seem to indicate that PvP is a good deal of fun, and the clash of fully powered heroes and villains is just as explosive as you'd expect from the pages of comic-dom.
The comic look that Cryptic managed fairly well has been expanded and refined in the level design utilized in City of Villains. The Rogue Isles look terrible, in a good way. Even the first zone, Mercy Island, is a twisted rubble of burnt-out buildings and industrial sprawl. In sharp contrast to the cleanly orderliness of Paragon City, the Isles are dark, dirty, and filled with naughty people doing naughty things. Mission design is much improved over the launch of CoH, as well. CoV incorporates the lessons Cryptic has learned in the last year, and mission spaces are quirky and interesting. Some of them are downright jaw-dropping. My teammates and I spent a lot of time during a mission against the military Council agog about their massive base, which evoked James Bond, WWII bunkers, and Star Trek all at once. Additional minor graphical elements have also been added, like an extremely appealing water effect and sometimes-hilarious ragdoll physics.
Overall, minor elements seem to be what separates City of Villains from its goody-two-shoes neighbor. CoV is a dark and gritty version of Cryptic's first offering, for better or worse. If you quit City of Heroes months ago because you were tired of instance, instance, rinse, repeat, City of Villains may offer you some fleeting fun because of the new setting but probably won't hold your interest over time. On the other hand, if you enjoy City of Heroes you're just going to love City of Villains. The people are bad, the story is good, and there's just as much to see and do in the Isles as in Paragon City. What's more, if you are already subscribed to City of Heroes you can double your content without increasing your monthly fee. One subscription fee allows you access to both CoH and CoV. If you've always wanted to leap tall buildings or find the idea of a world-spanning empire of evil appealing, you can do a lot worse than the world NCSoft is hosting online right now.
Why not combine the two games into one? Let CoH characters play against CoV players. That would be pretty cool. I know this will never happen for many reasons but it's still a cool idea.
Bradley Holt
That's most unfortunate. I loved City of Heroes, was in the Beta for a week or two before it was released, and played it from release in several different classes. Mostly I'd reach a travel power, and group with friends from the Super Group, but ultimately what drove me to cancel was the lack of variety in quests. I value my game dollars, and full anticipated buying CoV even after cancelling my CoH account, but I probably won't now. I can't reason myself into buying a game that suffers the same lack of longevity as it's predecessor.
...until the two games are merged such that CoV and CoH are actually *in* the same city.
I pity the foo that isn't metasyntactic
It's a question, but as a gamer who only enjoys the game when it brings misery to others (hah!), how good is the PvP?
I am personally waiting for the game that takes into account the player's skill at the game itself instead of having XXX level will beat XXX-1 level, or YYY class will always defeat YZY class. It's idiotic and boring, and brings little to tactics in games of scale.
I am still watching for DarkFall Online as it seems to be the only game that will combine the elements of PvP I'm looking for, but still I'm curious... how does PvP in CoV stack up? I haven't played CoH since there was almost ZERO PvP, but now with the expansion I wonder how the combat system takes into account any type of player skill, or is it just another XXX and YYY game?
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
I briefly beta'd during the stress test. I was unimpressed.
The character creation process was the only truely interesting part of the game. The rest was utterly repetetive to the point of boredom. Kill all enemies of type X from location Y. Now do that for the next 10 missions. Now do the same thing with a different enemy type for another 10 missions.
The engine is also horrible. It requires a ridiculous amount of memory (You get tons of swapping on 1GB of RAM, so really you need 2GB), and has insanely low framerates for an engine that doesn't look much better than Quake 3 with greater viewing distances.
The boredom combined with painful performance turned me off of the game.
It is a pretty game with a nice theme, but that is just not enough. Oddly, the day they upgraded CoH with the CoV content, I could no longer run CoH smoothly on my Radeon 9800, and was faced with the choice of upgrading my computer to have a smooth (still mindnumbingly repetitive) play experience.
Granted as a gamer I might drop a couple hundred to bring my computer up to snuff for a game, but not this one.
I played CoH for 1.5 years and was in the CoV beta.
My main problem with CoV, and the reason I didn't end up subscribing, was that most missions had me fighting other villains. Sure, villains engage in some in-fighting, but in 16 levels of leveling up a Corruptor in beta, I fought non-villains in exactly three missions:
1.Fought guards in the tutorial mission.
2.Fought heroes in the first mission.
3.Fought guards in the bank heist mission.
Everything else was fighting the same old villains from CoH -- Hellions, Skulls, Lost, Family, etc. Sure, the mission text may say "kidnap" rather than "rescue", but I was only ever "kidnapping" someone from another villain group, and it sure felt like a rescue. Sure, I steal valuable items, but only from other villain groups -- never from museums, offices, mansions, and the like.
It just seemed like a massive waste of an opportunity. There was even a 40+ page thread on the CoV beta forums titled "CoV Just Not Villainous Enough"? That thread never saw a single developer response, and appeared not to impact the game in the slightest.
Which is fine, really, if the developers' definition of "villains" is just "heroes who don't get along". I'm sure lots of people will dig it because of the new archetypes, zones, powers, and PvP potential.
For my money, though, I expected something very different from a game titled City of Villains.
Early on that's true - you spend the first few levels fighting almost all villains. Later on, you run across a lot more good and neutral factions. Longbow and the like, as well as a lot of Elite Bosses which are basically hero builds. There's also the striking dockworkers on Sharkhead.
You must have been skipping content also, because there are some other early missions you fight heroes in - I think you're L6 or less when you go to defeat the sea witch, who is the first "hero" sort of enemy (Although she's only a boss at low levels, you encounter her again in the low 20s as the first actual "Hero" you fight (which is the CoV equivalent of an Archvillain)).
Once you get to the high teens and 20s you're also fighting Aeon corp, which is seedy but "legitimate" on the surface.
Not that your objection is wholly out of place. But I think it makes sense; villains fighting villains is going to draw a lot less hero/law enforcement heat than villains assaulting the innocent.
I too have Beta'd this game, and I was wholely unimpressed. I was among the many people to Beta and play CoH when it first came out. I had fun (before it got repetitive) but really yearned to be the villian. I remember shouting out in most of my groups "I want minions!" So, now that CoV beta is available, I'm finally getting my minions. But that's about it. CoV did not do a good job at making me feel like a villian. I just felt like a hero in a black costume, something I could have done in CoH. Everytime a member of the old CoH gangs would attack me, I was upset. "No! I'm a villian too! We should join forces to over throw the Patriot!" The game wouldn't even allow me to attack citizens. What kind of villian am I, if I can't pushish the people onece in a while? All is all, it's CoH with a different name, and a very small number of costume changes.
To conquer death, you only have to die