City of Heroes
Contemporary Crimefighting Mayhem by Cryptic Studios
Demonstrating my typical sense for all things current, cutting edge and topical, while everyone else is off to <google>Warhammer Online</google>, for me, its back to City of Villains. It's a game I've played a fair bit before, and one of those old flames with whom I parted amicably. It did get a bit grindey, I must admit, but that was some time ago, and they've apparently smooth the mid-game level curve a bit since my last sojourn. I think much of the troubles of last time was me going at it in slightly the wrong frame of mind too....
Just as the ugly spectre of relentless grinding for xp begins to raise it's head in earnest in City of Villains, a Winter Event! Huzzah! I must admit I wasn't expecting the levels to slow down quite as suddenly as they appear to have done in the Rogue Isles, despite anecdotal evidence to support it all. I'm now level 27, and am perhaps playing two sessions a week, and things really do seem to be Getting Serious now, and CoX seems, to me at least, to be very much an MMO of The Old School. Perhaps it...
Sirens' Call is something of an education, I've decided. Well, putting it another way, I went to Siren's Call, and got schooled, big-time. My previous impressions of PvP in City of Various were largely based on tentative and furtive forays into Bloody Bay, a rather quiet zone much of the time, and despite it becoming a bit of a second home for my Stalker, I'd only actually been in a fight there once, and that by prior appointment. Actually stumbling across, and ambushing, a roving Superhero is a generally unlikely proposition, and in the end I just took to...
Last week saw all sorts of fun and games, as under the direction of the Silver Mantis, a highly-placed Arachnos nutcase, our highly ambitious and mostly competent gang of Supervillains were sent on caper after caper, all with the express and cumulative effect of throwing a whole toolbox of spanners into the workings of the Sky Raiders. This airborne company of guns for hire had clearly trodden on the wrong toes in the largely Arachnos dominated Rogue Isles, and have elaborate plans to become far too powerful for their own good. These plans mostly consist of a very optimistic...
After a few weeks of general purpose low-grade villainy, () and almost universal obsession with cake...(), our little gang of Villains, so recently thwarted in our attempts to usher in an age of demon-fueled apocalypse, have at last got a new gig! This comes in the form of the second of five Strike Force chained story missions, The Pirates of the Sky. A tricky thing to sort out, as it isn't just a case of strolling up to the usual NPC and going 'HAI! I CAN HAZ LOLCATACLYSM?', as you do. No, for this one, you need a Mission...
What did you do for Halloween, Van Hemlock? Well! I'm glad you asked! Let's get the annual 'I don't see why you Americans make such a fuss' rant out of the way early and get straight to the scooped out pumpkins, and free stuff, shall we? Only two real games on the go this year, City of Villains and Guild Wars, and both did very well. Second Life has no centralised community as such, and no 'GM Events' to speak of, so nothing special there really. City Of Villains entered into the spirit of the thing by adding the...
Previously, on Van Hemlock... The city of Cap Au Diable hides a dark secret. Beneath its brutally progressive streets, and responsible for it's wealth of cheap clean and abundant electricity, lies the volcanic prison of the demon Bat'Zul. Bound by the prayers and powers of a Jesuit priest, Padre Henri, the demon has lain dormant since the 18th century, until in recent years, the geothermal power plant experiments of Dr Aeon have begun to inadvertently weaken the demons bonds. Three factions have become aware of the demon, and the staggering power it represents. The demon's bonds are weakening, and...
I don't know what it is about self-imposed episodic content rationing that seems to work for me, but work it does. Regular readers will know about the Tuesday N00b Club, which basically started out as an attempt to bring some kind of structure to my Guild Wars gaming. Instead of just going mental and ploughing into the game five-plus hours a night, every night until I break something, why not ration it out a bit? This makes my Tuesday nights a thing to look forward to - in some ways a bit like going to an evening class, or...
Some top-notch villainy last night, with the Cabal of Evil taking on a number of assorted missions, and completing them with various success. Aside from the accompanying text-box descriptions though, there doesn't tend to be an awful lot to distinguish one from the next. Sometimes it'll be against the Legacy Chain, a kind of Paladin-type dogooding mystical order, or the Circle of Thorns, evil Wizard types, but mostly I seem to be beating up a huge amount of Longbow, Paragon City's combined Police and Army, and masses of fellow Arachnos minions. The instanced mission maps, while possibly different, do...
For a game which has no actual money to speak of, I seem to be getting an inordinate amount of enjoyment out of The Black Market in City of Villains over the last few weeks, and the thing is swiftly becoming a significant sub-game in it's own right, to be honest. As with much in my gaming life, this new aspect of CoV stemmed largely from personal irritation.
The economy of CoV is quite an unusual place really. Its a game where there is no gear, as such, and all The Numbers tend to automatically scale as you level. An...
I must admit to having been a bit of a tease of late, specifically with the whole Free Trial thing. Free, no consequences, online gaming is all very nice, but I suppose the point of it all is to actually test drive the thing with a view to paying somebody to then be able to play the thing properly. With that in mind, I've signed up with City of Heroes. Auto Assault is er...gone and Dungeons and Dragons Online didn't quite click with me as much as the rampaging superhero thing, although is definitely worth a closer look in the...