Thursday, April 15, 2004
How about that City of Heroes?
It get's an esteemed rating of "OK" from me so far. I find it hangs on me about once in thirty minutes (just the game, my machine still runs fine), but the sound also chops occasionally so it may be related to my drivers.
The combat is supposedly faster paced, but it's just that villains of your 'level' are just much weaker so you can take several at once. The abilities are geared to keep you in the fight, almost all heroes have healing of some kind. The fact that 'resting' has a cooldown timer is kinda pissy, but since I can use abilities to drain what I need from monsters, I don't use it at all incase I might actually need it.
My particular hero is a "Defender" which means I get abilities that centre around buffing, debuffing, healing and ranged combat. I have a sniper attack that almost 1-shots opponents of my 'level', a group debuff that sucks accuracy away from enemies, and a healing ability to regenerates all my groupies and supposedly drains endurance from the enemy I target it on (so far it drains a little more than a pixel).
Enemies are sometimes smart enough to attack me in groups, but often they use weak ranged attacks instead of forcing me into melee. They have a supernatural ability to jump and escape you when they are almost dead, which gets frustrating since normal street thug can out-jump a SUPERHERO, but whatever.
Quest are pointless "go here, kill that" at least at my level. I find they are unanimously boring, with the most entertaining part being how to dodge the packs of overpowered enemies that sometimes surround the entrances to the 'dungeons'.
Not being told the difference between a location within a zone and a zone itself, it was pretty aggrivating to discover that no waypoints appear when you need to leave your section of the city to do a quest in a different part.
The 'items' are fairly interesting and diverse, although some feedback on exactly how much enhancements to abilities are going to alter them would be welcome. It's a guessing game right now: sure, it says it increases damage, but at level 4, how MUCH does that actually improve it? If you stick an enhancement in and don't like the change, you just wasted that enhancement.
The chat interface is a step down from any game I've played. It's inconsistant and counter-intuitive, and the in-game help tells you to use commands incorrectly. There's no feedback on what you're doing wrong, so you're left guessing if it's a typo or if the help is just lying to you again.
Now it's time for BBQ.
It get's an esteemed rating of "OK" from me so far. I find it hangs on me about once in thirty minutes (just the game, my machine still runs fine), but the sound also chops occasionally so it may be related to my drivers.
The combat is supposedly faster paced, but it's just that villains of your 'level' are just much weaker so you can take several at once. The abilities are geared to keep you in the fight, almost all heroes have healing of some kind. The fact that 'resting' has a cooldown timer is kinda pissy, but since I can use abilities to drain what I need from monsters, I don't use it at all incase I might actually need it.
My particular hero is a "Defender" which means I get abilities that centre around buffing, debuffing, healing and ranged combat. I have a sniper attack that almost 1-shots opponents of my 'level', a group debuff that sucks accuracy away from enemies, and a healing ability to regenerates all my groupies and supposedly drains endurance from the enemy I target it on (so far it drains a little more than a pixel).
Enemies are sometimes smart enough to attack me in groups, but often they use weak ranged attacks instead of forcing me into melee. They have a supernatural ability to jump and escape you when they are almost dead, which gets frustrating since normal street thug can out-jump a SUPERHERO, but whatever.
Quest are pointless "go here, kill that" at least at my level. I find they are unanimously boring, with the most entertaining part being how to dodge the packs of overpowered enemies that sometimes surround the entrances to the 'dungeons'.
Not being told the difference between a location within a zone and a zone itself, it was pretty aggrivating to discover that no waypoints appear when you need to leave your section of the city to do a quest in a different part.
The 'items' are fairly interesting and diverse, although some feedback on exactly how much enhancements to abilities are going to alter them would be welcome. It's a guessing game right now: sure, it says it increases damage, but at level 4, how MUCH does that actually improve it? If you stick an enhancement in and don't like the change, you just wasted that enhancement.
The chat interface is a step down from any game I've played. It's inconsistant and counter-intuitive, and the in-game help tells you to use commands incorrectly. There's no feedback on what you're doing wrong, so you're left guessing if it's a typo or if the help is just lying to you again.
Now it's time for BBQ.
