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PC | RPG | City of Heroes

Boxart for City of Heroes
City of Heroes 95 screen shots
  • GRAPHICS: 4.0
  • SOUND: 4.0
  • CONTROL: 4.0
  • FUN FACTOR 4.5
  • AVG USER SCORE n/a
  • AVG CRITIC SCORE 4.2
Winner of the GamePro Editor's Choice Award

Review: City of Heroes

Review by DUNJINMASTER | 06/03/2004 | 09:26:24 AM PST

Paragon City needs heroes! Subscribe, citizen, for justice!

It?s everyone?s dream -- admit it. You?ve always wanted to jump up and fly over buildings, shoot lasers from your eyes, or punch evildoers so hard that they go sailing into the nearest wall. Up until now, MMOs have offered you a chance to wield great magic, swing powerful weapons, and do other things that characters from Tolkien used to do.

City of Heroes, bless its heart, offers you a chance to leap tall buildings, throw fire, and freeze enemies with your ice-breath, all with an unapologetic innocence that makes the game refreshing, despite its limited focus.

Paragon City Needs Heroes
When you start the game, you create a character from one of five Archetypes and five Origins, and head into a besieged city that?s in desperate need of heroes. You might think that five Archetypes (the COH equivalent of ?classes?) aren?t enough, but when you take a look at the power sets within each Archetype, you?ll see what makes City of Heroes such a diverse game. A Defender, for example, could take Radiation Emission to focus on weakening his foes, Force Fields to protect his friends, Empathy to become a true healer, or Storm Summoning to have a good balance of powers overall. Characters are much more ?unique? than in other MMOs, so you have to actually get to know other players and learn what they?re capable of.

Technically, the game is better than most games out there but maybe not as good as its upcoming competition. While the city and its denizens look pretty dull, powers and most heroes are dazzling and super cool. Generic but enjoyable sounds punctuate the combat. Your hero controls like a truck, but a bit of key remapping helps with that, and COH offers movement modes (super-speed, flight, super-leaping, teleportation) that make other games look landlocked. Also, City of Heroes enjoyed one of the smoothest launches in the history of MMOs, which shows that the launch team planned ahead and knew what it was doing.

Level Up?for Justice!
Like most other MMOs, City of Heroes is most fun when played with friends. Just going around and seeing all the superheroes people have come up with is awesome, but going into Perez Park with a team of six people is a wonder to behold. With so many EQ-me-toos out there, it?s refreshing to play something new, and to have it be this good is like finding a cooler of lemonade in the middle of the desert.


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