BY: ED V

In response to Loriisarobot in the Games forum, Ed gives his well versed overview of City of Heroes/City of Villans

CoH/CoV kicks many flavors of ass

I played it in beta and for the first year after it came out obssesively. I went back for a couple of months when the CoV expansion was released, but by then, WoW had sunk its talons into my soul and I didn't play long.

I got to the point where I had 3 level 50s heroes: A scrapper (Skinny Jack, claw/regen), a blaster(Doctor Strangeglove, fire/fire) and a controller (El Bicho Feliz gravity/fire). I gotta say, the game is really fun. Its like a super-distilled combat kinda thing, where the meat of the game lies in effectively using your powers to defeat the baddies. Its elegant, well, balanced and very flexible, merging tons of different combat abilities and powers in a multitude of different ways.

And then there is the character creator. You can literally spend all day in that thing designing costumes and looks for your hero. There are literally and almost infinite amount of permutations for your look. Some friends, in fact, never left the character creation process

The downside? That's really all there is too it. While there are quest lines and story-lines and such, they get somewhat repetitive especially in my case where I'd played through the game so much. There is no crafting or loot (seen by many as a good thing), which I missed...it kinda removes the "Carrot" from the game.

All in all, if i was to rate it, i'd give it a 8.5/10. Remember, despite the fact that I no longer play it, it did suck up almost a year and half of my life, and thats the highest praise I can give any game

If you're interested, the group I ran with still has a Supergroup going on the Freedom Server. Some of the members are from Tucson, and there are even a couple that work for Bookman's (Mitch, the IT ninja comes to mind). If you'd like, I can put you in touch with them if you roll a character on the Freedom server. The game is 50 times more fabulous if you play with others, and with their amazing sidekick/mentoring system, lower level characters can play with higher level ones seemlessly.

Let me know if you have any questions or advice or want me to put you in touch with my friends that still play.

Enjoy!