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Platform: PC Genre: RPG Publisher: NCSoft Developer: Cryptic Studios ETA: Spring 2004
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City
of Heroes
While
some of us dream of dawning a dark cape and a mask to prowl the city at
night, stopping evildoers, or at least dream of sporting some of those
flashy tights, it just isn’t practical.
There’s the chafing, the late hours, the traditionally
restrictive crotchal regions, and who needs that.
Cryptic Studios are working on a solution with their online RPG,
City of Heroes. Players
will be able to team up to fight villainous scourges, invading aliens,
and crime bosses without all the real-life superhero hassles. The game takes place in a booming metropolis by the name of Paragon City, where players will be able to wander through skyscrapers, economic districts, the slums, parks, major shopping areas, all the locales one would expect to come across while strolling through a big city. All the while they’ll have to contend with the small army of different factions in the criminal underworld lurking therein. Everything from roaming street gangs, to organized crime to remnants of a group of Nazi super soldiers are out to cause trouble. Due to there being literally thousands of players that will inhabit each server, it seems doubtful that there |
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will be any personal
relationships between particular villains and players’ superheroes in
a, “So, we meet again Captain Cranky Pants!” sort of way.
However, if Cryptic somehow can put it in, kudos to them. But enough with the bad guys, the point of the game is to be the hero, and there’s quite the selection to choose from. Heroes are divided into a number of different classes, which are looking like a very refreshing alternative from all of the fantasy based RPGs that insist on using the standard mix of fighters, clerics, mages, and such. Instead what we have are the |
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different types of heroes.
There’s the mutant who is born with a unique genome that gives them the expected mix of super powers.
These people can often perform a number of different abilities,
but their maximum power output for each of these is not as powerful as
other hero types. Mutants
are more of a Jack-of-all-trades, but master of none.
Similar to the mutants are the Altered Humans.
They are people who get their genetic makeup all jumbled from an
outside source or experience, which rubs off on them so that the nature
and properties of what the person was hit by are manifested in the
individual. Because of
this, it’s these powers that the hero has and little more, so
versatility isn’t really their forte, but the powers they do have can
reach extremely high thresholds. However,
not all heroes are willing to wait for fate to come along and sprinkle
some of its super power delights on them.
These folks have chosen to go the cybernetic route, augmenting
themselves with mechanical parts to improve their crime busting
abilities. Besides the
ravenous robotic retribution these parts can wreck on the bad guys,
going the way of the cyborg also allows the hero to have more endurance
than other types of heroes. Using
cybernetic components allows the person to divide their energy usage
between that of their biological selves, and the battery-based energy
supply they keep inside of them. Putting
too many different parts on a person can prove harmful to one’s
physiology though, so cyborgs need to specialize in specified areas
which means those facets of their abilities will become finely honed in
time. Staying clear of the
technological, instead favoring the other-worldly, there are also magic
using heroes. They’ve
chosen to tap into the arcane arts, casting spells, using magical
potions, scrolls, and other such imbued paraphernalia.
They too must do a fair amount of specializing, as there is so
much magic out there that the human mind simply can’t spread itself
between too many disciplines. That
being said, the spells and areas of expertise that the magic-user
chooses to pursue reach exceptionally high levels of potency as their
strength increases. The
last breed of superhero that we know of is the Superior Human.
These guys have no superpowers, they’re just normal human
beings that have a very strong moral fiber.
They’re people with a mindset similar to Bruce Wayne, or the
Green Hornet, mortals that just want to stop the bad guys and keep the
streets safe. There are
also two more types of heroes expected in the game, the Gadgeteer and
the Mystical Artifacts user. No
word on the specifics of these character types yet, but judging by their
names some pretty safe assumptions can be made.
There
are a good number of super powers for those heroes in the roster capable
of possessing them. Only a
handful are known so far, but there are expected to be a very large
number of abilities included when all is said and done.
There will be over 40 core powers and each of them will be
divided up into sub-abilities to play around with.
There will be the traditional amazing feats of invisibility,
leaping high in the air, manipulating the cold, energy blasts, flight,
et cetera in heroes’ arsenals for disposing of criminals with. As
players clean up the streets they will receive Fame Points as the
citizens of Paragon City here of their deed.
Fame Points are essentially experience points for the game, the
more you get, the stronger your hero becomes.
Beware though, fame points won’t only go up, they’ll go down
too. If you sit on your
behind too often the people will forget about you and your fame points
will begin to decrease, so if you don’t want to lose nifty new
abilities, you better keep on task or you can consider them as good as
gone. With
all of this crime fighting, disposing of the scum on the street, there
will be age-old associations of superheroes in the city.
They’ll have been formed a ways back by some of the first
superheroes in town (before the time in which players are playing in the
game), each of them having a knack for thwarting the plans of a
particular faction of villain. While
it’s tempting to consider them guilds, they don’t have the
exclusivity or competitive, antagonistic qualities of those
organizations. Players can
be part of more than one heroes’ organization, as the overall goal of
all these places is to keep Paragon City safe, not bicker among
themselves. With
all of the online RPGs that take place in fantasy settings or in a dark,
decaying, post apocalyptic future, City of Heroes is looking like a very
promising breathe of fresh air to the genre.
Hopefully Cryptic Studios can bring it all together and give RPG
fans something a little different to sink their teeth into. - Mr. Nash |
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