Pocket Change - Shopping Blog

Way back before the days when Warcraft ruled the world, a small game company called Cryptic Studios gave us a very different type of MMORPG. It was called City of Heroes, and it wasn’t your typical Elves vs. Orcs MMO. City of Heroes was for the comic book fan. It was for the guy or girl who’s biggest hero wore tights, and who really wished he or she could turn invisible or fly. When the game was first released it was the only solid choice in a very underdeveloped market. The world has definitely changed since then.

When I first played CoH on release it was a game full of holes, flaws, and a serious lack of end game content. In fact if one wished to continue playing the game post-50 they may as well get comfortable doing the same taskforce over and over, or learn to dance. Once World of Warcraft was released it wasn’t too hard of a choice to leave the world of Paragon City behind and enter the world of Azeroth. After 2 years, an expansion, and a whole lot of time spent in World of Warcraft I had nearly forgotten City of Heroes. However, thanks to a small fractioning of the guild (group of players organized to accomplish tasks) a friend and I have decided to go back to City of Heroes, but in a very different role. Since the time of our departure, City of Heroes is now two games. Now you can play both a hero, and a villain.

The changes made to the game since I have been gone are really somewhat amazing. The game still has it’s flaws, and it is nothing to cancel my WoW subscription over, but it is actually a very enjoyable game.

Some Highlights from the past week of playing:

• Mayhem missions: blowing up everything in the city in order the create as much havok as possible in order to gain more time to rob a bank.
• Building a perfect Villain (The Office Pirate – a idea given to me by former employee here at Become and fellow blogger Daryl) with the very well done character customization process
• “Invention” system – very cool new crafting system that has you constantly finding recipes and making new stuff.
• Arena Combat – I love WoW’s arena system, but it could learn a lot from the way that CoH has implemented everything. Tons of maps, and lots of situations make Arena combat fresh and new.
• Tons of powers – I was shocked at the sheer number of skills that I could receive. There are hundreds of ways to customize your hero of villain to your own play style.
• Casual game play – Being able to play for 2 hours a night at most and still feel powerful is a serious bonus in an genre where typically those with the most time dominate.

So really, if you have put the game aside or need something new to try out give the game a shot. for $30 , and a free month there is really not that much to lose.
Kris