City of Villains - Part 1

City of Villains is Cryptic Studios latest entry into the MMORPG genre. As with City of Heroes, Cryptic has paired with prolific inline game publisher NCsoft (Lineage, Auto Assault, Guild Wars, etc.) We'll look at the game from a high level perspective in the first part of the review, considering the implications of the release format and some of the ethical and parental problems that a game like this creates. In the second part of the review we'll get into the game mechanics and minutiae.

Like any MMORPG, City of Villains has depth. This is a game you can play for a very long time without feeling that you've done quite everything. What it lacks, however, is breadth, at least at the low end. All characters go and identical introductory mission and then have almost identical experiences for the first 6 or so levels. While there is some variation, there isn't enough to make creating a new character seem like somewhat of a chore, which is a shame given the beautiful creation and costuming system. This linear early game feels like a regression from City of Heroes, which had two starting areas and multiple paths within each, creating the feeling that each character was having a unique experience from the get go.

Speaking of City of Heroes, there was a lot of speculation before CoV came out regarding the relationship of the two games. The publishers have been very vocal in stating that CoV is not an expansion of CoH, but is a standalone game in its own right. While it is true that you could by City of Villains alone and play it that way, the statement rings a little hollow. Heroes and Villains occupy the same servers. Indeed, you select them from the same login (though you get more character slots with both games, creating ample space.) They even interact with one another in various mid to high level PvP areas. That said, City of Villains isn't exactly a normal expansion either. While it does contain content for City of Heros characters in the form of bases and the aforementioned PvP areas, the vast majority of the content can only be experienced with Villain characters. (Heroes and Villains cannot generally visit one another's home zones. Some missions take place there, but they are in instanced versions of the appropriate area, not the actual player spaces.) In the end, City of Villains is something new, neither exactly a new and distinct game nor merely an extension of the old. Cryptic has done a good job of integrating the two games and of separating their launches enough that City of Villains could incorporate enough new material to make it feel fresh.

Some of that new material may create parental concern. Make no mistake about it; your character in this game is a villain. You would have to be extremely careful in your mission selection to avoid robbery, extortion, blackmail, kidnapping and a host of other crimes. The game stops short of explicitly spelling out murder, though a number of your missions use euphemisms. It's left to the player to imagine the exact outcomes of his or her actions which, given the hospital grid built into the City of Villains world isn't entirely clear. Violence in the game is very abstract. You spend the vast majority of your time hitting/blasting/blowing up assorted other bad people, but you don't generally see blood. Corpses look for the most like they've passed out and there is no graphic violence whatsoever. You do, however, enact your cartoon style violence on a number of what would be considered good people, most notably the local police force. This is a rather interesting ethical statement from a company that took a large and well developed faction of Neo-Nazis out of City of Heroes. Remember, kids: Its okay to punch a cop, but don't fight Nazis, because they're too evil and you might get some on you. The violence, particularly when it is exalted by many of the in game characters, may create some parental concern. It is certainly a different sort of violence than you would find in a military FPS or in a Grand Theft Auto, but it is there and must be acknowledged. That said, were I to have children, I would let them play this sort of game after a discussion of what parts of it are, and are not, examples of things not to do in the real world. How said children would manage to get the game away from me to log any significant play time is, of course, another matter.