Took the plunge - loving the game

gurugeorge

OK, well after my post ("Sadface") outlining my worries, I finally took the plunge and subbed.

I have to say, whatever problems the game had to start with, as it stands now, I'm really enjoying it and I'm hooked.  It plays smooth, lag-free, with only one major annoying bug (for me) - occasional "server not responding" at load screens between zones, necessitating restart.

Yeah, it's a bit unfinished and unpolished, a bit buggy.  Anims are a sometimes a bit placeholderish, as are the sound fx, and I believe it when people say it's lacking a bit of content, both in terms of alternative levelling-up paths for altitis, and endgame.  But the content that is there is high quality.  I can't see how anyone who loves superheros would fail to enjoy it - unless they have very particular tastes.  e.g. if someone only likes "dark" style comics, the style and lore of CO. the Silver-Age-tv-Batman-esque humour, etc., might jar.  But I like that early-60s DC style of comics too (I grew up with it as a child), so it's abolutely fine for me.  I can definitely see myself staying subbed for a good few months at least.  I'm a pretty casual player, and for me the character creator and class-free build system are the main addictive draws.  I just love dreaming up superhero concepts and seeing how they play.  It saw me through 3 years of CoX addiction, so I don't see any reason why it shouldn't work just as well in this game.

The one major drawback for me is that there isn't much teaming, at least at the stages I'm at (13 so far), but I'm starting to get the hang of how to make it more social (basically, just do polite tells to people in zone to join in with me for fun - it seems to work, so at least I get duos going fairly frequently).  But it's true that at these levels there doesn't seem to be much incentive to group up.  So that is definitely the one major gameplay problem so far as I'm concerned.

Other than that, it really is a great fun game.  I can see it not appealing to the "hardcore" crowd who are looking for a second life.   Again, as with CoX, there's not much to the gameplay except alt-ing and combat, and it has less of the easy PUG-ing that was CoX's strong point.  There's a decent amount of "fluff", but the crafting, while nicely implemented and moderatly engaging, just doesn't have enough addictive "oomph" somehow (it's a fairly well-done extra, not very integral to the game) - i.e. the crafting has about the same feel as the "fluff" in something like LOTRO.  What the game could do with is another "sphere" that's superhero-related, a bit like the excellent Diplomacy mini-game in Vanguard.  The hero's secret identiy/private life is a big part of the superhero mythos, and it's a shame there's nothing to represent that.  There's the beginnings of something like that in the way you can come across missions just by exploring - maybe that could be expanded a little bit, so it's more like, say, detective work you could do in your secret identity or something.  I think there's a lot of scope for making the game deeper that way in the future.

But overall, as a game for the casual player, e.g. a working person who wants some high-octane excitement and build-pondering, and hopefully some teaming and socializing for a few hours an evening, it's definitely got legs, and I'm pleased with my purchase, as they say!

games72

I've recently tried this game and would have to agree with everything Guru said, well put G. For me, each time I play this game I say, "I'm going to play for an hour or so" and it ends up being 3.. I won't be redundant and list everything Guru did, but I'll say this game has that "Fun Factor" for me and I'm hooked.

I may just be lucky but I've had a few players just say Hi and invite me to group and it ends up being a full group of us just chatting and loosely helping eachother out. I haven't found the need to group at all as G said, but I've found the people I've met are very fun/nice and group just to be social.

I like the interface too... CO's UI feels easy to use, much like WoW. As a COX player it has always been a little hard for me to customize that UI to feel right for me, whether it's camera view, key bindings, etc. It's nice to have that camera snap back to front view when you start running in CO haha.

If you put the graphics of CO and other games side by side CO may look worse, but I really like the style of CO. This is just a personal preference of course, I also prefer the classic look of UO over some of the newer, very real looking graphics like LOTRO.

Hope this helps anyone on the fence considering the game.  I picked it up for $30 and feel I've got my money's worth already