Okay, I just ran through the intro and tutorial, plus the 'sort out your powers' bit, on a character rolled up as a direct port over from CoH. I chose Emerald Blast.
The good bits:
* Recreating her costume was surprisingly painless, once I determined how to reduce the HYUGE hands, monkey arms, and giganto-boobs. ProTip: the proportion sliders are in a different tab completely than the thing they affect.
* The combat is fairly fun. I'm not sure about the controls, but the combat is fun.
* Ripping a mailbox/bench/light pole out of the sidewalk and hurling it at a baddie is surprisingly entertaining. Never mind that Rhea doesn't have super-strength. Maybe she's been taking lessons from Terr.
* ASYMMETRICAL COSTUME BITS. HELL. YEAH.
The bad bits:
* What. The. Fuck. You have to rapid-tap a key to get free of holds?!
* Hold spam. See above.
* Man, these graphics are horribad. I've been spoiled by CoH Ultra Mode.
The Bwuh? bits:
* Tunneling travel power? Grapple hook travel power? I don't even what.
* Foxbat. What the frellin' I don't even get away from aarrrgggh.
* So the Rikti -- I mean, the Qularr -- are invading the city, and Statesman -- I mean, Defender -- has called on all heroes to repel the invasion. Paragon City -- doh, sorry, sorry, I meant Millenium Falcon, er, City -- is depending on you! And a giant gun firing the worlds slowest hypervelocity bullet.
The @#$(@$ bits:
* No shoulder pets. Apparently there's a city ordinance against them or something. She's keeping Whiskers in a belt pouch for the time being.
* BLOCKING IS FUCKING LAME.
* For the love of -- look, target-of-my-target is NOT difficult! If I fire off an attack at an ally, don't buzz at me; shoot his target! This will let me, y'know, play my role as a SUPPORT CHARACTER, so I can keep the tank targeted and healed and still do something useful while he's smashing bad guys.
* So let me get this straight. My combat effectiveness depends in part on these 'stars' things. If I die, I lose stars. I have to kill baddies to get stars. If I lose stars, I can't kill baddies. This is pretty much the opposite of good game design.
Also: my geriatric grandmother could run faster than you let us run, and she was bedridden. Srsly.
Summary:
It's not City of Heroes. But we knew that.
The story is ... clumsy. More so than CoH has ever been. The writing is painfully bad, there are typos everywhere... it doesn't feel professional. But the combat is slick (except for the bits noted above), and there seems to be plenty to do and lots of folks to do it with. I saw some active RP in the time I was there, and quite a bit more variations on gold/equipment selling, but it looks like I can filter most of that out.
I haven't yet begun to explore further. If I were soloing, I'd probably stop here -- the 'press Z repeatedly to NOT DIE' bits are infuriating beyond belief to me (but then, I froth at QTEs in console games, too). But I'll keep visiting Millennium City to see what else is on offer. As a potential harbor for CoH refugees... well, I saw a lot of people talking about being from CoH. It looks like folks are already shifting over.
I have no idea if we can reproduce a base, in any form. Will investigate.
If anyone has any particular requests for me to peek into, speak up and let me know.
--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
The good bits:
* Recreating her costume was surprisingly painless, once I determined how to reduce the HYUGE hands, monkey arms, and giganto-boobs. ProTip: the proportion sliders are in a different tab completely than the thing they affect.
* The combat is fairly fun. I'm not sure about the controls, but the combat is fun.
* Ripping a mailbox/bench/light pole out of the sidewalk and hurling it at a baddie is surprisingly entertaining. Never mind that Rhea doesn't have super-strength. Maybe she's been taking lessons from Terr.
* ASYMMETRICAL COSTUME BITS. HELL. YEAH.
The bad bits:
* What. The. Fuck. You have to rapid-tap a key to get free of holds?!
* Hold spam. See above.
* Man, these graphics are horribad. I've been spoiled by CoH Ultra Mode.
The Bwuh? bits:
* Tunneling travel power? Grapple hook travel power? I don't even what.
* Foxbat. What the frellin' I don't even get away from aarrrgggh.
* So the Rikti -- I mean, the Qularr -- are invading the city, and Statesman -- I mean, Defender -- has called on all heroes to repel the invasion. Paragon City -- doh, sorry, sorry, I meant Millenium Falcon, er, City -- is depending on you! And a giant gun firing the worlds slowest hypervelocity bullet.
The @#$(@$ bits:
* No shoulder pets. Apparently there's a city ordinance against them or something. She's keeping Whiskers in a belt pouch for the time being.
* BLOCKING IS FUCKING LAME.
* For the love of -- look, target-of-my-target is NOT difficult! If I fire off an attack at an ally, don't buzz at me; shoot his target! This will let me, y'know, play my role as a SUPPORT CHARACTER, so I can keep the tank targeted and healed and still do something useful while he's smashing bad guys.
* So let me get this straight. My combat effectiveness depends in part on these 'stars' things. If I die, I lose stars. I have to kill baddies to get stars. If I lose stars, I can't kill baddies. This is pretty much the opposite of good game design.
Also: my geriatric grandmother could run faster than you let us run, and she was bedridden. Srsly.
Summary:
It's not City of Heroes. But we knew that.
The story is ... clumsy. More so than CoH has ever been. The writing is painfully bad, there are typos everywhere... it doesn't feel professional. But the combat is slick (except for the bits noted above), and there seems to be plenty to do and lots of folks to do it with. I saw some active RP in the time I was there, and quite a bit more variations on gold/equipment selling, but it looks like I can filter most of that out.
I haven't yet begun to explore further. If I were soloing, I'd probably stop here -- the 'press Z repeatedly to NOT DIE' bits are infuriating beyond belief to me (but then, I froth at QTEs in console games, too). But I'll keep visiting Millennium City to see what else is on offer. As a potential harbor for CoH refugees... well, I saw a lot of people talking about being from CoH. It looks like folks are already shifting over.
I have no idea if we can reproduce a base, in any form. Will investigate.
If anyone has any particular requests for me to peek into, speak up and let me know.
--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs