Combat and Powers
Combat in City of Villains is very well done and has a true RPG feel to it. This means the player with the fastest reflexes won't necessarily have an advantage. Experience and the best combination of offensive and defensive weapons is the true advantage for any player in City of Villains.
The actions you take during combat(except movement) are all controlled from the Power Tray. Located in the bottom right corner, the power tray hold 10 slots for powers. These can be utilized during combat by either clicking on the specific power or pressing the keyboard number associated with each power. You can customize up to nine different Power Trays and toggle between them to ensure you have to right powers ready when needed.
There are five main types of powers, attack, defense, mezzes & taunts, buffs & heals, and debuffs. Attack and defense need no explanation and combine both melee or ranged combat powers. Mezzes & taunts are powers that restrict your enemies actions, while buffs & heals makes you more effective in combat and replenish lost hit points respectively. Debuffs on the other hand make enemies less effective in combat. Enhancements can also be bought or awarded to characters through out the game and are applied to powers. Once successfully applied to a power they can alter the performance, increase damage, increase range and more.
If you die as a result of combat and there is no one around to revive you, you will immediately spawn at the hospital. Respawning does incur an experience point penalty so it's always good to either fight with a group or not get killed! Player vs Player combat does not incur this experience point penalty in the event of your character's death.
Game Features - Misc
The game features and interface is virtually identical to that of City of Heroes, someone familiar with that game should have no trouble picking up the controls and interface. Players new to CoH and CoV may have an extended learning curve for getting accustomed to moving around and combat controls.
A very helpful color coded system is used to inform you about the statistics of other characters and enemies in the game. When a character is encountered their name will show up as a specific color based on your level of experience. Cool colors such as gray, green and blue are used for characters less powerful than you, while warm colors of yellow, red, orange, are used for characters more powerful than yourself.
Graphics
The interface, combat, and environments all look fantastic and have a unique comic book appeal to them. The character models are also very detailed, as is the character generation process. Character movement is very realistic and character models during action sequences keep that realistic look. City of Villains also includes a nice rag doll physics engine that makes explosions and collisions appear more realistic as well. Finally there is also the added option to select different resolutions and graphics settings. This option greatly improves the performance on lower end graphics cards.
Bottom Line
City of Villains is a fun multiplayer game with a straight forward character generation process that will appeal to anyone. Missions can be simple at times so if you're looking for something that's more than combat and linear objectives it may not be right for you. With that said, City of Villains is a great addition in to the world of massively multiplayer games. Coupled with City of Heroes it makes for a unique and well rounded Super Villain vs Super Hero world. Gamers who already subscribe to City of Heroes will be happy to hear that their subscription fee is good towards both games if they purchase the City of Villains software.
