The villainy continues apace in City of Villains. I'm not quite sure what happened actually, but I seem to have almost completely given up on my do-gooding Ice/Ice Tanker at a paltry level six, and am now pretty much a fulltime villain, wreaking all manner of mayhem and pandemonium over in the Rogue Isles with my Dark/Dark Stalker instead.
I think its mostly the gleeful comic-book dastardlyness of it all. Functionally, the two side of the game are pretty much identical. Basic gameplay, power progression, the costumes and contacts and missions structure are all very much the same in terms of sheer mechanics, although CoV does have a number of noticeable tweaks, adjustments and refinements, most likely small ideas that suggested themselves in the time between the release of CoH and CoV. Its the little things that do make the difference though, kidnappings and theft instead of rescues and confiscation, infamy instead of influence, a newspaper used to plan capers instead of a police radio used to foil crimes. It all just feels more fun.
Day to day herowork often gave me quite unreasonable pangs of guilt. I'd charge in and beat up some thugs, and then wonder about the ethical basis for my arbitrary violence and heavy-handed 'the guy at the city hall told me they were Bad Men' lack of due process. Silly, I know, but being a villain on the otherhand, well, you're supposed to go at it, fists blazing and not give a damn about the consequences. Strangely liberating!
I quite like the Rogue Isles maps too. Mercy Island, the first villain zone, is a much more twisty and ramshackle place than Galaxy City or Atlas Park, making it a lot more interesting than the very structured 'Large Generic US City Grid' layout found in most of the Paragon City hero zones at the lower end. Also makes it much trickier to get about, but that's the price you pay. Port Oakes and Cap Au Diable seem to follow this design too. Certainly, large chunks of each resemble parts of Paragon, but the zones seem more variegated in themselves.
Saying that, the Villains do seem to get less zones per level range overall, usually only one choice for Paragon's two or three for any given level. Still, the missions all scale as appropriate, so its not too bad for variety.
Something else that threw me was that despite signing up to be a cohort in the mighty Arachnos Empire, the rank and file of this evil organisation still attack me on sight. I spent a long time running away from these fights initially, thinking that I'd get into trouble for offing my Evil Overlord's minions, but this seems not to be the case, and Lord Reculse operates a very competitive promotional system, where murdering your way to the top is positively encouraged! I even got a badge for it' 'Spider Smasher'! Only the white armored 'Arbiter' caste are exempt from this, and it is these that take on the role of NPC skill trainers and shops, etc.
My favourite bit of it all so far is the Villainside version of the Safeguard missions, given out for three successful radio/newspaper missions. The villain's Mayhem missions function in a broadly similar fashion, a small subsection instance of a Paragon City zone, reached via a submarine instead of a SWAT van, containing a bank and a number of other objectives, only this time, we're actually robbing the thing, rather than trying to foil a robbery! This is the main task of the excursion, but as well as that, and the time extensions handed out for defeating groups of enemies, in this case police officers, the Mayhem version is absolutely full of targetable street furniture; boxes, creates, parking meters, bus shelters, dumpsters, even parked cars and trucks; all of which you can beat up for more bonus time. Hell with that - just the sheer gleeful carnage of it all makes the whole exercise well worth the trip, and being in a fair sized team of street wrecking villains, beating our way down a busy city street, trashing everything in our path, explosions and all, police and civilians fleeing in all directions, had me giggling constantly for a good fifteen minutes.
The cars in particular are hard work, but rewarding. They have a huge number of hitpoints and take a hell of a beating. Being able to...er...backstab them, using my Assassin's Eclipse helps, by as a melee type, one does have to remember to take a few steps backward before they blow. Probably content more aimed at the Corrupters and Dominators really (ranged archetypes), I think to myself as the wrecked car explodes and flings me backward across the street.
But its all hilarious, and it going to take a while to get old, I think, and like the Safeguard missions, these hand out temporary powers, like the Zero-G Jump Pack and so on, which is nice. I wonder if a Hero vs Villain PvP version is on the cards?
I'm level fourteen now, and thanks to a sudden Moment of Clarity regarding how their blind-bidding Black Market (CoV auction house) works, (more on that another time), I'm absolutely stuffed to the gills with all the very best hexagonal 'scaling' enhancement addons, which all makes me feel quite secure and comfortably powerful with my character so far. I went with teleporting as my travel power, and like many powers I end up taking, it initially seemed like a red herring and not nearly as good as the Jumping one. Then I realised that despite having a quite short range, its instantly reuseable, and can be aimed at thin air above the streets, not just spots on the pavement ahead of you. On materialisation, you float in place for a moment or two before falling, but that moment is long enough to teleport onward again, and in this manner, endurance permitting and with a bit of quick mousework, it seems as if this might actually be the fastest travel power of them all. Clearly something that needs a bit of practice to get right though, unlike the jumping, flying or super-speed.
One more level will see me eligible for Bloody Bay, and CoH vs CoV PvP, which ought to be interesting, if nothing else, and presumably the first of the Villainside 'Strike Force' super-mission story chains is somewhere nearby too, so more interesting things ahead.
We've formed a little Supergroup of villainy, myself and a few choice others, giving us access to the Secret Base playset, which is fun, but also giving us the chat channel, which it perhaps of more use, and so far, things are going well in general, although I am starting to notice the levels slowing down a bit. I'm not sure how I feel about that really. My main other gaming at the moment is Guild Wars, a game where the Level Cap marks the end of the tutorial really, and Second Life, where there aren't levels at all. Been a while since I was on a real level trail, but I'm not hating it just yet. Time will tell if I can cope with a good old fashioned treadmill anymore...