City of Villains BETA
The beta is buggy and the video code needs serious streamlining. The visuals themselves don't look any better than CoH, but that's not particularily surprising considering the fact that it's the opposite side of the same coin. The gameplay is also quite similar, but the new power sets seem interesting. I threw together a Master Mind character with the "Ninjas" primary power set and the "Trick Arrow" secondary. Yeah, that's NINJAS. The first power in the set is the ability to summon a ninja to do your dirty work. He basically becomes a pet who follows your orders. It's a touch that the first CoH didn't have and didn't really lack for it, but now that it's in - it's pretty friggin' sweet. Instead of Ninjas, you can summon Robots or Undead. So far, the missions have been very much the same as the early missions in CoH: go to this building and clear out this type of bad guy, roam around the city and kill x number of this other type, etc. The one notable exception was the bank robbery mission, where I (and my cunning Ninja henchman) busted into a bank, offed all the security guards, and blew the vault. Good fun. It does seem as though they have a good number of bugs to clean up before launch at the end of the month, though.