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Love World of Warcraft? How about comic books? If you answered yes to any of those two questions than you might think that City of Heroes produced by NCsoft might be the game for you. I gave the game a test drive, and by test drive I mean I paid for the game plus a months subscription.

Lets clear some things out.  I love superheroes, and I thought this game would be perfect. You have no idea how wrong I was. I must first applaud its creator Cryptic for at-least trying to produce a superhero mmo. But the games flaws vastly outweigh its advantages. One of its advantages is that the game looks like it would be really indept and fulfill all our childish fantasies of being a hero. True you do get a vast amount of customization for your hero, but the start of the game is confusing, often leading to just clicking next to get to the next stage in character creation. One of its big flaws is that Cryptic also created Champions Online, which in my opinion draws away potential users of City of Heroes, thus leading the game into a lackluster game with few players.

The gameplay is very familiar to that of any other mmo, you get to choose your character type, abilities, and equipment. I think it would have been a better game by somehow introducing villains without the need of an expansion pack.  Heroes not only defend the innocent people from goons, but from evil villains. People that their sole purpose is to destroy/rule the world. Its almost as if they completely took out the antagonist. The game is ultimately left bland and boring. The character skill sets and equipment usage is really confusing, and difficult to grasp. The speech boxes are difficult to read, and often times get in the way of other things.

Visually the game is lackluster, I played the game on my Aluminum Macbook running at 2gb of ram, and the 9400m (or whatever its called) video card. The game under its default settings creates a world of square, unidentifiable buildings. EVERYTHING from the start is absolutely boring. After tweaking the game a bit, you can finally figure out the settings for creating a more realistic world.

Overall, the game lacks in the fulfillment department of my childhood dreams. If you wanna try the game go ahead get the free trial. I made the mistake of not looking for a trial period version, and bought the game and a months worth of subscription. Possibly the worst $35 spent. I do NOT recommend playing and or buying this game.

sorry for the run-on sentences, grammatical errors, and mis-punctuations.

-Cheers

Julian

As you probably know by now, Infinity Ward’s highly anticipated latest release, Modern Warfare 2, has hit shelves and is already a successful hit on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 consoles. The game has a few new additions in customization and online gameplay, as well as a few new weapons. It is definitely a fun and addicting game, both on single and multiplayer modes.

What is sparking controversy, is a level in the single-player campaign. The level takes place at an airport in Moscow, Russia. You and four other men, enter the airport with automatic machine guns fully exposed and begin a massacre of killing the innocent.

I was shocked when I played this level. I had no idea it was in the game, and I was surprised that Infinity Ward was allowed to publish the game, as it is a simulation of a true act of terrorism.

I must note, before the level begins, there is a disclaimer warning you that this level may be offensive to some people, and it gives you the option to skip it if you so wish to.

I imagine this will make some people furious; more specifically parents. The game is rated M for a reason. Am I appalled at the game? No. Why should anyone be when you can mow down crowds of people in Grand Theft Auto and have been able to for years?

Is a game with this kind of content unacceptable? Probably not. I see no wrong doing here from Infinity Ward. After all, this kind of stuff happens all the time in the real world anyway. Might as well play it on a video game.

Comments welcome.