Superheroes

#1 There is a new MMORPG game with Superheroes called City of Heroes. It looks like a more recent World of Warcraft game. You make your own hero and fight others or go questing or fight criminals. It looks fun.

TONS of other comic book hero games have been created, however, most have sucked!!! Superman 64 was by far the worst in my opinion.

The Spiderman games have been OK.

Every single superhero game out there is in a 3rd person perspective (or at least most of them).

I don't know any storylines though.

@Alex

LOL.

#2 City of Heroes is a MMORPG that just came out and seems really popular.

Freedom Force is kind of a hybrid game that's sorta 2-parts Real-Time Strategy to one part Roleplaying Game. It was EXCELLENT and successful. It takes place in a setting reminiscent of the superhero comic books of the 1950's ("Silver Age?" I can't remember). Your heroes are patriotic and colorful, and your enemies are largely lead by evil Communist villains. I highly recommend it.

#3 Superhero MMORPG: "City of Heroes", yes its out. Apparently a new expansion "City of Villains" is due out soon.

Edit: oops, looks like I was too slow on that one :)

#4 Aha. I guess I've seen a few of these already. What I really meant was if anyone here had created a superhero game and if so, what kind.

(I write comic books for a living and was just curious)

#5 Actually there is a comic based game made by someone from this community. That game was just recently released through GG. I believe it is free to download.

#6 Ah Penny Arcade (www.penny-arcade.com), is there any other Video Game based online comic more deserving of a video game?


Well maybe Ctrl+Alt+Del (http://ctrlaltdel-online.com/)

#7 Freedom Force and City of Heroes leap to mind. Freedom Force is 10 stars on a scale of 1-5, and is squad-strategy type. City of Heroes is about 4 stars, and is FP MMORPG style - run around kill monsters, level up - um, repeat endlessly.

There was also Hero X, which stunk the place out. Superman N64?! :) wow that was funny. I don't recall superman crashing into as many buildings as that :)

#8 Funny how this thread got revived.

I got sucked into playing "City of Heroes" courtesy of my friends, who later jumped over to "World Of WarCraft" and dragged me kicking and screaming into Azeroth. That, however, is a completely different story.

"City of Heroes" was fun, for a while. But then it became a grind. An increasingly unpleasant grind. When "WoW" servers were dying left and right a couple weeks ago, I tried going back to "CoH," and found that it just wasn't fun anymore. This may have had something to do with the fact that my friends had all dropped "CoH" like a bad habit. Or it may have been that there was a missing sense of purpose. I mean, vanquishing evildoers and pounding on street scum is usually fun, but the thrill was gone.

In retrospect, I think "City of Heroes" did try to give a good superhero experience, but I also think that their initial execution was perhaps antithetical to the whole superhero genre. Look at the comics that inspired "CoH." There was a definite Silver Age feel to the game, even if the technology and references were modern day. As an MMORPG, I think the game's character classes were unnecessarily balanced towards a "team" style of play. Sure, you could try to solo as a Controller, but it wasn't easy. Look at the superhero teams in the comics. Each character can take care of themselves and operate on their own. Some of them prefer it that way. But other times, they call in their friends, or the whole team if need be. In "CoH", past a certain point, soloing either became a practical impossibility or a mind-numbing bore.

If somebody ever does decided to do a superhero game, I can think of a few things that would make the game not only fun but long lasting.

--Hideout/Lair/Secret Headquarters
Yeah, yeah, I know, they're adding this to "CoH" through the "City of Villains" expansion, but a superhero needs a place to crash, not simply standing out on the street. Whether it's a pocket dimension, a cave, or a seemingly abandoned loft in the heart of the city, your super needs a safe haven to store his gear, soothe his wounds, and sleep with both eyes closed.

--Signature Gear
A superhero needs gear to work, it's true. But the gear should be as unique as the super. Something that speaks to the style and personality of the super. If "CoH" could give us a massive costume creation database to play with, there's nothing to say you couldn't have a massive equipment creation database to play with as well.

--Seamless Experience Between Solo and Group Play
One of the banes of any MMORPGs is having to camp an area for a specific NPC to appear so you can kill him, thus irking the next guy who has to wait for the next spawn. Another problem is headaches with server volume, as we see with "WoW." Instead of centralized servers, why can't we have a P2P decentralized system where one person acts as host and his friends come on to his "city" for an adventure or two? With the increasing use of broadband, this is not as logisitically difficult as it once was.

#9 The reason I asked is because I'm a bit more of a comic book writer than a video game creator. I'm only the plot and script and character stuff guy.
As such, I was wondering if it was possible to make such a thing in a reasonable amount of time. (now I sound like an idiot).

#10 While I'd admit you would have recieved better responses if you'd been clearer in your first post, I'd hardly say you sound like an idiot. The area of "plot and script and character stuff" is one that is the weakest in games today. The gaming community NEEDS people that can help in those areas.

With the RTS pack out, I would imagine that a Freedom Force Light game would be pretty easy to get together.

#11 Possible to make it in a reasonable amount of time?

Absolutely. But it depends on how you scope it. If you want something the size and scope of the major AAA superhero games out there now, you are in for a world of hurt.

But people have made superhero mods out of Quake and other games. Granted, they were mostly lame, but it's do-able. Keep it tight and focused, and you can do it. Expect to spend a lot of time on characters & animation, though.

#12 Personally I found CoH to be perfect for me as far as controls went - it felt great to play, especially once you gained your travel abilities (super speed + super jump + lots of mods = one helluva good time). But what the game lacked was variance in gameplay. The whole "beat up so and so, come back here" theme gets REEEEEAAAAALLLLL old, and until CoV is released, I believe that's still pretty much all there is to that game. Also, not enough interesting powers after about level 25 to keep you interested. There's a new type of character you can start if you reach level 50, but who can go to 50 just for that? Leveling becomes so tedious it'd be more fun to saw off a limb... I'd love to see a game that feels like CoH but has many dimensions of gameplay/objectives/things to do.

Glez

#13 A friend told me about a new game that will se DC Comics characters and that will be played online using next gen consoles and pcs... all the platforms users will play together. Was he joking?

#14 Manuel - He wasn't joking. It was announced at the same time that it was announced that Matrix Online was sold to Sony Online. Sony Online will be making the DC superhero online game.

#15 FANTASTIC! But how will they manage multiple users using different platforms?

#16 @Manuel.. Probably the same way Square/Enix does with FFXI. Simply client software optimized for use with a gamepad.

There's also a Marvel based superhero MMO comming out. Looks to be an XBox 360 exclusive now, though.

I do question the logic of making an MMO set in an established comic book universe. I have a fear it will end up like the 'jedi' issue in Star Wars Galaxies, with people wanting to play as their favorite hero and such.

As far as CoH goes, it was great in that you could just jump on for a little while and do a quick mission or two, but it WAS repetitive to the extreme, and tended to jump on the 'group or else' bandwagon. They have plans for more varied gameplay(in the form of secondary, non-combat skills and such) but they haven't been released into the game yet after first announcing them in the middle of 2004.

#17 Don't forget Superhero League of Hoboken :D

http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=1104