Of a weekend, I like to potter about the various MMOs I have on the go. The regular week nights are good for progress and camaraderie, but I like to wander about solo sometimes too, and flitting about at weekends is a good time for that kind of thing. City of Heroes is a bit trickier than most for solitary meanderings though, and has a very peculiar…well, problem isn’t quite the word, but out of all the MMOs I’ve ever played it perhaps the most difficult one in which to solo.

By that, I don’t mean the usual gripe of enforced group content making the game unplayable for loners, although grinding out radio missions over and over can be a bit of a chore. No, I meant that in City of Heroes, I actually find it very difficult to not be in a group. Literally; remaining alone in that game takes quite an effort of will. I have no idea if I accidentally picked a very in-demand Archetype and Powersets, or what. I doubt very much that anyone outside the regular weekly group knows who I am or indeed, should especially care if they did, but for some reason I just keep getting random, unsolicited, group invites in that game. On average, I’d guess at one every twenty minutes or so; just sudden lines of yellow tell text; Bloop! “LFT?”, Bloop! “Want to join mish?”, Bloop! “Looking for farm?”

Its more or less unprecedented in my experience, but as long as I can remember playing CoX at all, its been happening, and I’m sure its not just to me. I’d filled in a line of text to describe my powersets in the Team Search window, but habitually have the thing set to ‘Not Looking For Team’, mostly because I’m either rampaging with the Thursday Group in a big team already, or genuinely trying to take some time to actually see Paragon City, alone. (There’s a lot you miss with Travel Powers in full flight, such as the entire of Dark Astoria!) Its the non-committal ‘not fussed either way’ setting by the looks of it, and I’d have to set myself to the big red ‘Not Accepting Invites’ state if I really wanted to project a ‘Go Away Vibe’, but that seems a bit mean.

It did used to happen to me in World of Warcraft, toward the very end of my stay, but as a Level 59-60 Pre-TBC Warrior, I suspect those people only wanted me for my shield. Perhaps its similar in CoX? Tankers are the…er…tanks of the show, but CoX is far less picky about that kind of thing and unlike WoW, large groups off pretty much any composition can get things done, as far as I can see.

Why shouldn’t I want to play with others? Its the old ‘Why R U Play MMO To Solo?!’ problem again and this weekend I was poking about the Ouroboros a bit on my own when the invite happened. Next thing I know, I’d caved in and signed up for a pick-up task-force. (The Mender Lazarus Task Force) We didn’t make it as it turned out, not having nearly enough DPS to overwhelm Nosferatu’s insane regeneration, but it was a fun half hour none the less.

I don’t know why I signed up though. I distrust strangers, and everyone knows how bad all PUGS are. I think mostly the constant unasked-for friendliness, (or at least frank admission of need) wears me down. But being a player in about the only game where this seems to happen at all, (to me anyway), I’ll be damned if I’m going to be the curmudgeon of the piece! I wonder why it so rarely happens anywhere else? Poor search tools? Inflexible group composition requirements? Good old fashioned cantankerousness? Who knows?

What with it being two games sort of, instead of just the one, I’ve got two characters I’d consider my Mains in City of Heroes and City of Villains. I’ve often had troubles with Altitis in the past, and perhaps now recognise it as a symptom of a greater fatigue and indeed, boredom with many of the MMOs I’ve played. The logic is simple; I’m bored of grinding out levels – lets see if it’s anymore interesting as a different class? The answer is usually “briefly.”

If I ever hope to get anywhere at all in these games (especially four of them at once during the typical week), I have to pick one and stick with it. The temptation to Alt Up is particularly strong in CoX, which offers over 30 character slots, more than 300 combinations of Archetype, Primary and Secondary powers, and a dressing up box still unparalleled in any other MMO to date. Focus is the key here, but even so, I couldn’t resist one Hero and one Villain…

City of Heroes Van Hemlock

Who?

My two mains here are a Magic-based Ice Armour/Ice Melee Tanker, and a Science-based Mind Control/Psionic Assault Dominator, and frankly, the two couldn’t be more different.

The Tanker is tremendous fun, especially in big groups. Big groups mean even bigger groups of enemies in missions, and this all adds to the often ridiculous amount of incoming damage I routinely put up with. CoX’s ‘Tank’ is an extremely exaggerated thing; I have six toggled defensive abilities which overlap to make me virtually indestructible, a super-power which sucks energy and defence from everyone around me and adds to my own, and an AoE Aura which taunts constantly everything within 10ft or so. I’ve played ‘Warrior’ in a lot of MMOs, and this right here has to be the most foolproof tanking I’ve ever played. It does make it easy-mode a bit, yes, but that does leave the mind and reflexes somewhat freed up for chatting and such like. Mind you, as befits a hardcore tank type, my own damage output is painfully slow, making soloing hard work here. I’ve gone with all the Fitness stuff here; improved health and stamina regen, as my main weakness is running out of power to keep my toggles going, and Jumping is a lot of fun for travel. Currently L35.

The diabolical foil to the happy-go-lucky meatshield is much more of a hands-on affair. With Mind/Psi, I seem to have gone for the most pure form of crowd-controller the game offers. Again, low on solo damage output, but with more stuns, sleeps, holds, confuses and knockbacks than you can shake a stick at. With careful use and husbanding of my powers, I can effectively keep most, if not all, of the enemies from being able to fight back; either hugely debuffing them, stopping them fighting at all, and extreme cases, turning them on to our side for a short span. I’m not so familiar with ‘CC’ in other MMOs, but again, CoX seem to take the basic concepts and massively exaggerate them. My main weakness here is my own fragility, and lack of damage output, so this character works best in teams, and to ensure I’m a wanted addition, I’ve gone crazy with the four Leadership pool powers; team-wide buffs to most stats in a kind of ‘Paladin-Aura’ style. Flying helps me here, both for travel, and for lurking up in the ceiling during fights, giving me a much clearer line of sight and better control of adds and such. Currently L26.

When?

Generally a once a week game for me, in a large boisterous Teamspeak-enabled team; very much a social event and kind of ‘night out’ with the folks from Limited Edition, than a quiet reflective gaming session. Like Guild Wars, the game very much revolves around the people, and the game itself becomes a venue, like a sports field or pub; not that interesting intrinsically, but a good place to be with friends.

It isn’t just about a clique though; throughout my time in the game, I’ve been constantly surprised by the regularity and frequency of the random pick-up group tells. I’ll be minding my own business, getting on with Auction House or Crafting, and out of the blue, team invite. This seems to happen to both characters and most nights. Don’t even have to have the LFG flag set sometimes. This isn’t always welcome, of course, but in all my travels, I’d be hard pressed to pick another MMO with quite the open and carefree community. Those PUGs I do join are rarely completely hopeless, and even if technically poor, are full of people who don’t seem to mind wiping that much.

Saying all that, it is a good idea to hop on that PUG trail, as one complaint the title does attract, is the grind and repetition of the solo game, which is frankly best avoided.

Recently, I’ve started to take a bit of a renewed interest in the city around me too; partly because I’ve just looked up from a sustained bout of weekly missions and Task Forces, to find I’d missed huge chunks of overland zones through the sheer speed of my levelling, so lots of exploring on those rare downtime moments. The badges have always been appealing too.

Where?

I tend to bounce all over Paragon City really. Brickstown, Talos Isle and Independence Port seem to be popular favourites though, despite me outlevelling most of it. The excellent sliding difficulty system means that wherever you find yourself, the missions will be the right level anyway, making the outdoors places more about exploration and tourism. I spend a lot of time in Steel Canyon when not actively fighting injustice, mostly because the Wentworths and University are right next to each other, and I’m lazy!

A recent wiki-fuelled badge frenzy has sent me further afield though, to zones I’d have otherwise missed entirely; Croatoa, Dark Astoria, Boomtown and such.

On the Rouge Isles, with their more linear progression, exploration isn’t quite so available. I’m generally around the Sharkhead Isle and Nerva Archipelago level there, but again, tend to lurk about in Cap Au Diable, for the easy jog between Black Market and University!

All of this takes place on the Union Server, on the EU side of the game.

Why?

I’ve never been a Comic Book Person, to be honest, which is the logical target audience for the game. Nothing bitter, just a phase that passed me by entirely. However, City Of interests me greatly from a technical perspective, as for a very long time indeed, it was about the only MMO out there that dared to be different. Its remarkable system of sliding statistics, which in turn enable its utterly brilliant Mentoring and Sidekick system; sometimes imitated, but rarely with the complete flexibility offered to friends who want to play together. The vast number of power combinations, making a huge mix and match superhero simulator, and of course the excellent dressing-up box character creator. The immense badgelist. For any number of reasons like these, I just find it an absolutely fascinating example of how else you can design an MMO, and still have it work and be fun.

On a somewhat less academic level, it is just that, a lot of fun. I may not be a comic Book Person, but the sight of 20+ armoured stormtrooper goons falling on their arses as they try to pummel their way through my shells of ice, or the sight of 15 or so Mafia-a-likes all staggering about clutching their heads, hallucinating, and beating each other up at my whim, well… it all does make me feel quite super!

Difficult times are ahead for this aging but quirky and different MMO, what with two other Superhero Games with better graphics, (and who knows what else), on the horizon, but for now, it really is in a class of its own, and very hard for me to put down.

Round we go again, and this time, I’m back in City of Heroes. While I’ve been playing the game on and off for a good few months, a recent change in the wind has seen me move over the Forces of Justice, and City of Heroes proper, on the Union server and whole new gang of rather unconventional superheroes.

I’d tried Heroside a bit, quite a while back, but a combination of The Hollows Hazard Zone and the hellish Positron Task Force, and a general nagging worry that really, Heroes ought not to pummel first and ask questions later, all conspired to turn me to the dark side, and City of Villains, which is where I’ve pretty much stayed ever since. City of Heroes itself then, is a fairly newish game for me.

The move to Union came with the unexpected surprise that my original Trial Account Ice Armor/Ice Melee Tanker was waiting there patiently for me all along, so rather than start entirely from scratch, I’ve picked her up again, and now find myself front-and-centre, being beaten on for a living, which is quite a departure from my previous subtle Mind/Psi Domination Evilside. I’ve moved my previous diabolical schemer across too though, so not giving up on that. The whole process was surprisingly painless actually. It cost £6, which was a bit steep, I thought, but was entirely handled within the game client, with three clicks, and took place more or less immediately. I’d prefer it if it was cheaper to do, but can’t fault the mechanisms involved in the slightest.

Mostly though, its about ICY-FIST-OF-DEATH-FOR-GREAT-JUSTICE!, and thanks to all my new friends, this seems to be going very well. One common gripe I’d endured with the game, (on both sides), in the past, is how slow soloing can be, (Esp. as Tanker or Dominator) and The Grind of it all has caused me to hang the thing up a few times in the past, but as I’m sure is obvious to many, its not really a game about soloing particularly. The game practically bends over backwards to make it very easy to fit in in any group, so there isn’t really much excuse, and hanging out with the, er…’RAF Rofflecopter Assault Force’ over the last few weeks has pretty much transformed the game for me.

As well as the sheer rightness of approaching these missions in a large boisterous (and only marginally in-control) group, and the ensuing pandemonium of it all, I’ve been taking my first nervous steps into the world of TeamSpeak. Well, what with one thing and another, the ‘I’m shy’ excuse doesn’t really hold as much water as it did this time last year, so when they told me to ‘get on TS’, I pretty much had to. Still, its one thing to podcast into the void from a relaxed, if somewhat seismically vulnerable studio, but quite another to be doing the Talking Thing while actually playing a game, but you soon get the hang of it and the seasoned veterans already in there soon had me at my ease, and then variously doing bad Wookie Impressions, quoting from Shaun of the Dead, and for a large part of the evening, giggling uncontrollably.

Certainly made the main event of last week bearable, that’s for sure. The Positron Task Force is very old, and shows. Consisting of little more than ten very normal missions, chained in a gruelling row, it really does make a terrible first impression for the new Hero, and was instrumental in sending me off to Villainside for a very long time. The sheer logistics of keeping a team together for the necessary duration is hard enough; unable to leave the group until its done, and the Villain equivalent is much better put together, more spectacular, rewarding and most of all, realistically manageable in an evening.

We gave it a go though, and did very well. Staying Power is the real enemy here, rather than any kind of technical or choreographic requirement, and without the constant gibbering on TS, I’m not sure I’d have made it through. It took us over four hours to complete in the end, and I begin to somewhat sympathise with End Game WoW-folk. Not something I’d want to try again in a hurry, but we have the badge now, and I’m assured that subsequent Task Forces are nowhere near as painful. Positron still wants a damned good Redesign though, if you ask me.

The other bane of my CoH life was also addressed earlier in the week, with me finally finishing the Frostfire story arc, an mission that my Tanker seemed to have had outstanding for over a year! Despite having earned no xp at all since joining Union (always sidekicked down), I’m having a blast and almost certainly seeing that rarest of things in my gaming life, an MMO As Intended. Good things ahead, I’m sure.

The RAF Rofflecopter Assault Force, with four hours of Clockworks, Vahziok and Circle of Thorns still ahead of them; various pimpage to: Limited Edition, Teppotastic, To The Blogmobile!, and Welshtroll

Annnnd, four hours later, we’d only lost one member through sheer exhaustion, although another member subsequently had a lot of Apologising to do, thanks to the protracted marathon it turned into…

Everyone loves the Cyborg Addon Pack, mostly because it lets you explode in a rather spectacular manner. You see a lot of the above when out with us. I’m the one Not Going Thermonuclear, cos I already paid £6 for Extras this month, thank you very much! Also, I am not chipping in toward the Civic Restoration Claim when it arrives, kthx.

And here we are goofing about on the Ice Halfpipe in the final Frostfire mission. Fifteen minutes to kill Frostfire, forty-five minutes mindless skidding about on the ramps. I was particularly impressed with Welshtroll and Foxybimbo’s synchronised double-axle wall-plant. Ten points!

Demonstrating my typical sense for all things current, cutting edge and topical, while everyone else is off to <google>Warhammer Online</google>, for me, its back to City of Villains. It’s a game I’ve played a fair bit before, and one of those old flames with whom I parted amicably. It did get a bit grindey, I must admit, but that was some time ago, and they’ve apparently smooth the mid-game level curve a bit since my last sojourn. I think much of the troubles of last time was me going at it in slightly the wrong frame of mind too.

You certainly can solo it, and while the missions strewn across the Rouge Isles may not quite be as fresh an innovative as <google>Public Quests</google>, they can be a fun and entertaining diversion of an evening. Taking the time to actually read the quest text does pay off, with suitably cheesy Comic Book Hijinks going off all over the place. The various enemy groups are sufficiently varied, there are a tonne of badges to be had, and although the tilesets could use a bit of work, in general, the game provides a very acceptable MMO experience.

Mind you, where this particular game does shine, is in getting the whole group thing spot on. We rambled about the sublime mechanics of it all a fair bit in the most recent podcast; anyone can group with anyone else, at any time, anywhere, which is not something many MMOs can boast. (Well, as long as their on the same side of the Atlantic anyway, but can’t have everything I guess). But while the laudable <google>Open</google> nature of the basic <google>Group</google> dynamic is a wonderful thing on paper, its actually being there that does it for me.

The last few ‘League of Evil’ nights have been absolutely barmy. Typically, there’s eight people in Team Evil, of all persuasions, and when they start rampaging, I have a hard time know what the hell is going on, in a good way. There’s rampaging robots, and arcing electricity and bursts of fire and green healing energy and boiling darkness and howling blizzards and through it all, there’s me trying to find a back that’s alive long enough to stab. Absolute <google>Chaos</google>, and total <google>Destruction</google>, most of which has me giggling like a simpleton most of the way through. It all scales admirably, adapting to our large group sizes, and throwing dozens of the faceless troopers of <google>Order</google> at us as we make our deafening way through a number of bizzaro office blocks, which frankly should have collapsed long before we reach the second elevator, and strangely, I find myself, the Eternal Statistician, starting to let go and just roll with it all.

I went with a Stalker again, the same stalker in fact; Dark Melee/Dark Armour and a Dark Heritage granted to me by the powers of the Peanut Allergy (Don’t ask), and for a while, I was stressing out (again) a great deal about my typically preconceived notions about what a Rouge DPS class should be doing and when, worrying about not pulling my weight, etc. CoX catches you like that, if you’re a game hopper like me; none of the Archetypes are quite what you think.

After a fair bit of stressing at the futility of being the only stealth class in a gang of insanely indiscriminate AoE fireflingers and absolutely berserk AoE melee monsters, I eventually just thought, what the hell, and indeed, if you can’t beat them, join them. There wasn’t a huge amount of finesse, to be frank, but I stopped worrying and had a jolly good time anyway. The lesson of CoX, if there is one to be had at all, is probably one of Release…

Last week saw us start a rather ambitious go at the first Strike Force, (which you can read about in detail in the previous CoH category, sidebar). It went well enough, but is probably a mutli-session thing really, during which you can’t leave the group, so to occupy myself, I’m alting, already. This time, its a Dominator, with Mind Control/Psionic Assault, powers derived from the terrifying force of Indecision!

Yet again, I find myself caught off guard by the way they seem to have taken A Standard MMO Class Type, in this case the Enchanter, and gone absolutely overboard with it. Within about five levels, I seem to have gained enough powers, and such potent powers at that, to ensure that in a typical solo fight of my own level, the enemies never get a chance to actually attack me. Sleep, stun, hold, confuse…the poor buggers never know what’s happening until its all over. Muah!

It seems a subtle class, so I’m interested to see how it’ll function when the rest of the rather…blunt League of Evil turn up and start having at it, but the grouping mechanisms are so good, it would be rude not to use them as much as possible. I’m even thinking of taking ‘Leadership’ power pool picks, in a rather uncharacteristic ‘team-player’ move. Still, what self-respecting Evil Genius is without a vast array of eccentric henchmen?

Looking forward to the ‘Architect’ player content mission building things to come, and the Halloween Zombie Apocalypse events, and apparently, there’s a whole load of time travel stuff I’ve not even found yet. Probably going to be a keeper for quite some time, I think.

Just as the ugly spectre of relentless grinding for xp begins to raise it’s head in earnest in City of Villains, a Winter Event! Huzzah! I must admit I wasn’t expecting the levels to slow down quite as suddenly as they appear to have done in the Rogue Isles, despite anecdotal evidence to support it all. I’m now level 27, and am perhaps playing two sessions a week, and things really do seem to be Getting Serious now, and CoX seems, to me at least, to be very much an MMO of The Old School.

Perhaps it is just me with my massively altered expectations of what constitutes a good session in an MMO, post-WoW, but it does get a bit dispiriting putting in a good few hours and not really seeing much in the way of tangible progress. Has the XP bar moved? I can’t tell! Perhaps I’m just a lightweight these days.

Mind you, when I signed up for Supervillainy, I didn’t quite realise that taking over the world would entail physically overpowering everyone on it, one at a time, with my fists! I thought there’d be Evil Plans and Doomsday Devices!

Just as the prospect of punching another warehouse full of Longbow Agents into vague but insincere submission had me on the verge of beating my own face a bit, for variety, suddenly, there’s a Father Time that needs help, and Presents spawning everywhere. I poked at one a bit and got jumped by three snow monsters for my trouble. Kick ‘em in da snowballs!

Father Time is waiting for help, in the typically abandoned ‘Pocket D’ Super-Nightclub zone. A strictly social space, this club allows both Heroes and Villains to visit, and seems largely ignored by both. Not so today, and a new alpine looking door whisks you across to one of the more surreal places I’ve seen in an MMO, a floating, er, ski slope, suspended in the pinkish infinite space of the ‘Pocket D’ pocket dimension. It has a chalet, ski instructors, log fires, and a number of bars.

It also has a complete ski course, marked out with stripey poles, and the whole thing is on quite steep snow and ice, which causes your character to skid quite severely, and adopt a kind of surfing/snowboarding pose. Right back during the free trial I particularly enjoyed one specific mission, to kill ‘Frostfire’, a thug boss of some sort in The Hollows, and in there, was a room with an icy half-pipe, which had similar properties, and had various team members standing around impatiently while I went berserk in a most childish manner on the small scrap of ice.

Well, this ski slope is much bigger, and has badges for doing the route in fast times, badges which I failed miserably to qualify for the most part of the night. There’s a definite skill to be learned there, getting used to the sudden and different way you move as you hurtle down the slopes, and eventually, I managed a Bronze Medal. Yay me! Silver and gold are going to be a lot more difficult, and take a bit of practice, I think, but there’s a few weeks left yet.

I’ve yet to formulate an Evil Plan to Take Over the World using skis, but the Ear Muffs do look rather fetching.

Father Time himself needs help. Apparently, his son, Baby New Year, has been kidnapped by evil elves, and unless Father Time can hand on his, er, mojo to Baby New Year, time will stop, in defiance of everything ever taught to me by school Physics teachers, Donnie Darko, and Dr Who. I’m in no position to criticise, I suppose – I just got a bronze medal for skiing down a floating piste in a pocket dimension, found via a sidedoor door in a nightclub!

The mission was fairly straightforward, although did have an Elite Boss at the end, which needed a bit of help to swat. The reward was on of four badges, along with costume part unlocks (v. important!) and Temporary Powers. If I do the thing three more times, I can have the other three too!

Out in world, looting spawning present boxes can give you Candy Cane salvage parts, which can be take to the Chalet to be crafted into all sorts of other interesting bits and pieces, including seasonal rewards from previous years, which is a nice touch.

All in all, a nice change of pace and scene, in a game that is starting to show ominous signs of settling into a very routine experience indeed…

Sirens’ Call is something of an education, I’ve decided. Well, putting it another way, I went to Siren’s Call, and got schooled, big-time. My previous impressions of PvP in City of Various were largely based on tentative and furtive forays into Bloody Bay, a rather quiet zone much of the time, and despite it becoming a bit of a second home for my Stalker, I’d only actually been in a fight there once, and that by prior appointment. Actually stumbling across, and ambushing, a roving Superhero is a generally unlikely proposition, and in the end I just took to using it as a change of scenery to Cap Au Diable, for exclusively PvE work.

I think the place has several problems that combine to make it a poor choice of venue for a fight. Firstly, Bloody Bay is just so big! It feels comparable in size to Cap Au Diable, and possibly The Hollows, although I’m less familiar with Heroside. This makes random and chance encounters a rare thing to begin with. Much of the island is the tall dense Rogue Isles Townhouse style of architecture, canopied and dense forest, or tangled industrial – all of which is quite tricky to navigate through at street-level, and very easy to hide in, even without some form of stealth.

This is compounded by the fact that the very first and easiest PvE Mission in the place, (Patrol Bloody Bay), gives you a 30 minute temporary stealth power, no matter what Archetype you are, meaning that everyone can be invisible if they choose. Also, by the time you’re allowed in the place, Level 15, most if not all players have one of the four travel powers, (Super Speed, Super Jump, Flight or Teleport), meaning that everyone travels very fast, so even if you do glimpse an orange (enemy) playername flash past, they’re gone before you can stop your own breakneck dashing about.

It also has a quite harsh ‘downscaling’ effect on most players, bumping everyone up or down to L25. In doing so, it strips you of all the powers and enhancement slots that you gained after that level, potentially removing powers that many players will have come to rely on – several of the more powerful L20+ Power Pool choices in particular – Stamina, and the like. It means that unless your character has been grown from creation with L25 in mind as an optimum, with the very specific choices you will need at that level all bought in the correct sequence – a ‘Bloody Bay Character’ in effect, the whole experience is likely to just annoy. It does not give you bonus power choices if you are below L25 at the time of entry.

All in all, not a popular zone, and most people only go there in small groups to restock the Summon Shivan power, as our own little gang on hoodlums did this week. They’re a handy thing to have in reserve for the harder normal missions, or Strike Force assignments.

Siren’s Call is the next PvP zone up, pegged at L30, (L20 minimum entry) and seems a whole different ball-game, and a great deal more popular, with 10-20 players in the place, compared to Bloody Bay’s ‘Just me then’. It does seem to address a lot of the above problems, but not all. For a start, the map seems to work a lot better. Its a Heroes’ ‘home game’, taking place in a district of Paragon City, with the Villains trying to make a beachhead. The map is essentially a broad L-shaped corridor, with a base at either end. Head toward the other base and you’re bound to come across an enemy or two.

The place still has it’s fair share of PvE Assist missions, the same ones as in Bloody Bay, mostly revolving around trashing Longbow/Arachnos bases in instanced doorways, to give zonewide buffs to your side and zonewide debuffs to theirs. There seems to be some kind of larger scale PvE battling to be had outside, to vie for control of the zone overall, and open access to shops and such, but there isn’t anything like the Shivan Strike, and it’s supreme usefulness in the larger PvE game. What goes on in Siren’s Call stays in Siren’s Call, and this seems to attract the more dedicated PvP types, rather than PvE tourists looking for an edge. This all means the level of competition is quite a bit higher, and most, if not all of the participants are in fact Level 50 folks, who have repsecced themselves to have the ‘Correct’ powers, and in the correct order for a L30 downgrading.

And then in wanders hapless carebear me! I’m not actually level 30 yet, being bumped up for the duration of the visit, and meaning that I didn’t lose any of the powers I already had, and somewhat naively assumed that I, an Invisible Backstabbing Ambush Class, would be ideally suited to PvP. I came for the change of scenery, and to do a few of the Buff Villains Missions, and thought I’d have a go at the actual killing.

Of course the first problem was the classic ‘I Think I’m Invisible, When In Fact…’ faux pas. It was like a bad sit-com! I’d be doing that exaggerated creeping thing in a quite comical manner, sniggering probably, secure in my blanket of boiling darkness, approaching the defenceless Superhero loitering idly at the intersection, when BAM! They casually turn around and drop the old Snare/Stun/Sleep/Nuke combo on my actually quite visible indeed thankyouverymuch ass. I passed it off as a fluke, but after a number of these, it turns out that in fact every single Hero in the place has, quite wisely, opted for the Leadership: Tactics optional power, which acts as some kind of See Invisible type of thing. Well, it makes sense I guess; the Bad Guys have Invisible People with Backstab Powers! You’d have to be a Bit Thick not to take that if you’re doing PvP more than once, ever.

It then turns out, that to get the really quite important and necessary feature of my chosen class back – Not Being Seen – I need to get the ‘Invisibl-er’ power, to make me Invisibler! Invisible is not a binary state in CoX PvP, and in fact uses some kind of pointage system. Of course being PvP professionals, they are likely to all have the basic Concealment: Stealth power too, making them ALL Stalkers, to an extent, only with Survivability if they are detected, a luxury I need to work on a great deal more.

If I take the basic stealth power, however, it will somehow stack with my own Stalkerishness, making me More Stalkery Than People Who Aren’t Stalkers, again, with any luck, putting me back at the forefront of the ‘Invisibl-est’ Arms Race. Unless there is some kind of ‘Percept-ier’ type of power I am unaware of that will make me visible to them all again. Ho hum.

Visibility wasn’t the only sore point mind you, and all the troubles I had with the Air Pirate mission came back with a vengeance too. I am a melee class, and require physical contact with my prey to do damage. Given that everyone in the place has one of the four travel powers, this is Quite Tricky to pull off. If you think bunny-hopping is a problem in FPS games, imagine the hilarity that ensues when you give them all a 75ft high bunny-hop. These monkeys were bouncing around all over the place! I’d stab one, if they’d just…stay…still…a minute!

One of my chosen powers is Teleport: Teleport Foe, a handy prerequisite to my own travel power, Teleport. Using this, I can -YOINK!- unsuspecting enemies into fist range, and this was indeed working as advertised. Unfortunately, I hadn’t quite thought my cunning plan all the way through and one of two things would happen next – neither of which involves a Hospitalised Superhero and World Conquering Supervillain. In most cases, after an initial split-second of confusion, most of them simply mash the space-bar and jump 75ft up into the air, coming down two or three city blocks away – somewhat out of range of my devastating Fist-O-Doom assault. They usually start shooting fireballs at me at that point. Or Ice. Or sodding great rocks. Or photocopiers, burnt out cars and Second World War Shipping Mines. Or… You get the idea.

The rarer alternative is that they just turn round and punch me in the face so hard that I lose motor function and quite possibly, bladder control too! Stunned, I can then only watch as my Stalker is beaten unconscious in with none of my pesky defensive toggle abilities getting in the way. Nap time! I should really look into getting a Stun, Fear, Hold, Immobilse, Sleep, ANYTHING! of my own. And something that protects me from Stuns, Fears, Holds, Immobilises, Sleeps or ANYTHINGs too. And some kind of ranged attack that hits further than arms length. And maybe the Super Jump Power. Starting a complete new and separate PvP Corruptor Alt, in other words.

My own special effect, ‘-Accuracy’ is perhaps less useful, given that pretty much everyone slots every power with 3x +Accuracy asap. I mean what good is the rest of the power’s effect if you can’t hit with it in the first place?

Teleporting as a Travel Power for PvP also leaves much to be desired. The control method is a bit fiddley, for a start, which isn’t what you need while under pressure. You have to activate the skill, then angle the camera to look where you want to go, then place the glowing ring cursor where you want to TP to go, then click, then wait for a half-second or so while it charges up, then wait for a half-second at the other end as it charges down, and repeat.

In that time, Super Jumpers are awaaaaay – Mash Spacebar For Great Altitude! I thought that perhaps being able to TP in a random direction would help throw enemies off the scent, but it doesn’t actually untarget you, and as in most MMO PvP, aiming is not used. It takes at least two TP hops to get far enough away to break this ‘lock’, and their bolts of ice/fire/rocks/spinach/acid home in with unerring accuracy during this panickey escape. A useful PvP travel power needs to be fast and simple to operate, and Super Jumping and Super Speed seemed to be the favourites.

Superior Mobility is a cornerstone of successful PvP in any game, increasing your own, decreasing theirs, and with everyone using either of those powers, the whole dynamic of the place is hectic to the extreme, and far more fluid and fast-paced than in many MMOs – very little duking it out here; it’s all rapid skirmishing. Blink and you’ll miss it!

Superior Numbers is another cornerstone, and very much in evidence here. Strangely though, it has seemed to be the Villains that have the numerical edge the majority of times I’ve been there. While I, personally, may suck, and offer easy kills for bored Heroes, the Villain ‘Regulars’ generally seem to have the numbers in the place, loitering near the Hero base and waiting for the Heroes to sally forth. Mind you, it doesn’t take many Heroes to drive off the large collection of thugs arrayed against them if they organise a bit, and one outing saw the same two or three Heroes beating upward of ten Villains about the place in an almost comically casual manner. Turned out that they had an ‘Really Very Invisible Indeed!’ Healer type (Empathy Defender?) that none of us could find, making them more or less immortal. And a huge number of Stun powers! That and we were adhering to the Holywood Villain Convention, of only attacking the Heroes one at a time, which while fair, probably wasn’t helping.

So much I don’t know! It really is the deep end, trying to take part in Siren’s Call, and in the end I figured I’d be the most help just doing the Longbow base wrecking PvE instance missions, to help our side with buffs instead. Still, I did somehow manage to score a kill of my own. It was less diabolical planning and brutal efficiency, and more an eight Villain ‘All Pile On!’ gang-bang on some hapless tourist Superhero who seemed as clueless as me, and I happened to get the last hit in. Still, that’s one more toward the ‘I’m a Psychopath, Get Me Out Of Here!’ Badge. Woot!

Clearly, PvP in CoX is like many MMO PvP systems, largely about The Stats, and The Build, but Visibility, Mobility and Numbers play significant parts too. I expect a little research will turn up a generally accepted ‘best’ template for doing the above kind of high-jinks, a Template which is no doubt, a far cry from the ideal sort of powers and choices needed for optimum PvE work. That I’m even in there on my ‘first go’ through the levels is probably asking for trouble, and the better plan will be to finish the journey to Level 50, the ‘real game’, and then relax and play about with respecs and tweaks, PvP and Raids, with all the options now at my disposal.

Still, it cost me nothing but shattered self-esteem, a deep sense of worthlessness and enormous personal shame, and made for an interesting alternative to the day-to-day! I just need to have realistic expectations about the place and not expect to actually get anywhere, without a lot of practice, preparation and most of all, dedication to the sub-game at hand. Mind you, if I can actually manage to stay successfully hidden, it does all make for quite entertaining viewing, if nothing else!

Last week saw all sorts of fun and games, as under the direction of the Silver Mantis, a highly-placed Arachnos nutcase, our highly ambitious and mostly competent gang of Supervillains were sent on caper after caper, all with the express and cumulative effect of throwing a whole toolbox of spanners into the workings of the Sky Raiders.

This airborne company of guns for hire had clearly trodden on the wrong toes in the largely Arachnos dominated Rogue Isles, and have elaborate plans to become far too powerful for their own good. These plans mostly consist of a very optimistic series of raids on the various other Supervillain factions of the Isles, and stealing their stuff, in particular, the things that make them all super in the first place. With all these different powers, the Sky Raiders may indeed become powerful enough to confront the Arachnos, and so using the medium of our Secret Base’s Oracle/Soup Cauldron/Answerphone, (seen below), the Mantis sends us out to disrupt and destroy, a calling that we tend to fall into quite naturally!

The Cafeteria of Evil

(The Control Room at our luxurious five-star Secret Base, Bar and Grill. Its done out in a bijou ‘Arcane’ style, with so many blood-red lighting effects that it becomes difficult to tell if your eyes are actually bleeding, or if it just seems like it, without touching your face! The Oracle cauldron itself, centre, is a deep green colour which provides a pleasing contrast and attractive talking point! Probably needs more purple scatter cushions and some rag-rolling. I fully expect an Evil Insurrection, and base remodeling to the ‘Tech’ scheme, any day now, but I’m watching those treacherous maggots like a hawk!)

Ahem!

We’d done most of the hard work last week, completing the first five missions out of six in the Pirates of the Sky Strike Force, and reconvened, ready to take on the final challenge; mission six, in which a certain Sky Raider Colonel learns not to get ideas above his station. The plan is a simple one; we stow away aboard a container ship at Sharkhead Isle, wait for it to get to the Sky Raider’s secret offshore base, and then proceed to take the place apart and give everyone aboard a terrific mauling!

Crusin’

Here we are, perhaps not taking things as seriously as we ought to, lounging on deck as we wait for the S.S. Sky Raider Loot Express to depart. Needs more deck-chairs. We are contractually obliged to point out, at this stage, that our Brute, centre, does in no way resemble The Thing! He has a scarf on for a start, and any resemblance is merely a coincidental side effect of the SG Uniform Colour choices; a settable alternate colour scheme that lets SG members all coordinate on outings like ours. Fabulous!

Once aboard and underway, the first job is to bust out of the container ship. This is a mini instance using a tile set I’d seen before, but which works very well indeed; the Container Ship Interior. Designed to look like you’re working your way along the interior of a super-tanker’s hull, this is one of the more memorably types for me. Its roomy, logical and still made interesting with the addition of scattered towers of crates and containers. Large and believable bulkheads separate the whole into sectional ‘rooms’, and enemies lurk behind, and indeed on top of, these crates.

In this case it was more of the Sky Raider groups; Engineers with the Forcefield Generators, flamethrower types, teleporters and the officers as well. A useful and welcome warm-up exercise that still saw one of two of us knocked out as we all tried to find our stride again. I don’t know about the others, but I only tend to pop into CoV once or twice a week on average, so hitting it ‘cold’ like this does make me a bit stiff and it takes a good few fights to get the hang of it all again. Same with my weekly Guild Wars sessions too – the first few fights will always go badly.

Once through this area, we arrive at a door at the far end, and leap through to discover that while we were busy, the ship has arrived. Standard sort of thing, oil tanker deck, no land in sight, lounging goons…and then you look up…

The ship is moored beneath the legs of a towering oil-rig like structure, with many levels, gantries, platforms and the like. An alarming number of very large gun emplacements cover the thing, and in the skies all around the place hover Sky Raider troops – literally in mid-air. The place is essentially a fortress, and is going to take a lot of work to climb.

We made a start on the nearest goons, with me using Teleport Foe to try and bring the flying troopers down to the deck of the ship where we could administer a sound thrashing, but it very quickly became apparent that here was something fairly unique; a properly three-dimensional mission, more akin to movement and fighting in EVE Online than any more usual MMO – the buggers would be swooshing up and down, back and forth, in and out, and this all made life extremely difficult for ground-bound, melee-ranged me.

Like everyone who knows remotely what they’re doing with CoX characters, I planned ahead and got a Travel Power at L14. I went with Teleporting, mostly because it sounded interesting. The other three members of Strike Force Scalpel all went with Super Jumping as their means of getting about, and neither of these are a lot of use for Air-to-Air combat, frankly. The two Corruptors were okay though, both having a variety of targetable ranged attacks which don’t especially care what direction the target is in, just how far away. Life for me and the Brute was more fraught. Being the huge aggro magnet that Brutes are by nature, meant that the enemy was quite often coming close enough for the Brute to just continue smashing away as usual, but being invisible, and largely built around my backstab meant I have to go to them.

Luckily, a previous line of work on Cap Au Diable meant I still had a Goldbricker Rocket Pack temporary power, so was able to take to the skies myself. Without that, the Raptor Pack available form one of the early Mayhem Missions or just Flight as a power choice, I’m not sure I’d have been any help at all in the largely air-based hijinks that followed. Anyway wings acquired I then spent a lot of the subsequent fighting trying to fly close enough to the hovering riflemen to actually make contact with my fists – delicate maneuvering which I really need to go away and practice a bit!

Mind you, despite the rocket pack sounding like a small helicopter, and belching out clouds of smoke, I was still able to remain Stealthed Up which helped a bit. Even so, while I did manage one or two spectacular (if I do say so myself) Air-to-Air Backstabbings, mostly while humming 633 Squadron (its that kind of mission), it was the others that carried the day, with their ranged attacks and the Brute’s frightening raw Fury-Enhanced damage output obliterating any rocketmen that were foolish enough to come close enough to the ground. Hectic stuff, which only got worse when we started on up the structure of the rig itself.

In addition to the swarms of rocketmen, and rather obvious and powerful large caliber deck guns festooning the thing on every corner, it was also equipped with some kind of nerve-gas launching missile batteries, and worst of all, scores of ‘invisible until you go near’ pop-up anti-personnel machine-gun turrets, on pretty much every goddamned pillar! The entire time on the rig was largely spent under a withering hail of gunfire, which we had to struggle to keep on top of. Each time we moved into melee range of one set of guns, we’d trigger the next set along; all the while, trying to swat flying shock troopers. Harshness!

Thinking back, I do wonder why we didn’t all jet-pack up, fly far above it all, and and try attacking the fortress from above, instead of the laborious attrition of trying to climb the thing. Oh well! One nice touch was the fire; the more turrets we blew up, the more flames started sprouting from the structure, lending a real ‘action’ feel to the endeavor, and by the time we reached the helipads on the roof, the whole structure was mostly ablaze. On the down side, it turns out that it is rather difficult to remain Hidden, while actually On Fire.

Once on the roof, Colonel Duray arrives to see what the noise is. He’s an Archvillain grade boss, and takes quite a beating – purple difficulty (The one after red) and in addition to god knows what other powers, is able to call in killer robot minion support, which rather took us all by surprise. Before we knew what was going on he’d killed two of us and the full-party wipe wasn’t far behind. Damnit.

One trip back from Hospital later, we got back to the oil rig fortress roof, to find it deserted. No sign of Duray, so we finished off the remaining turrets and goons. Still no sign, and by now the whole structure is looking decidedly rickety. We split up to scout about and found him, waaaaay over the far side of the map, hovering above a wrecked oil tanker that we thought was just scenery, along with another pack of the more standard flying henchmen.

As Archimedes says, ‘Give me a place to stand and I will move the Earth’, which is the basic problem with this mission in a nutshell and lucky for us, Duray and Co are hovering about two feet above the deckhouse of the wrecked container ship, making the ensuing fight a LOT more conventional, and doable as it turned out. I’d run out of Shivan Destroyers, but two of the big friendly blue goo monsters were called in to help, which was only fair – Duray had robots! Some frantic pummeling later, Duray hits the deck, and we are victorious! He’s not so bad if you can get him on the ground, and without fifteen turrets of varying bore firing at you as well…

Wish You Were Here!

The perfect end to the perfect day – gray storm clouds, lots of things on fire, and everyone beaten senseless! A true postcard moment. The fortress, right, is quite far in the distance there, and pleasingly aflame. We did that! We did leave a few Raiders alive (left), but then if you kill everyone, there is nobody left to spread the tales of how terrifying one is! Evil 101, that is.

Its a fun map, but grueling. The rig/fortress features in a couple of places; the above Strike Force, the last mission of the Lt. Chalmers Story Arc, or just out in the sea to the south end of the Sharkhead Isle map. The Chalmers version also features similar insane Air-to-Air combat too, this time vs Longbow Eagle units, and an Elite Boss, so bring a group! Air-to-Air Melee is really quite hard work, but something I’m going to have to get the hang of, I think.

The Strike Force in general seemed somewhat easier than the first one; Tarikoss, with less in the way of hugely difficult boss mobs and more variety with the enemies faced. The last map was genius though, and well worth putting the 2-3 hours of work to get to. And of course there’s a badge; ‘Air Pirate’:

Air Pirate

The Silver Mantis was suitably pleased with the mayhem we’d caused, and the status quo is restored, with the Sky Raiders put well and truly back in their place. Life continues on the Rogue Isles, as ever it did. For now…

After a few weeks of general purpose low-grade villainy, (and almost universal obsession with cake…), our little gang of Villains, so recently thwarted in our attempts to usher in an age of demon-fueled apocalypse, have at last got a new gig! This comes in the form of the second of five Strike Force chained story missions, The Pirates of the Sky. A tricky thing to sort out, as it isn’t just a case of strolling up to the usual NPC and going ‘HAI! I CAN HAZ LOLCATACLYSM?’, as you do.

No, for this one, you need a Mission Computer, or Oracle. And to have those, you need a Supergroup Base, which needs a Control Room, with a Mainframe or Mystic Axis. All of this of course, requires a Supergroup, so I’m not quite sure what you’re meant to do if you’re a pathologically sullen loner, as I usually am in these games – skip this one entirely I guess.

The base is free, and requires only that you have an SG at all, but the various extra rooms and items that go in it, cost Prestige, a kind of secondary currency earned by members of an SG while in ‘Supergroup Mode’, at the cost of potential ‘Infamy’ earnings – the personal currency used for the Black Market. We’d had a bit of a head start, in the form of a free bonus payout of Prestige given to the SG whenever we sign on new members, so a variety of alts ended up in the group, although I’d like to think this was mostly just us all wanting to try out different archetypes, rather than an outright exploitation of the sign-on bonuses. A large portion of the required prestige was actually earned properly though. I forget the exact total, but it’s somewhere around 200,000 Prestige needed to get the basics up and running, to the level where the second Strike Force becomes available, aimed at four or more players, level 20-25.

To get the Mission Computer or Oracle (Two items, one ‘Tech’ style and one ‘Arcane’ style which both do the same thing), you then have to build it, using Base Salvage, and a Forge workshop item, (or it’s Tech equivalent). I’d set up a communal storage rack for this salvage, so everyone could contribute, but to be honest, the necessary junk is so cheap and plentiful on the Black Market that its no real hardship just to go shopping for it all if you want to get on with it all in a hurry.

A novel system, if a bit grindey, which allows everyone to contribute toward the end goal, and it even makes the otherwise largely cosmetic Secret Base Playset Guildhall relevant to gameplay somewhat. There are all sorts of other bits and pieces for the base, although many of them are PvP Raid specific, an aspect of the game which isn’t of huge interest to me, and is apparently broken anyway.

Anyway, we finally managed to build, place, power and control an Oracle, the Arcane variant of the required item, which looks a lot like a large cauldron of soup – curried broccoli or pea & ham, I’d say, although I suspect drinking out of it would be both heretical, and fatal. This object now acts as a dialogue driven ‘NPC’ of sorts, with two options. First is the now-defunct opportunity to visit the Cathedral of Pain and steal an Item of Power, the reason Hero Supergroups would want to visit your base and destroy it, and you; no thanks! Seems this place was broken, and contains an exploit that functioned as some kind of 1-50 Insta-Level Button. Oops!

The second is a message from the Silver Mantis, an extremely psychopathic bint who is the right-hand woman of the Black Scorpion, an Arachnos Bigwig of Great Prominence. She has work for us that will greatly improve our position in the incestuous and treacherous society of the Rogue Isles, and the murderous Arachnos Empire itself.

Also in the Rogue Isles, there is a lesser organisation known as the Sky Raiders. A kind of paramilitary mercenary outfit, noted for the extensive use of their characteristic jetpacks and ‘sky-skiff’ light fighter craft. These flyboys, like many other gangs, factions, cabals and corps, are permitted by Arachnos to go about their business on the Isles, as long as they don’t get too big for their boots, or present any kind of real threat to Lord Recluse’s power.

Lately however, the Sky Raiders have been getting more daring and organised, and have overstepped the mark, with a planned series of audacious thefts, which if successful, would make them more than a minor annoyance to Arachnos, and upset the evil status quo of the Isles. The Silver Mantis, using her bowl of mystic gazpacho, has recruited us to put the Sky Raiders back in their place. Our newly formed punishment squad was designated ‘Strike Force Scalpel’, and off we went! This soup will self-destruct in five seconds…

The first act of brutality…er… ‘prevenge’? involves foiling their own raid on the Tsoo, a very oriental inspired group of martial artists, samurai, mystic sorcerers and spiritual ancestors. Their big Super Villain ‘thing’ is magical tattoos which give the inscribed all manner of abilities more commonly associated with life-changing lab accidents involving Baryon Radiation, Mutated Meercat Bites and the like. The ink makes them a Force for Awesome, and the Sky Raiders, normally a very technological bunch, are desperate enough to dabble in this magical source of power.

Our job is to hit the same Tsoo warehouse base that the Sky Raiders are, at the same time, and kick an indiscriminate amount of backside, destroying both sides of the conflict, and while we’re at it, Silver Mantis would quite like us to kidnap a couple of the Tsoo Tattoo Artists as well, for study, examination, and most likely, dissection.

A fairly standard kind of mission layout – the ‘Warehouse’ tileset, decorated with a few oriental knickknacks. A quite difficult mission however, with a great many souped-up versions of the factions involved; Sky Raiders that had a nasty habit of teleporting about the place with a great deal more accuracy than I can, Sky Raider Engineers that kept deploying AoE Forcefield generators, making the smackdowns a lot more time consuming, and some Sky Raider officers who were simply very tough indeed.

The Tsoo were the real problem in this mission though; the Sorcerers teleport and do all sorts of crazy AoE storm stuff, and almost all of their rank and file seemed to be capable of stuns, temporarily holding us in place, and most crucially for myself and the Brute Dude, turning our large number of very necessary ‘toggle’ defence powers off, making us easy targets, and in my case, removing my crucial invisibility. I’m far too fragile for head-on fist fights! A particularly troublesome over-aggro near the end even caused a team wipe at one point.

An extra, ahem, “challenge”, came in the form of our Kinetics/Ice Dude and their new fun power, ‘Speed Boost’. More on Kinetics, and what glee it is here, but from the ‘Customer’ perspective, frankly, it’s a bugger, and I swear our Kinetics Dude knows this! It is indeed a great buff, offering faster power recharge and improved endurance regen – both immensely useful for a Stalker Dude like myself. It also comes with a suitable balancing “downside” – it massively increases your foot-speed. Runbuffs are helpful, to a point, and then simple things like Walking Through Doorways, Using Stairs and similar all become Quite Difficult. Quite lucky my invisibility prevented my out of control skidding about the place form aggroing every group I tried to walk near! Add to that the fact that our Brute Dude has a rolling ‘rage’ bar powering their damage, positively encouraging rampaging, and all the missions last night were extremely hectic affairs, conducted mostly on the seat of our pants, the edge of reason, boundaries of common sense, and the far side of, er, knowing what the hell was going on, most of the time!

We triumphed though, just about, and it was on to the next job. The Sky Raiders second heist was against The Lost, a band of sewer-dwelling Super-Homeless, with an understandably bad attitude. City of… is a dangerous place – even the bums have super powers! They’re running some kind of hospital where they patch up their troops with bizarre and probably quite unregulated Alien Medicines. The Sky Raiders are out to steal those, so we’re out to stop them, and steal the stuff for our evil Mantis friend, thus royally screwing all parties concerned. Evil; It’s What’s For Dinner!

The Lost aren’t so bad as an enemy really, mostly consisting of Mutant Dude With A Gun, and Mutant Dude With A Sharp Thing, although you do have to watch out for the Mutant Dude With Mind Powers, who can paralyze you if left alive too long. Making those ‘Primary’ tends to stop that foolishness before it begins though, and despite the same difficulties with advanced Sky Raider types, we pulled off the theft quite satisfactorily.

Number three was a visit to the trashes offices of Freakshow, another super-powered gang of thugs. Their powers come from extensive and spikey cybernetical doohickeys, massive amounts of really quite dubious narcotics, and the music of the mid-seventies Punk Era. The Sky Raiders are out to plunder as much of this as possible, so we’ve to, well, trash everyone really, and never mind the b*ll*cks! Apparently there are also a number of Sonic Bombs on the premises, which are quite dangerous, to the point that even Arachnos doesn’t allow the lesser gangs to have them, so Mantis is sending us in there (huh?), to destroy them (what?!) while were at it.

Usual kind of thing to start; advanced Sky Raider troops to deal with, along with the Freakshow Dudes, whose Annoying Superpower is the ability to self heal, and the ability raise fallen comrades from the dead! Grr! Its like pushing down bubbles under wallpaper, honestly! I’m not quite sure what happened next however, but we’d found the first sonic bomb, and neutralised it by the delicate expedient of pummeling it, shooting it with bolts of darkness, and raining shards of ice on it, until it stopped humming, (which is a good sign, right?), and then all hell broke lose.

City of … makes generous use of the Ambush – the scripted sudden arrival of extra thugs after carrying out key points of a mission – stealing the item, rescuing the hostage, and so on. Destroying the bomb set one of these of, but my god… they just… kept… coming… Literally dozens of Freakshow Dudes, in twos and threes, in an almost continual stream of carnage. We just about kept on top of it, with only a few KOs and no team wipes, and by the time things had calmed down a bit, and we could take in our surroundings, we’d somehow beaten our way back through the entire map, to the entrance again! Huh! Tricky stuff, but exactly what CoX is all about – not carefully balanced encounters versus one monster of equal or slightly less power than yourself, but dozens of disposable goons falling beneath your super powers!

Next is a Council base. The Council are a very big organisation, a kind of paramilitary army of evil, shock troops, uniforms, all that. They and Arachnos Do Not Get On however, and the Sky Raiders, trying subtlety this time, are trying to negotiate the purchase of some of the Council’s Vampire Machines. The Council have invented machinery that turns people in the vampires, in defiance of thousands of years of collected vampire folklore which all broadly agrees that it doesn’t quite work like that. Don’t look at me…I just work here!

Anyway, this turned out to be a quite complex map, lots of jumping down holes, fixed gun emplacements, and very large multilevel rooms to get lots in, and gnarled up in the walkways thanks to the Speed Boost! Also they had Vampires! Nothing especially awkward in the enemy powers side though, and eventually we found and destroy all the mechanical coffin machines, and forcibly broke up the negotiations. Huzzah!

Then is was on to the Crey Labs. The Crey Corporation is a biotech giant of the more dubious sort, but the Mantis doesn’t really know what they’re up to, so in addition to the standard orders , (kill everyone, steal anything not nailed down, destroy everything else), she wants us to find out what the deal is. The Sky Raiders are after something in there, so it must be good.

More Sky Raider, er, Raiders on the way in, and then very quickly, we found out what it is that Crey do. In addition to the usual rent-a-cop security guard dudes, and the less usual men-in-black style enforcer dudes, we were soon being attacked by a variety of evil super-hero clones; Fire Tanker Clone, Radiation Defender Clone, etc. Turns out that during a recent war against the alien Ritki, Crey agent were busy looting the battlefield of dead superhero corpses, and Doing Science on them! Some careful Teleport-Pulling needed in the tight and multi-leveled confines of the high-tech Crey base, but one of the less tricky missions in the story overall, and once more, the Sky Raiders were foiled, and everyone bar us got the pummeling they so clearly deserved! Or didn’t. Whatever. That’s one of the nicer perks of Evil; the lack of difficult moral choices!

Having now thwarted the Sky Raiders at every turn in their quest for power and resources, the Silver Mantis now wants us to end this game of cat and mouse. Our next, and final, mission is to infiltrate the Sky Raiders’ base of operations, locate Colonel Duray, the brains of the outfit, and defeat him, pausing only to destroy the base on our way out, thus demonstrating what happens to those who cross Arachnos. The Silver Mantis is looking forward to it, but then again, she is an unbalanced sadist and dangerous psychopath. I’m quite looking forward to it too!

Can the Sky Raiders avert the wrath of Arachnos? Are their defences up to the job of repelling Strike Force Scalpel? Will I manage to get the hang of movement under the influence of Speed Boost? Will our mission-giver double-cross us at the last minute…AGAIN? Will there be more Dudes? Tune in next week to find out!