Friday, June 7, 2013

Marvel Heroes - Bit of fun but a bit of a letdown

First Impressions (30 minutes in)
Marvel Heroes is fun. It's odd that the loot that you equip doesn't appear on your character. It's also odd that there are 50 Hawkeyes running around the starting zone.

I dropped $20 and got to play as wolverine right away. It was sweet!

He plays like you'd think he would... Has a charge that can really help with mobility! It costs spirit, which is what we are calling Mana in the Marvel universe.

Got lucky with some early drops and for now little Wolvie's healing factor is higher HPS than any NPC DPS! Hilarity ensues.

Thought it was going to be instanced like D3 but found an MMO style PVE zone packed full of mobs... Saw Thor running about messing stuff up. SWEET! Still a lot of Hawkeyes though!

Impressions after day 1 (10 hours)
Played it for about 10 hours yesterday. Check it out cause it's free but I don't think it's going to change face of gaming. The monetization is too "IN-YO-FACE!"

This is exemplified by some interesting items in their store, you can spend REAL money to buy a stacking buff to Treasure Find. So you can gamble actual currency for an increased chance to acquire better in game items! A CHANCE! You can't just buy the items you have to gamble with real money.

First epic item that dropped was a weapon for Spiderman. But to equip it I would need to buy Spiderman for $15... So you get the OOOH PURPLE ITEM rush... Then realise you have to spend actual currency to feel the warm glow that comes with equipping an Epic!

It's a shame really the core game is pretty good fun. It's Diablo after all. It's well animated and has a great frame rate. You can bash the baddies really hard and they go flying. It creates a great sense of momentum and the hours fly by as you chew through the levels. I certainly felt like my character was an OP cheeze fest from the first time I picked a skill point which is what playing as Wolverine SHOULD feel like.

But then there's the MMO style open world sections, where 5 wolverines, 4 hulks, 76 Hawkeyes and a dozen Ironmen run around killing thugs until a world boss spawns. It's not right and if I'm honest it's downright kooky!

They said it on Penny Arcade, these are 'Characters' and they've been built like they're 'Classes'. Wolverine is a warrior (or possibly a rogue), there can be many warriors (and rogues) but there's only one Wolverine.

Well there SHOULD only be one Wolverine, he runs around saying "I'm there best there is a what I do" and it kinda kills the illusions when there a 5 other identical guys running around saying the same thing while killing bloodless thugs and waiting for WOW style world bosses to spawn.

So a world boss spawns and you get a little UI element that points you at him. You begin to bash your way through the thugs till you find... Say Venom (a villain from Spiderman) he's got 50 superheroes wailing on him many of those are clones of the same superhero. The funky animations cease to make sense as the bosses health is whittled away like we've come to expect from MMOs. So after a few minutes of collective pounding, he dies and drops loot that you can only use by paying to unlock a different character.

Shes no wow killer that's for sure. The worst parts of an MMO combined with aggressive moentization make for a novel but un-fulfilling experience.

No comments:

Post a Comment