Hero or Villain: Genesis
By Adrao
Luckily, you are only around the corner from the Museum of Natural History, and you could be there in a couple of minutes. You rush toward the edge of the park, put your suit on in an alleyway, and climb the wall and jump from rooftop to rooftop to the museum.
One of my favorite MMO experiences was playing City of Heroes. There was so much variety in character creation, and I played with my brother for the longest time. I was even logged in on the day the servers shut down. My favorite memory was competing and winning the backstory competitions that other players would hold right in front of city hall. Creating characters and having them be memorable is super important. This holds true for whatever you can cobble together for the PC in interactive fiction from what the author provides.
General Story:
In this world, a hero or a villain is created through happenstance. Your powers come from a glowing meteor shard you found while on vacation. It’s up to you who you are, what your powers are, and whether you use them for good or evil.
Starting with a very stat heavy character creation, you’ll find yourself in an almost episodic story where you take on the Steel Aeronaut and your boss, Emily. If that sounds like differing levels of importance, it kinda is. Early on, you’ll balance a day job with your cape job. There are so many different threads you can follow that none of them really feel exceptionally fleshed out, so the payoff doesn’t really land. This is a game that is much more about the mechanics than the story. I will say that I was not an exceptionally big fan of the ending that was updated when the sequel came out to connect the two titles.
Quite a bit of what is included in the game is going to be familiar to anyone who consumes any type of superhero media. Some story beats seem lifted straight from the pages and movie reels we’ve all grown familiar with.
Format and Typos:
Readability suffers a little bit. There are so many variables in the code, and so many different things you can do that sometimes a screen can just feel like a list of all the things you both have and haven’t done yet.
Game Mechanics and Stats:
It’s weird. This game feels like the opposite of many of some of my favorite titles. There is so much code that the average reader will never see, so many options and variations that aren’t really woven into the game as seamlessly as it could be… but it still works. This feels almost like a simulation game for day-to-day life of a superhero. Character creation is a beast, and it all starts with one of the neatest ideas for difficulty.You create your character using a point system, and game difficulty is just ‘how many of these points do you get’? More points equals easier difficulty.
You’ll get days and evenings where you’ll decide what you are doing, which tend to be either ‘experience filler episodes’ or raise your stats.
Combat is actually tracked through HP and damage. Damage resistance, accuracy and damage dealt are all based on your stats and powers.
Some opposed personality pairs, and skills that determine effectiveness of combat or even how much you make at your civilian job.
Replayability:
This is the bread-and-butter of this title. There are so many power-sets and variations in the game (expanded with a relatively recent update). Romances aren’t exceptionally deep, but there are a few scenes here and there (sometimes it’s difficult to know if you have any chance of being successful at pursuing them, too). A lot of your options during your time off are missions that turn into side episodes. Often, you’ll need to devote multiple days to complete one of these threads.
All of this means that you’ve got a pretty much endlessly replayable title, even if it just to see the little variations that have been included in each episode and this isn’t even including the fact that you can work towards being a Hero or a Villain (ooooh, he said the title of the thing!). There are achievements that can point towards paths you haven’t taken. There are still paths I’ve never even seen in the game, and I’ve probably put in at least 30 hours into the game since I originally played it.
Dislikes:
- Wide as a comic book story arc, shallow as a comic book page.
- If you aren’t interested in stats, the story here isn’t much more than what you’d expect from the Super Friends in the 80’s.
- Mind powers introduce some moral quandaries. This is on brand for those powers, but it is worth mentioning.
Likes:
- So many different options during setup, it almost feels like a character creation session with a superhero-themed tabletop RPG like Champions.
- Difficulty being attached to how powerful your character is just makes so much sense in a world with superheroes.
- So much content. You’ll have to play a lot to see every path and variation.