The sounds in the game are also rock solid which is good since you’ll be hearing a lot of them over and over again (especially the ones for your powers). There’s enough variety that you won’t get too bored and after a while you can actually tell which power a user is using just by the sounds. In game music is also well done and as I mentioned before each subsection of the city has it’s own distinct music that gives you a feeling of what to expect.
The gameplay does get a bit repetitive at times. For the most part, all you really do in the game is to take down bad guys of varying levels. You do this in the context of a mission or just fighting crime in general, alone or with a team. While this may not necessarily sound like a lot of fun, it’s the execution of the concept that really makes the game fun to play. You have to manage your health and endurance (when you use a power you expend endurance and while endurance re-charges after a while you can quickly deplete your endurance and be left defenseless against a group of evil doers) and if you play in a team setting you have to know what your role is to best serve your team. The game is so easy to get into and play that it’s hard to really get bummed out by some of the repetition.
Player death is handled well. This is important since you die a lot early on (at least I did). There is no penalty until you reach level five after that instead of losing experience points players take on experience debt. When you eliminate a villain, instead of gaining all of the experience, you will receive half of it and the other half pays off debt. This is a nice way to allow people to continue progressing to the next level while still paying some penalty for being defeated.
The developers have also done a marvelous job of adding cool little touches to the game. In some of the missions, the bad guys will actually call you by name or your name will be part of the clues. In one mission, I found out that it was actually a trap since the bad guys felt that I was a threat to them. Is that something really to implement or do? Not really, but it helps suck you into the game. The citizens of Paragon City are also a nice touch. You can talk to them and sometimes they’ll tell you about your latest victory or give you some statistic about the game such as the number of heroes in that part of the city or the number of times you’ve used a power today. If you rescue one of them from a mugging or ritual, they will come up and thank you, sometimes providing you with an inspiration or additional influence. The final kicker for me was that every month, you will get a comic book sent to you (if you live in the US) that provides information on the major plot lines in the city. The comic book also features some fan fiction, and if you’re lucky your, character might even be featured in the book. It’s kind of cheesy but it really does draw you that much further into the game.
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