As promised, I thought I would do a “first impressions” on Going Rogue, the latest and greatest City of Heroes paid expansion. Praetoria – the new 1-20 zone included with the expansion – is so nice looking compared to pretty much any other zone in CoH. It’s not as pretty as Millennium City from Champions Online (and I hate to compare the two), but it gets the job done. WIndows reflect the city nicely and the buildings no longer look like big grey blocks. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the game to run on Ultra settings without noticeable lag. So I’m on the setting below that with some minor adjustments. For the most part, I prefer a smooth frame rate over the best visuals, so I usually set it as balance of both.

Praetoria is easily one of my favorite zones that I’ve played in this game. It’s shiny and elegant but hides the “truth” and it’s dark flaws. Ghouls inhabit the lower areas (for reasons not yet clear to me) and these areas are often littered with the bodies of fallen Police and Resistance Members. Sadly though, out of all the missions I’ve played so far, most of them have been in one of two places: the underground, or an Apple-store like science lab. It disappointed me to see so much repetition in the instanced environments, especially at the start of the game. Luckily though, the missions are more fun than ever. They’re still “go here, enter, kill guys, find this” type missions that City of Heroes is known for, but there is much more going on this time around. The first mission alone has you helping Loyalists fend off hordes of Ghouls. I had never seen so many mobs on screen at once in an MMO, especially in City of Heroes. You’ll get ambushed upon meeting NPCs, and ghouls regularly leap out of the shadows above you.

As for choices, I really haven’t seen much of it yet. For you who don’t know, Praetoria lets you choose a side to fight for at the beginning, and you can switch over through moral decisions made between missions. Think of it like Mass Effect 2’s Paragon and Renegade system. Only here, the implementation is much deeper than just straight up “good” and “bad.” In fact, it’s hard to tell sometimes what faction in Praetoria are the good guys. That’s the genius of it. The whole loyalty concept is put to good use and leads to WTF? moments. I won’t ruin them for you, as they need to be experienced. It’s totally a Bizzaro world and really well done.

I have yet to try out the new powersets, but I am enjoying Going Rogue thus far. New starter content is what this game needs, especially for people wanting to give CoH a try and be impressed.

-Rav4ge