City of Heroes Gets Visual Upgrade

By Kevin Parrish
published

The super-hero MMORPG is getting a face-lift in the next update.

A few years ago when I worked at Billy Wilson's non-VE gaming site, NCSoft offered me a six month press pass to City of Heroes. That had to be one of the best games I've played in a long time. Who wouldn't like to play a super hero? with that said, there's no question as to why the MMORPG is still around.

Now it seems that NCSoft is revamping the visuals (aka Ultra Mode) in the next update called Issue 17, "Dark Mirror." Slated for this April, the company is not only throwing in a revamped graphics rendering process, but other goodies such as improvements to the Mission Architect, enhancements to UI and game systems, new badges, new missions, new emotes, and more.

For more info, head here. Haven't checked out the super-powered MMORPG? Go have a trial run.

Kevin Parrish
17 Comments Comment from the forums
  • brett1042002
    Played this game for like a month... was over it. Character creation is excellent. Questing was terribad. Maybe it is better now... maybe not. I didn't stick around to find out.
    Reply
  • So, good thing they put an "Ultra Mode" stamp on the enhanced pic so we could tell which one is supposed to have the better graphics.
    Reply
  • TheDuke
    you can barely make out any difference in that picture besides the water and I think shadows
    Reply
  • mickey21
    Other than some better shading and more reflections, particularly in the water reflecting the monument building, there isnt much to write home about. Loved the game for the time I played it back in the day when it released, but end game was next to nonexistent at the time. I am surprised it is still around.
    Reply
  • darkknight22
    Is this a joke? I don't get it. I don't see the difference in 'ULTRA MODE'.
    Reply
  • invlem
    Doesn't make the game better... After character creation the game itself is pretty boring
    Reply
  • eklipz330
    this game is terribly optimized, i couldn't max it out on my hd 4850 and dual core... mind you, it's a very old game

    i played it for 2 1/2 years, then i quit because of school. a year or so later, i joined it back because of a free weekend... what was i thinking playing this game for so long? I guess my interests were different when i was younger..
    Reply
  • nukemaster
    Funny, the water reflections have been in the game for a while. it was kind of a glitch I noticed(with certain settings it was there). It was not right(the reflection did not move with your perspective so it was a glitch), but was there for a while.

    Last off as said above, The game engine that powers this is about the worst optimized EVER(it uses like under 50% of almost all video cards and does not even max out a dual core cpu most of the time, use it all and make it run better.). When they brought out the dual core optimization they pretty much leveled single core users to half the performance(so they actually lost performance not just giving dual core more).
    Reply
  • I've been playing 51 months. Just when I feel it is getting a little stale they throw in a new twist. Don't know if I'll stay forever, but I haven't seen anything I like better. With Mission Architect your own creativity is the only real limitation.
    Reply
  • Gin Fushicho
    Certainly looks better, but not by much , they should have focused on more then just water reflections and shading. How about maybe some new textures that take advantage of stronger cards?
    Reply