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Along with the new single player oriented zone, Cryptic is taking some hints from multiplayer first person shooters like UT 2004 and the Battlefield series with Recluse's Victory, another new zone that's for both City of Heroes and City of Villains players. This time it's all out war inside the fictional Paragon City with the heroes and villains battling out for total control.

This new Player vs Player environment is different in that like some FPS games, the players fight for control of certain points throughout the zone. As the GDC demo showed us, the players wait inside a bunker where a city grid is showing all of the control points. Once a match begins the heroes and villains battle it out in the new environment, complete with armed turrets at each control point that come under the heroes or villains control once they have established ownership of the zone. There are also spider -ike mechs in the game that can be controlled by each team, with several different classes of mechs.

There are many smaller mechs, but only three large mechs to control, so you have to be careful when and where you use them. The cool point of the battle is when it ends and one of the two sides gets a victory. If the hero side wins things should look familiar to City of Heroes players with blue skies, clean streets, and Greek-like statues depicting super heroes in Atlas Park. However, if the villains are on the winning side the environment actually changes. The blue skies turn red, the trees turn into dead stalks, and the super hero statues are turned into images of Lord Recluse. It's rare, if at all, that we get to see actual environmental changes happen on the fly in such a multiplayer conflict.

Mayhem Missions

Yet another cool addition for the City of Villains players are the new stand alone Mayhem Missions and that's exactly what they will be judging by our GDC demo. Yes, you robbed, killed and destroyed a ton of stuff in the regular game, but the Mayhem Missions makes those original quests look tame. You get to rob major banks, get extra points, fight super-powered police officers, blow up buildings by setting off bombs, and more. Of course you can get taken down by "the man" but you don't get to go to the clean and neat hospital if that happens. You go to jail. You go directly to jail. Which means of course that you can do the villain role and break yourself out. There are even mini-missions in the game where you can break out other super villains who can then join you on your quests to blow stuff up.