I deeply regret that this page of video game reviews, hosted by the Maoist Internationalist Movement, does not include any reviews of City of Heroes. One might speculate, though, from this review of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.
Knights of the Old Republic … or should we say Cossacks of the Old Republic?
Although many people have given this role playing game rave reviews in the united $tates for mostly technical reasons, even the rabid fans have admitted that it is easier to be evil in this game and that the Jedi Knights are too much more powerful than other characters. Apparently one way to “win” is to kill one’s traveling friends.
The universe of Star Wars is not unlike our own. There are the common people, and there are the “great” people. Unlike in our own world, however, the “great” people in Star Wars have their own caste of warrior slaves with special powers who, under the guise of “maintaining stability” move against any insurrection and crush any move to advance the society.
In this game, the player takes a role of one such warrior that calls him/herself a Jedi KNIGHT. The manufacturer doesn’t even try to hide the connection to the exploitative feudal system of the Middle Ages.
Actually, the Jedi are a bit creepy, but that aside.
Perhaps a review like this of CoH would work:
City of Heroes … or should we say City of Oppressors?
[…] Even as the bourgeois citizen technocrats on the street flee from the so-called evils they, themselves, have unleashed — proletariat workers trying to take purses that rightfully belong to them, sprocket “robot” workers trying to build a world of their own, organized military resistance, alien “invaders,” and those who are driven mad and descend into religious opiate ceremonies — the self-labelled (and government-sponsored) “heroes” strike back against these true representatives of the masses, striking them down and sending them off to the unseen fates their masters decree.
Unrest must be suppressed, in the City of Heroes. Groups of malcontents who band together must be crushed. Those who stand out must be beaten senseless — doubtless without resort to the private medical care doled out to the “heroes,” who then must labor under crushing debt until they further serve their mysterious masters.
Yeah. I like that.
(via BoingBoing)