We've played the first few missions in the game and basically City of Villains plays out much like City of Heroes. You chat with an NPC contact who gives you missions (and apparently a lot of the first few missions involve taking out snake men) and taking out enemies ups your experience points and gives you access to power-ups much like the original game (increase hits points, more accuracy, etc). Going up levels gives you access to more powers and more slots for existing powers to be beefed up. Just before we ended our play test we finally got access to something that you could not have done in City of Heroes; robbing a bank.