City of Heroes

"Grab your spandex... Paragon City is online"

First off, City of Heroes is an amazing game. The maps are so expansive and the idea of a city full of super heroes is a really cool idea. It's great just to see everyone with different and sometimes hilarious costumes working together. The team up and supergroup features are great- you can form your own permanent or temporary stable to combat evil.

The game starts out in one of the coolest features ever in a video game- the Super Hero creator. There are literally millions of possibilities so you can set your crime fighter apart from the rest. First you choose your hero type (blaster, tanker, scrapper, defender, or controller) and your origin (mutant, science, natural, magic, or technology) Based on these choices you get different costume combinations. For example, a magic based character might get robes while a technology character can become a cyborg. The choice is yours, with tons of color combinations and accesories.

Then, you get to pick your powers, depending on your hero type. For example, the blaster gets long range attacks while the controller gets things like ice powers which can freeze his enemies. You get two power "sets" which contain many powers you later unlock during the game. Some of these sets can combine. For example, my tanker used Ice Armor and Battle Axe. The battle axe is slow, but the Ice can protect him and slow down his enemies so he can get a-choppin. Eventually, you can gain the abilities to fly, teleport, and much more.

Now, the real part- the city. After clearing the simple tutorial which helps you get the basics down, you get free range of the city. You can do missions, fight random bad guys, team up with others, and even get (or become) a sidekick. All of this is interacting with other people. I've never played a MMOG before, but this one is easy to get into but will keep you challenged. It is not linear at all- there are varieties of missions which can eventually lead to the deeper story behind Paragon City. At higher levels, you can join task forces- temporary alliances of powerful heroes who will usually end up taking on one of the city's main villains, if you can survive the grueling mission beforehand.

Unfortunately, this game suffers from a number of bugs. You can be randomly booted at different times and the game is not fully functional after beta. You also need a high end computer if you don't want to lag all day. My game was unplayable until I updated my drivers (Doh!) Eventually, these will be fixed, hopefully before the free first month is up. The game DOES have a monthly fee of $15, this includes game time and the monthly comic book sent to your door (which may even feature your character if you're lucky!)

The graphics and sound are great, with appropriate sound effects and cool animations. Again, your computer needs to be pretty high end to handle the people and graphically intense game. It's well worth it. And, with the upcoming expansion pack City of Villains in November, you'll be able to become a villain and take on those do-gooders. This probably means player vs. player action, a feature not available right now. Like goody two shoes who run around in spandex? No? Either way, this is still the game for you.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 05/09/04