City of Heroes can be summed up in four words: a very noble effort. When MMORPGs first grew out of the murky depths of their developers, I’m sure it was easy to pick the basic genres, especially fantasy, which has been the basis for the majority of role-playing games over all. However, as we see more and more new genres pop up, I think exciting times lie ahead. It means new methods of storytelling. It means innovative ways to create a fun and interactive combat system. Most of all, it means stretching the boundaries of today’s typical game.

     When I first stepped into the world of Paragon City, the backdrop for City of Heroes, I found myself in awe. I’m not talking about “Ooh, look at the pretty landscape.” The city the game calls home is ALIVE. People are walking about, they talk to you, interact, and it’s a refreshing change from exiting the main city or safe zone and seeing 8 billion level 1 bunnies to kill.

     The city is really at the heart of the entire game. The players’ motivations live there. The antagonist’s goals also exist within. I found myself shocked at the immense detail spread about the city. Cryptic Studios has essentially reached deep into every comic book out there, and yanked out a living, breathing game. And that’s without the players.

     Let’s start at the beginning. The login process is short, concise, and easy. No web sites to connect to, no clunky chat room/patching clients, just one service agreement and a login. Once in the game you’ll find yourself on the character creation screen. In this stage of beta, there are 8 character slots (which may change at launch) as well as five different character types. That gives you a ton of breathing room to test out archetypes and costumes. It may sound silly, but trust me, you’re going to want to play dress-up a few times before you get that perfect look.

     Character creation is hard. Not because of the process, but because of the CHOICES. The easy part comes first: choose between a Blaster, a ranged high-damage character that won’t take much damage, a Controller, a complicated archetype that has some really nifty power sets like gravity control, Defender, a buffer/healer, Tanker, your basic, every day meat shield, or Scrapper, the always loved fury-of-blows character.

     Once you’ve got that down, you move on to power sets. Initially you need to choose your Primary Power Set, as well as a power from it, and your Secondary Power Set, and a power from that. The development team has obviously given this portion of the game quite a bit of thought, as the sets and powers are plentiful without having any useless powers, as far as I can tell. There are some powers that overlap archetype, so don’t worry about being too locked in to your powers. You cannot change power sets at this time, but you will have access to more later, which consist of things like transportation, additional healing powers, and even fighting powers. JUDO….CHOP!

     Okay, now the easy part is over. Here comes the HARD part. Prepare to go SHOPPING! You get to dig through a metric ton of choices when it comes to your costume. There are three body types, male, female, and huge (male only, sorry, no lady Juggernauts). The neat thing is even the huge body type can be very short. Ice Box, my ice blaster robot, is only 4 foot tall, yet he’s as wide as…an Ice Box.

     Once you’ve gotten that perfect look, get ready to have some serious fun and enter the game! There is an excellent tutorial system set up that runs you through the bare essentials, and once you’ve mastered the basics, they plop you down in front of your new trainer. There are two starting areas, which makes the game even more dynamic.

So I kill lotsa bad guys, and I level up. What then? Well, good question, reader. There are several cool things to note here. One, you don’t have to go back to your trainer every time you level up. When you hear the level-up “ding”, enemies will downgrade difficulty before you actually train! That way you can keep adventuring until YOU choose to go train. When you do decide to make the big leap forward, you will get to choose a new power every other level. On the levels you don’t choose a new power, you get new slots for enhancements, or other very cool extras.

     Enhancements are “items” that are given to you along the way, or for defeating a big enemy or completing a mission. They are simply modifiers to powers. Time to activate power, damage of power, and range of power are examples. On the other hand, the other things you can find around town are Inspirations. Equate these to potions. You can use them at any time and they do various things such as replenish life, endurance, or increase damage or chance of hitting. I must say to the developers, way to eliminate my biggest pet peeve in some MMORPGs – the crucial need for items to just survive. This way, your powers are the true importance, and the enhancements and inspirations are simply secondary helpers.

So now that we’ve got that down, WHY should we fight? Why should we risk our super-lives for these people? What’s gone wrong? Well, in the not-so distant past, an alien race called the Rikti came to Paragon City to invade. For the time being, they have retreated (although there are still rumors that some remain hidden below the city, planning their next move). Meanwhile, many other gangs and evil groups have used the resulting chaos to their advantage. They’ve just about overrun the city with evil. It’s your job to stop ‘em, hero!

     When a hero loses all of his hit points, he collapses and incurs an XP “debt”. This is easily recovered at lower levels but when you’re at level 35, losing 35,000 points of XP is deadly. The game convinces you to be MUCH more careful when picking enemies once you’ve gotten that many levels under your belt. When he collapses, the hero has several choices. He may have an inspiration which he can use to revive himself, another player can revive him, or he is transported to the nearest hospital – then sent on his way again. Again, kinda cool, no need to run back out in the middle of nowhere to recover “gear” or “that sword I can’t live without”.

     Travel in the game is done by a tram system which is very well thought out. There is an “inner loop” and an “outer loop” and getting to the farthest reaches of the city isn’t hard. This cuts down on travel time, and thusly, boredom.

     Let’s talk groups. There are a few different kinds of groups in City of Heroes. The basic group is the “team”. This is when you, the guy next to you in purple tights, and the girl next to him in the skimpy red tights all decide to go out and kick butt together. This is equivalent to the “group” in other MMORPGs. Teams can share missions, which is a nice way to deal with multiple people wanting to do multiple things. Then, you have a smaller, more private group called a “Mentor/Sidekick” duo. When a high level hero makes a lower level character his sidekick, they form this duo, and the sidekick fights as though he were almost equal to his mentor. No new powers, but certainly much harder to kill and much more damaging.

	The last type of group in the game is the Super Group. This is the “guild” of City of Heroes. The awesome feature they’ve put in the game is that Super Groups will have their own costume/color scheme, and members of the group will be able to use them whenever they want.

     How deep can this game go? Well the game is based around contacts. You start off with a basic one, and they hand you off to the next one when they feel you are ready, and so on. This way, you’re always dealing with new NPCs, new mission types, new enemies, etc. It’s extremely difficult to get bored in this sort of environment. The developers have stated the storyline of the game will be a living history…big events, and even team or hero interaction with enemy groups will change the way those groups react! When the game goes live, it’s very possible that famous heroes may end up on newspapers or even as a statue!

     Things that made me go, “Bummer.”? Well, there were a few. Bugs were one, but it’s only beta, and they’re fixing them daily. Another is the lack of capes. C’mon, what self-respecting hero doesn’t at least have access to a cape? Also, I’d love to see more mask types. I wanted to create an Owl themed character and there just wasn’t any really good masks that were animalistic enough. Some cat faces (panther/cheetah/lion) might be cool too. Surprisingly, one thing I thought might make me fuss – didn’t. I saw plenty of people named bizarre things with equally odd costumes, and for someone who loves the role-play of the game, I feared it might put me out if I was trying to stay in character. Then I had a thought about all the different comic book genres, and the huge mish-mash of heroes in them. This helped me to ease back and just shrug it off when I saw a huge guy in his shorts and nothing else named “Beach Bum”.

     All in all, I am clamoring for more. I want higher level powers. I want bigger bad guys. I want deeper underground tunnels. And I’ll get them….in April. Evildoers beware, City of Heroes is one game you will have to reckon with!