City of Heroes Retail Hands-On Impressions

Check out some of the combat in City of Heroes. Double-click on the video window for a full-screen view.

NCsoft and rookie developer Cryptic Studios recently put the finishing touches on the retail version of City of Heroes, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game in which you can create your very own superhero with whom to help clean up the crime-infested streets of Paragon City. City of Heroes' concept always sounded ambitious and exciting, but many gamers were also rightfully skeptical of just how well the game would work in practice--after all, many online RPGs sound promising, only to turn out to be quite tedious. The good news, though, is that City of Heroes seems to work very well indeed. We've been playing it since its release earlier this week and have greatly enjoyed the early stages of the game, not to mention the elaborate and entertaining character-creation process. We've got a lot more crime to fight before we're ready to commit to our full review, but we wanted to bring you these impressions for the time being.

Let's get some important details out of the way first. City of Heroes has launched smoothly, and that's commendable. Whereas many online role-playing games, from EverQuest to Anarchy Online to Star Wars Galaxies, launched with rather disastrous results, City of Heroes is up and running swimmingly. It took only about 15 minutes to open the retail packaging, fully install the game (which ships on two discs), register for an account, and log in for the first time. Like other online RPGs, City of Heroes requires a paid subscription that kicks in after your first 30 days of play, and it's worth noting that the subscription fee is quite steep at $15 a month. Whether that's a sustainable amount of spending is for you to decide, but judging by what we've played so far, City of Heroes is at least worth those first 30 days.

As you may have heard, City of Heroes' character-creation system is highly elaborate. The basic, fundamental choices are simple: The most important is your choice of one of five hero archetypes, which determine whether your hero will be an up-close-and-personal brawler, or the sort who hangs back and rains deadly ranged attacks on his or her foes, or the sort who can baffle enemies or aid friends. Beyond that, you have a tremendous number of options in customizing the look of your hero, and in practice, what this means is that all the heroes running around in the game truly do look a lot different from one another. Put it this way: You can replicate the look of just about any superhero you can think of using the game's vast selection of body types, clothing and armor types, colorings and decals, and little frills.

For starters, we successfully created a complete and total rip-off of Wonder Woman (our version is "The Prosecutor"), as well as a spitting image of the heavily armored Man-Bot from Irrational Games' outstanding Freedom Force. We also whipped up an assault-rifle-toting female commando, as well as a burly cybernetic samurai. It's possible to create multiple characters on the game's multiple servers, and the possibilities, especially from a visual standpoint, are extensive and exciting. The archetypes themselves seem to play quite differently as well. Furthermore, within each archetype there's a good variety of primary and secondary skills to choose from, which will define how your character fights.

In gameplay terms, City of Heroes succeeds at making you feel powerful from the get-go. Your fledgling hero starts ready to take on gangs of thugs or rascally robots. Gameplay is fundamentally reminiscent of other online RPGs, insofar as you're directed to go on missions, seek out danger, or bring down foes to gain experience points. However, City of Heroes is very streamlined--it's surprisingly easy to pick up and play--and it does away with many of the cumbersome conventions of the genre. One of the most unlikely twists is that your character has no inventory. You don't find loot, per se, though you do earn enhancements to your various powers (for instance, you can augment ranged attacks with greater damage or recharge rates, and so forth), and you also find "inspirations," single-use items that can boost your health, damage, defense, and so on for a short time--and they can easily save you in a pinch.

There's no way to alter your character's appearance once you've created him or her, so the main motivation for gaining experience points is to gain access to bigger and better powers. You're typically given a choice of different abilities upon gaining a level, so the ability to fully customize your hero isn't only skin deep.

The gameplay is fast, smooth, and good looking. Heroes seem to pack an appropriately powerful punch and sustain a superhuman amount of damage. Eventually, they can learn truly remarkable powers, such as the ability to fly or to turn completely invulnerable for a period of time. The game succeeds at giving you the sense that you've got a genuine superhero--of your own creation--at your command.

Not only does City of Heroes deserve points for originality, but the execution seems to be very good, too. The preceding description is based on a fresh take on the newly released game by an avid player of massively multiplayer online role-playing games, and it was not colored by any access to prerelease versions of the game, such as the recent beta. Stay tuned for a full review of the game detailing some of its finer points and perhaps some of its less apparent shortcomings. But, if you're anxious for a quick take, our immediate reaction is to give City of Heroes a big thumbs-up.