City of Heroes Hands-On Impressions

Cryptic Studios CEO Michael Lewis gives an in-depth look at the game. Click on "stream" for a closer look.

City of Heroes promises relief to online role-playing fans looking for something other than elves and dwarves. Most online role-playing games, where you get to explore and adventure amidst a gigantic virtual world populated by thousands of other players, are set in the traditional high-fantasy setting made most famous by J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. More often than not, those games are set in medieval worlds with humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, and other fantasy races. In contrast, City of Heroes is the first superhero-based online role-playing game. Like in a comic book come to life, your job will be to band together with other players to save Paragon City from the forces of evil. We had the chance to play the beta of City of Heroes to check out what being a superhero entails.

In City of Heroes, you'll be able to create virtually any comic book hero you can imagine. The easy-to-use character creation system first has you select your character's archetype, or background. This just means choosing the basis of your character's powers. (Are your superhero powers the result of magic, mutation, technology, science, or natural ability?) Next, you'll choose a few basic attack and defense powers. You will then be able to define the look of your character. You can be male or female or a hulking male giant; two sliders will allow you to adjust your height and stature. After that, you get to customize virtually every part of your character's appearance, including hairstyle, clothing, and accessories. There are literally millions of potential combinations that guarantee no two players in the game will look exactly the same. In our experience with the beta, we did not encounter any two characters that even looked vaguely similar to each other.

You'll start off in the beginner zone of Paragon City, where you will undertake a series of easy quests to get you familiarized with the game. These quests involve taking down a couple of thugs or learning the combat system. You receive your missions from a contact, usually a city official such as a police officer or detective. As you progress, your contact will refer you to a higher-level contact from which you can receive more challenging missions.

Like most online role-playing games, City of Heroes is a third-person game, in that you see your character onscreen at all times. The control interface is a bit different from most games, though. You'll use the familiar WASD interface to move your character around. To steer and move the camera, you have to hold down the right mouse button while moving the mouse; clicking on the left mouse button interacts with the environment and selects characters and objects; and the mouse wheel zooms in and out.

Once you've finished the beginner's zone, you'll be given a choice of which zone to travel to next. From the zone you choose, you'll begin adventuring in proper. We chose Atlas Park, where we were taken to a gigantic zone consisting of several distinctly different neighborhoods. The first thing you will notice about Atlas Park is the architecture; there are a lot of magnificent sculptures that dominate the main plaza of Paragon City, including a gigantic statue of Atlas bearing the world.

There were also a lot of superheroes running about, each of who was unique in appearance and power. One character looked and ran like The Flash (though, it was not officially The Flash, since publisher NCsoft doesn't have license agreements with Marvel or any other comic book publisher). There were also many other original characters present. Most players were congregating around Ms. Liberty, an important non-player character. Ms. Liberty not only serves as a contact for quests, but she also allows you to level up when you've gained enough experience points (hence her popularity.) During the level up process, you'll be allowed to select which powers you wish to add or which existing power you wish to enhance. By right-clicking on a power, you'll get a description of that power's abilities. You will be able to spend time figuring out how you want to develop your character.

The Paragon City League!

After we finished with Ms. Liberty, we received instructions to go inside City Hall to meet a new contact. Navigating around Paragon City is very easy, thanks to the map system. Whenever you receive a new quest, your next objective is always selected and highlighted on your map. You'll also see a waypoint on the compass located on the top of the screen to indicate which direction your objective is; there is also an indicator on the screen showing how far away it is. And if you switch to the map, you can select any of your contacts, team members, or quest objectives and the waypoint will switch to it.

At City Hall, we discovered that there are various organizations that your hero can belong to, but as a member of ELITE, the Enhanced Logistics for Insight and Tactical Excellence, we took our orders from the contact there. Our first mission involved meeting with a doctor who had a missing patient. As we raced to the clinic, we discovered that the city itself is populated by countless non-player characters, mainly civilians and police officers. There were also lots of thugs and gangs roving about. You will stumble upon many crimes in progress that will allow you the opportunity to intervene and be a superhero. Taking care of random thugs is rewarding because you gain valuable experience, but it's also very satisfying to have bystanders run up and express their gratitude after seeing you save the day.

The combat system is easy. All you have to do is select a target, either by clicking on it or using the "Tab" key to cycle through all the targets in the vicinity. To execute a melee attack, you have to run up close enough to the target and click on the attack key on your action bar or hit the corresponding number key that it's mapped to. If you want to use a super power, such as power blast, all you have to do is hit the appropriate button or number key. All powers take a few seconds to recycle, but you can cycle through various attacks while waiting for others to reload.

Once we reached the clinic, the doctor explained to us that the missing patient may have been kidnapped by a gang. The doctor gave us the gang's hideout, and the waypoint switched to guide us there. Inside the building, we encountered numerous gang members that we had to defeat, but once we located the missing patient we were able to return to the doctor for our reward. During the mission, we began to uncover a larger, more dastardly conspiracy that lead to another mission involving an attempt by a criminal organization to take over the city!

Naturally, as both a massively multiplayer role-playing game and a superhero game, the idea of adventuring together in teams is very important. Often, thugs will travel in packs with serious firepower, so it's especially difficult for a new character to survive in a fight against them alone. (If you lose all your hit points, you'll be revived inside Paragon City's hospital.) There are several groups of different sizes that you can join, including a supergroup and a task force. However, the most basic and temporary group is the team. We were invited to join a small team looking for short-term adventuring. Once you join a group, all the members of the group will appear on your map, and you can select any of them. One member is designated the leader, and he or she will be able to receive quests that the group can go on. Our team was able to bulldoze across most of the gun-totting gangs we encountered, however, there were still plenty of places that presented a daunting challenge, so you will want to be careful where you go.

From our experience, City of Heroes is one of the more beginner-friendly online role-playing games we've played. The opportunity to play as a superhero, and the huge variety of potential heroes in the game, should definitely appeal to comic book fans of all stripes. For years, it was said that there was a curse on all PC superhero games, but from all indications, City of Heroes is proof that the curse is dead. The game recently wrapped up development and will launch later this month.