These last few weeks, I¡¯ve had the opportunity to sit down with City of Heroes from Cryptic Studios. I have to say that for a game that launched over three years ago (April 2004), it¡¯s really got quite a bit to recommend it.

I should really start this by saying that this is by no means a full review of the game. These At A Glance articles are designed so that the writer plays the game¡¯s trial (in this case, 14 days), and reports back with their impressions, so here goes:

Character Creation


Right out of the gate players are met with the feature that, in my opinion, is the biggest highlight; character creation. Every MMORPG has it, but outside of the ¡°virtual world¡± games (Second Life comes to mind), I have never seen such a diverse and interesting creation system. Cryptic Studios has done a fine job of allowing the players to feel like their characters are totally unique. Whether you want to make a costumed superhero, a ¡°regular guy¡± or some kind of monstrosity, you can do it, and quite easily. A person can easily spend an hour or more choosing every detail of their character¡¯s appearance¡­ if they choose to. It¡¯s also relatively easy to make a unique character in a minute or two.