City of Heroes Deluxe (PC)

There are loads of powers to choose from such as super speed and a huge stone mallet to whack enemies with,[ my fave is super jump ].

There are six classes to choose from, the blaster which is a far ranged damage dealer guy, the defender whos is like a healer, the scrapper a melee high damage dealer, the controller who of course getsbehind the brain of enemies and the tanker who can takes a ton of damage like the hulk.

Team work is a big part in COH and lets u do special missions and it is a shame people are all on WOW [world of warcraft]leaving COH in the dust with no friends to play with. rarely big events happen such as there have 2 alien ivasions since the release and last winter there was a global attack of giant snowmen which could have a snwbll fight in thier remains.

Summing up City of heroes is the greatest game ive ever played and probably will be for a long time i,m also looking forward to city of villains. Go on dont bother with wow and get COH.

Playing a hero, you have a choice of 5 'archetypes' to pick from, each of which has a clearly defined role in a team. You have the tank, the guy who can take whatever you throw at him and is basically your human shield. The Blaster, the ranged damage dealer of the team. The Scrapper, melee fighter and another high damage dealer. The Defender, about as close as you get to a healer, these guys make your team stronger and the enemies weaker. Finally, we have the Controller, these guys are exactly what their name suggests, crowd control. They lock down the enemies, stopping the rest of the team getting overwhelmed.

Within each of these archetypes, you get to pick a primary and secondary powerset from a list of between 5 and 8 per archetype. For example, you can have a blaster who's primary powers are fire based and their secondary are ice based. Your scrapper could have a broadsword and rapid healing. Each powerset has about 10 powers in it and you'll start with one from your primary and one from your secondary with more available as you level up.

As if that wasn't enough, there are also 'pool' powers. There are around 8 pools, each with four powers in and anyone can pick up to 4 pools to complement their main powers. These pools are also where the 'travel' powers of flight, teleporting, super speed and super jumping(no wall crawling or web swinging unfortunately).

Hero design is extensive, with masses of costume options and body scaling. Capes are not available at the start and must be earned in game, along with additional slots for up to four costumes.

You can temporarily team up with other heroes, up to 8 in a team and can also form a Super Group with up to 75 members in and this is where COH excels. The community in the game is great and it won't be long before you have regular team mates to deliver corny superhero puns with. The game 'can' be played solo, depending on the hero you have, but the beauty of it really is in teaming and when you have a well designed 6 man team who have played together regularly tearing through enemies and telling bad jokes on the way, that is when you realise how great the game really is.

The City itself is set out into different areas which are divided by walls and security check points with some of them requiring that you're a certain level to enter. The first few levels come very quickly and the learning curve is steep,

MMORPG's are a growing genre in computer gaming but they do seem to follow a standard template, the majority being set in fantasy worlds and agonising hours spent repeating the same actions over and over to increase your rating at that particular task, or lots of time spent trading. COH avoids all of this, there are no skills and while you can trade certain items to enhance your powers, this is not essential, meaning the action is always fast paced.

If you want to try out a MMORPG, COH has to be the number one choice.