By Joshua Duran

By Joshua Duran

In a city where evil lurks behind every corner, you can be a hero. This is the premise for the massively multiplayer online role playing game, or MMORPG, known as “City of Heroes”.

Role playing games have never been my style; I’m more of a real time strategy game player. However, “City of Heroes” had me hooked after a couple hours of game play. The graphics, action and full world immersion bring players to a whole new level of game play.

I was given a free two week subscription to “City of Heroes” and within those two weeks I gained a reputation, made friends, led teams, and beat my way through enough villains to make it to level 18 (out of 50). Leveling that fast in less than two weeks, I could have been to level 50 within a month.

For a person who doesn’t know how to play role playing games, I don’t think I did that bad. The interface is very user friendly, and the controls are defaulted to movement settings used for many other video games, so it is easy for people with even the most minimal of gaming experience to catch on quickly.

As easy as it is to get started in this game unless you learn to meet other gamers and make a team, most new gamers won’t last long. I tried to work by myself and only made it about three days by myself. By then I was so far in over my head I had to reach out to more experienced gamers to hold my hand through some difficult missions. But b y the end of my first week I was leading teams as a level 1 technology tanker.

The first thing the game lets you do is what your hero like. You get to decide everything about your hero from what type of fighter he or she is to what color scheme to giver your costume. You can make your hero the likeness of yourself or the likeness of your alter-ego; whatever tickles your fancy.

There is so much to learn and see and do in this game it is almost impossible to do it all. This game was designed to challenge even the most experienced of gamers while at the same time being easy enough to allow the novice to get the hang of it without too much trouble. But like any game with enough time, effort, perseverance and even some cold hard cash you can find things and do things that only the most elite gamers can see or do.

Yes I said cold hard cash. All it takes is a quick eBay search and a valid Paypal account and you can buy, with real money, whatever you need to give your hero the edge he/she needs in combat. I don’t know what kind of person is willing to pay their hard earned cash for some virtual information, but if people will pay for toast that looks like Elvis than this isn’t that far fetched.

All in all “City of Heroes” is a game that can be played by gamers of all levels of experience. Although as easily as I picked up on this game myself I don’t know just how challenging this game would be for hard core gamers. But for all of those interested, check it out and Game on!