City of Heroes

Which brought me to realising how plain the cities look now. They're still often beautifully put together, with places like Boomtown looking majestic in their crafting. But not in textures. Even cranked to the very max, CoX is looking increasingly tired, many areas a wash of grey against grey. A makeover is exactly what this engine needs.

Power surge

The tone seems quite negative, doesn't it? A quietening, ageing world. But there's a reason City of Heroes has always been my favourite MMO, and it lives on.

Joining a party of enthusiastic players, I set off on a series of level 38 missions, and was immediately delighted by the frantic mayhem of its dungeon battles. The six of us obliterated huge gangs of Lost, Rikti and Thorns in wonderfully explosive battle. City of Heroes may look plain when you're outside in the streets, but once the powers are flying back and forth it becomes astoundingly pretty.

Admittedly, the Midnight Squad mission we set off on was surprisingly anticlimactic, and perhaps it doesn't matter how much story is sandwiched either side of the action - you're still twatting your way through a twisting series of corridors or caves - but City of Heroes offers a fantastically strong sense of teamwork. The sense of role, of specific purpose, is so easily found, and so rewarding to take part in. And most of all, it's an instant, intuitive thing. It doesn't require an experienced Supergroup (guild) to be effective.

Age before beauty

Until Cryptic finishes their forthcoming Champions Online, there's nothing like City of Heroes/Villains. Over the years vast amounts have been added, from the Invention system letting you create your own enhancements, costume pieces, etc, to the Bases, where your Supergroup can set up home and create all sorts of useful bits and bobs for ease of travelling and healing. Of course, adding Villains introduced PvP, and the arenas and extra zones for Hero versus Villain battling. It's swollen, it's taken notice of movements in MMOs, and it has maintained its focus on fun, never taking itself distractingly seriously. So it's unfair that it still feels like something from gaming past.

I still love it. I still have more fun in that City than I ever have in World of Warcraft, or elsewhere. It's just so instant, so immediately satisfying. A new power isn't just a slightly better chopping action, but the ability to fly. Or to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Or to call up purple tentacles from another dimension to bind the enemy to the spot. How can you not love that? It's cartoon, it's comic, it's the gaming form of those brightly coloured words that burst from Batman's TV fighting. But it's also a world that, I suspect, has had its day.