I don’t consider myself a gamer, unless you count six intensive months of Super Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt twenty years ago, however, I’m quite hooked on the game City of Heroes. City of Heroes is an interactive online game where you get to create your own hero and battle the forces of evil.

First you start by selecting the type of hero you’d like to be. Are you an invincible smashing machine or do you get your business done with magic? After choosing your archetype and your origin you get to choose your powers. Each archetype has specific powers that become available as you advance in the game. Some character types can solo pretty well, but the fun really starts when you team up with other players on the server. Each type of character has a specific role to play, and these roles are brought to life on a team with a good mix of heroes.

For example, you might have a “tanker� who draws the attention of all the bad guys and can withstand a lot of damage. He fights up close. On the fringes of the battle might be the “defender� of the team who runs around healing teammates. In between there are several other types of characters who serve different purposes depending on their powers. My husband and I have a tendency to both have specific preferences for characters! He usually is a smasher, and I’m usually a healer. We often play as a team and design our characters to have similar costumes and names… and that’s where the real trouble starts!

There are so many options for costumes and types of characters that it can take sometimes half an hour or even longer to create a character. After creating your hero comes the task of naming it, which could take another ten minutes and involve a thesaurus, since many of the heroic sounding names are already taken. What’s more, you are given so many slots that you could create a seemingly endless number of heroes. Of course, you can’t have a hero without a villain. Recently the creators of City of Heroes came out with City of Villains. There are even more options for creating a villain than a hero!

In City of Villains you find a corrupt world full of intricate stories. Both games include story lines that your character can choose to follow. Currently you can reach level 50 in City of Heroes and level 40 in City of Villains. However, the next update is only a few days away, and you will then be able to get your villain up to level 50. As you level up you gain new powers, visit new maps, and get access to travel powers, like super speed and teleporting. There is also a player versus player element in the game and the opportunity to cross over between the games and have your team of heroes battling a team of villains! However, for the most part of the game you are up against characters that are part of the program and not real players. Although the game involves attacking with various powers, it is rated “T� for teens and there is no blood or talk of killing anyone. In general you either arrest or defeat someone.

Since City of Villains is the newer model, the settings of the game contain a lot more detail and variety. The developers learned quite a lot from CoH (City of Heroes) and used that knowledge and the suggestions of players to really vamp up the concepts in CoV (City of Villains). Rumor is that the next update of CoH will benefit from what the developers have learned over the past couple of years.

Be careful though, both games are full of colorful and complex graphics, so not just any computer can handle the load. Recommendations for computer requirements are listed on the game box or at the website: http://www.cityofheroes.com. You’ll also need a decent internet connection. Dial-up won’t cut it! My husband has upgraded his computer recently, namely his graphic card, and I’m fairly convinced this has to do with wanting to see the armor on his costume shine! My laptop is new and runs the game pretty well with a few of the graphics options turned down just a bit.

The game requires a monthly subscription of $15 or you can purchase codes for specific amounts of playtime. CoH and CoV are purchased separately, but if you own both they automatically link, and when you log in you can choose whether you want to play a hero or a villain. Also, if you own both games you still only pay $15 dollars. This doesn’t double, which makes up for the fact that you can pay between twenty and fifty dollars for a copy of the game. Shop around before you buy. You can sometimes find CoH or CoV for $19.99 around town or on the internet, which could mean you end up paying 40 bucks plus tax for both instead of grabbing the first copy you see and possibly ending up paying 50 bucks each! CoV is a little more difficult to find on sale since it’s more recent. You can also download the game directly from the website, which is convenient but not the most economical choice.

If you have more than one person playing in the same house (there are quite a few couples that play together) you will need separate accounts. This means buying your own copies of the games and both paying the subscription each month. However, the games aren’t dependent upon one another; you can play CoV without owning CoH and vice versa. So, decide whether you want to be a good guy or a bad guy, a superchick or a villainess, and set out to save the world… or bring it to a fiery end!