Even if it’s been a few decades since you wore a towel as a cape and declared the family dachshund to be your loyal sidekick, who doesn’t want to be a superhero? Four years after its initial release on the Windows platform, the superhero MMORPG City of Heroes has landed on Intel Macs.

Set in the fictional world of Paragon City, City of Heroes lets you create a superhero (or villain), write an origin story, choose one of five origins (Natural, Magic, Science, Mutation, or Technology), and select from five archetypes. Blaster characters inflict long-range damage, Controller characters can control foes, Defender characters weaken opponents and heal allies, Scrapper characters inflict melee damage, and Tanker characters dish out and take damage for their team.

Battling not just a behemoth, but a behemoth overlord controlled by a mad scientist.

Next you go to work on the all-critical element: your costume. Within a few minutes, you can modify almost every aspect of your character’s appearance before launching directly into the game’s tutorial to learn such basics as movement and character interaction.

Even during the uncertain first few hours of working with a character, City of Heroes is inviting for new players. A good interface makes inventory management easy, and it’s fun to join a pickup group, take out a lair full of assorted bad guys, and walk away with additional experience points, new powers with every level gained, and some extra cash to go shopping with later.

Even though City of Heroes is fun, friendly, and does a good job of avoiding the “grind” of many MMORPG titles (where a player can’t find a team and has to fight a repetitive slew of enemies solo to level up), there’s some room for improvement. Minor bugs affect character motion. There’s no in-game voice chat, so you’ll have to use Skype or iChat for team communication. And previous-generation MacBook owners will be disappointed to find that the game doesn’t support the Intel GMA950 chipset.

Architect Edition Expansion Pack

The Architect Edition expansion, included in the Mac version of City of Heroes, lets players create their own missions, as well as play and rate missions that other users have created. Oddly enough, this works. Players can enter the Architect Entertainment buildings located throughout the game and browse available missions. Choose one, and the game adjusts the mission’s difficulty for your level.

To create your own mission, enter an Architect Entertainment location and go to a console. There you’ll choose a map, enemies to place throughout the level, and an end goal, such as defeating a boss or rescuing hostages. You can custom-build characters, and fill in the relevant lines of text to tell a story. After testing the mission to make sure everything works as expected, you can publish it to the server.
 
As nifty as this may be, there are some limitations. Every event and bit of extra text you add consumes space, and missions must be less than 100KB. You should craft your missions to be accessible to as wide an audience as possible, and the game will scale the mission to an appropriate difficulty level should a low-level player attempt it. Still, the editor is fun to work with and a cool toy for a rainy afternoon, especially when positive ratings come in.

City of Heroes provides the full comic book experience via good graphics, detailed character modeling, a larger-than-life feel, and energetic music. You may have hung up your towel-cape for good, but the dachshund still makes a darn good sidekick.

City of Heroes
COMPANY: NCsoft
CONTACT: www.gametreeonline.com
PRICE: $19.99, plus $14.99 per month subscription fees (the first month is included)
REQUIREMENTS: Intel Core Duo or better Intel processor; Mac OS 10.5.5 or later; 1GB RAM; ATI X1600, Nvidia 7300 GT, or Intel X3100 or better graphics; 2.9GB free disk space
The editor tool is simple, easy to use, and allows for a good level of customization without the need for manuals. Easy to create something fun and scalable for multiple ability levels. Architect mode is a good break from normal gameplay. Good place to level up. ESRB rating: Teen.
100-kilobyte content limit cuts down on the details and events you might want to insert. Additional tutorials (especially how-to videos) might make the process of creating your first missions a bit less intimidating.