As the evenings draw in and Christmas approaches, so the Holiday Buying Guides and Best of the Year features begin to gather. This year, several have already turned their adulatory gaze upon the fair City of Heroes. Now, more join the throng…

No less than three of the staff at GamersInfo.net picked CoH in their “We Hope You Get the Game You Want” Holiday Buying Guide. Not surprising when their original review said:

I usually get bored with grinding out levels, but I find myself playing CoH nearly every night. It helps if you have people you can group with, but I solo most of the time and have a blast.

Next up is the heavyweight PC Magazine - not, as you might be forgiven for thinking, dedicated to the finer points of acceptable social behaviour in the post-modern world, but ‘the independant guide to technology’. Its Best of the Year feature names City of Heroes MMORPG of the Year, saying:

Hey, comic book fans: Forget dragons and ogres. City of Heroes may just be the most inventive MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) yet. You play as a superhero of your own design, and creating your character is almost as much fun as playing the game.

Finally, the hip fashionistas at JIVE Magazine have not only named City of Heroes Best Massive Multiplayer Online Game in their Best Video Games of 2004 feature:

Out of left field comes the one MMORPG that has turned the genre inside out with its dazzling (yet manageable) graphics, quick learning curve, and extremely addictive gameplay...

But they’ve also picked their chat with Jack ‘Statesman’ Emmert as their Best Interview of 2004 in JIVE Magazine’s Superlatives & Best Entertainment of 2004. Nice.