2004 certainly hasn’t been without its ups and downs, but it has brought us all some truly excellent games, a fact celebrated by The Associated Press in its round-up of the best and worst releases of the year, where City of Heroes comes a close second to the mighty Half-Life 2:

Finally, a maker of massively multiplayer online games got it right. “City of Heroes” tossed the dungeons and dragons in favor of superhero tights. It also dispatched with many of the genre’s grueling “leveling up” aspects and let gamers do what they really want: band together with dozens of others to battle villains.

The story has been picked up by several major news networks in America, including ABC News - you can read the whole article here.

There’s a new comic up at Coh Comics, featuring the first appearance of The Static Roach, a new hero from the author of the Lavitator stories.

The script could certainly use a run through a spell checker, but you still have to admire the effort that goes into creating something like this. Think you could do better? Then get to it and email your work to - you too could see your creation in (digital) print…

We know it’s cheeky to talk about this sort of thing before Beta has even started, but we’d feel bad if we didn’t let you know about this as soon as we did....

If you’re the kind of person always on the lookout for a bargain, then you probably spend a lot of time shopping online. In which case you might have already found City of Heroes available for pre-order, but in case you haven’t… here are the online ‘e-tailers’ who are on the ball, with their prices as of today.

(The official recommended retail price is £29.99 in the UK, €44.99 in Europe, by the way, with local prices varying if your country does not use Euros. You can read what I just said in an FAQ too, if you like. )

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.

Following hot on the heels of the first two European fansites to appear in the run-up to the beta come another pair. The first is a new message board, The Sunday Paragon, where you can post away to your heart’s content. The second is from the EPIC (European Parahuman Intervention Coalition) supergroup, which has launched a European Beta branch.

Good luck to both sites - go and check them out to show your support.

US entertainment channel Spike TV held its second annual Video Games Awards last night in Santa Monica, California. The frighteningly hip event featured appearances by the likes of Snoop Dog and Tiger Woods, used words like ‘rad’ and ‘gnarly’, and attempted to ‘sex up’ gaming with ‘Hot Girls Read Cheat Codes’ sections in which scantily-clad and extremely pneumatic young ladies were seen saying things like, “Up, Down, Left, Right, Left, Left...” in husky voices. No, I’m not making this stuff up. In an uncharacteristic display of taste, however, the show did name City of Heroes the winner of the Best Mass Multi-Player Game category (yes, ‘Mass’ - apparently syllables just aren’t cool enough for Spike TV).

If you’re feeling extremely brave, you can run the gauntlet of the Flash-animated horror show that is the VGA website here. But it’d be far less traumatic for you to just take my word for it. Really.

Yes, folks, I’m happy to say that the official French language City of Heroes site is now up and running. You can find it at fr.cityofheroes.com. Perhaps rather obviously, it’ll help if you can read French…

As with this English site and the official German one over at de.cityofheroes.com, the French site will be keeping all our French-speaking fans topped up with CoH-related goodness, including information about the imminent European Beta test.

Let us know what you think!

The official US site has a nifty video showing off the new Kheldian characters that will be added in Issue #3: A Council of War. The Kheldians are energy beings from a distant galaxy, divided by an ancient internal feud.

They’re also the first of the Epic Archetypes, a new class of Archetype that can only be unlocked by playing the game - in the case of Kheldians, by reaching Security Level 50 with a normal character - and come in two distinct types, Peacebringers and Warshades.

You can read more and download the video here.

After months of devising evil schemes and nefarious plots, Shane Lacy Hensley, senior writer on the City of Heroes expansion/sequel, City of Villains has taken some time out of his busy schedule to have a chat with Sean Michael Whipkey of GamersInfo.net and give some hints about how heroes and villains will be able to come to blows in Player vs Player gameplay:

There are lots of different kinds. There are arena duels, PVP missions, and free PVP zones. The most exciting to me are the PVP missions and base raids. (Remember that all of this is consensual—you’ll *never* be forced into PVP if it’s not for you.)

If you think that bad guys get all the best lines or simply can’t wait to pit your wits against other players, you can read the full interview here.

The online gaming gurus in the MMO Guide section of GameDAILY have been dedicating their time to the US Collector’s Edition of City of Heroes recently. The result is a rather glowing 5 out of 5 review that says things like:

If you haven’t donned the spandex, put on the cape and pulled on the gloves yet… there’s no better time than right now! The Collector’s Edition DVD of the hottest MMO on the planet, City of Heroes, is on store shelves just in time for the Holidays!

And if you think the US Collector’s Edition sounds good, just wait until you see what we have planned for our special edition here in Europe…

Evil never sleeps, and neither it seems does Jack ‘Statesman’ Emmert. In between masterminding the finishing touches for the American release of Issue #3: A Council of War, the next major update to City of Heroes, Cryptic’s lead designer has found the time to chat with GameZone about what’s coming to Paragon City soon:

Since the release of the game, “we’ve added about 450 megs of content,” stated Cryptic’s Jack Emmert. “By update 4 we will have doubled the size of the original game.”

City of Heroes will launch in Europe with Issue #3 included, so if you want to see what’s in store, read the whole article. You might also want to check Statesman’s interview with GameSpot.

Congratulations to the snappily-titled CoH-EU and The Council, two new European fansites that have just launched.

At the moment CoH-EU is just sporting open forums, with more site content to come soon (drop by and help them!), and The Council, while looking kinda spiffy, is still lacking a bit on the forum front. They’re looking for help there too.

With your heroic assistance, I’m sure both sites can get off to a flying start. Good luck to both!

Jack ‘Statesman’ Emmert, City of Heroes lead designer and defender of truth and justice, has been chatting with the guys at GameSpot about the next major update, Issue #3: A Council of War - which will be included in the European version of the game. Most of the piece concerns the first of the new Epic Archetypes:

The next update will add many new features to the online game, including “epic archetype” characters--all-new character classes that will be unlocked and playable from level one, once one of your current characters reaches level 50.

But Jack also talks about the new zone, new power pools and Cryptic’s continuing effort to improve existing missions. You can find the whole article here.

If you still think that computer games only appeal to the male of the species, you probably haven’t spent a lot of time at WomenGamers.com. Which means that you probably haven’t seen its new review of City of Heroes, written by a couple who play together as a duo - and, it seems, loved almost every minute of it:

This game taps into two things I love, the idea of being a superhero fighting crime, and gaming in a very duo friendly environment with my partner. This has been the most dynamic and interactive game we’ve played together yet and I would highly recommend it to duos that are looking to explore the world of on-line gaming together.

None of us here have come across a review specifically aimed at couples who like to game together before, and we think it’s a great idea. So go check out the whole article.

It’s not just the dedicated US gaming sites that are looking forward to a heroic holiday season. Even serious IT site Network World Fusion is lining up to save Paragon City from the forces of evil, recommending City of Heroes in the After Hours section of its 2004 Holiday Gift Guide and awarding it a “Coolness Rating” of 5 out of 5:

We had lots of fun playing this game, hanging out with other heroes and generally ridding the world of the bad guys as the Gigabit Kid. If you see him around Paragon City, say hello.

Readers with a sensitive disposition can skip the bits covering wireless client adapters and jump straight to the City of Heroes section by clicking here.