MMO’s come and MMO’s go. Despite some surprise successes over the last year or two (would you believe there were analysts predicting that World of Warcraft would crash and burn when it launched in November 2004?), most games in the genre, for whatever reason, appear like a dust mote in the eye and are gone in a blink. Remember The Saga of Ryzom? How about Risk Your Life: Path of the Emperor? No? Well, here's one for you then: City of Heroes.

NCsoft's wildly popular superhero MMO has just the right mix of extensive cosmetic customization, streamlined gameplay (VERY streamlined) and a market appeal that's not quite niche, but not quite mainstream. Hailed as an innovative step forward in the MMO world, the game features neither equipment nor trade skills, instead leaving everything to the inherently awesome powers of the super-charged crime fighter’s player’s control. Only focusing on combat makes CoH a great game to just sit down and play for half an hour in between work and school, and a lot of nice little touches and extras (such as the ability to write your character's own backstory for all to see) give it appeal to the more dedicated MMO player base.

On the flip side, the game's excessive focus on combat can make it difficult to really sit down and play for long, as the endless fights begin to get repetitive and the lack of anything else to do makes itself painfully obvious.

The game's biggest draw, overall, has always been its character creator, a setup with so much flexibility it's impossible to ever run into anyone who looks exactly like you do. And in NCsoft's release of City of Villains, the long-anticipated sister game to City of Heroes, the creator has been left intact - but with hundreds of new "evil" options, such as skull belts and hoofed feet. That alone will make it worth the purchase to almost anyone who knows what the creator is capable of. But does the game address the weaknesses of its predecessor, or is it just an uncommonly extensive expansion to the original?