NCsoft and rookie developer Cryptic Studios recently put the finishing touches on the retail version of City of Heroes, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game in which you can create your very own superhero with whom to help clean up the crime-infested streets of Paragon City. City of Heroes' concept always sounded ambitious and exciting, but many gamers were also rightfully skeptical of just how well the game would work in practice--after all, many online RPGs sound promising, only to turn out to be quite tedious. The good news, though, is that City of Heroes seems to work very well indeed. We've been playing it since its release earlier this week and have greatly enjoyed the early stages of the game, not to mention the elaborate and entertaining character-creation process. We've got a lot more crime to fight before we're ready to commit to our full review, but we wanted to bring you these impressions for the time being.