City of Heroes

[Cal Wright]

$15

[Shadowhawk]

I'm a relatively active player. Not so much the past month or two, mostly thanks to the wealth of new games released over the holiday.
All my characters are on Infinity:
Pyroclastic, a L38 Fire/Energy blaster.
Player1, a L12 Assault Rifle/Devices blaster, created as a Doom concept.
Deepness, a L13 Force Field/Psychic defender.
Crossed Wire, a L14 Fire/Energy tanker.
Retailer, a L5 Mind Control/Empathy controller (I'm gonna reroll him to get rid of Empathy, though).
Gothy McDark, a L4 Dark/Dark Defender

Could you give me a simplified description of the gameplay?

Basically, you create a superhero, choose from one of five archtypes (Blaster, Scrapper, Controller, Defender, and Tanker), choose two powersets for your AT (Blaster: Attack and Attack Support; Scrapper: Attack and Defense; Controller: Control and Team Support; Defender: Team Support and Attack; Tanker: Defense and Attack). You can start in a training zone where you learn how to fight and use your contacts, or go straight to the main game. You can talk to your contacts to get specific missions or just street fight. Missions have two different flavors: A simple 'Arrest 10 of this type of enemy' street hunting, and instanced missions, where you enter a building, cave, portal, or train destination and fight just with your team, without having to worry about other players.
Enemies are relatively varied, and get more varied as levels increase. At first, it's generally just street thugs with bats, knives, and guns, cultists with crossbows and swords, nazis with guns, or zombies with vomit and crossbows. Some enemy groups get phased out as you level, while others stick around. The cultists start getting powerful mages or summoned demons; the nazis turn out to be involved in vampirism and lycanthropy... And, of course, new groups come into play as you level. Crey Industries combating heroes with warped heroes of their own; the Malta Group crushing most comers with their anti-hero equipment and mecha, the ass-kicking alternate dimension Praetorians...

There's really nothing else gameplay-wise in the game besides combat. There's no crafting, there's no real loot, there's no real money...
You can team with up to 7 other players. Door missions scale to the number of players on the team. Where you might encounter groups of 2 or 3 enemies in a door mission while playing alone, a full team could be facing groups 20 enemies strong, with several Lieutenants and Bosses (stronger enemies with more skills and hitpoints) in them. Your tanker gathers up the enemies and absorbs the damage while your blasters rain down attacks, the Scrappers go after the dangerous enemies, the controllers prevent the enemies from attacking, and the defenders either debuff enemies into uselessness or keep your team's superpowers...superpowered. Task Forces are special missions that require a team of players of a certain level. These Task Forces can be 5-15 missions long, and, while scaled to the number of players, are usually impossible to complete solo and culminate in a battle with an Archvillain, usually the leader of one of the enemy groups.
All the different archtypes are theoretically capable of playing solo, although some are more effective or faster than others. Very badly built heroes, though, can be useless outside of teams...or be useless in teams. Occasionally, though, most players will need a team to complete some missions (particularly Archvillain missions).

As a bonus, the development team is adding new content regularly. There have been two 'Issues' released since June, adding 10 more levels, several new areas, new mission threads, new costume options (capes!) and new enemy groups since release. Issue 3 is due soon. Issue 4 will probably be out before summertime. City of Villains, the PvP game (it's standalone, so you don't need CoH to play it) is scheduled for release before 2006.

Screenshots I've taken can help you get an idea of how the game plays:
http://www.reprehensible.net/~shadwhawk/coh/

The 'Barrier' screenshots were just pictures I took after I discovered a bug that let me go outside the map's boundaries.

[Kosh_The_Vorlon]

And, to add to what Pyroclastic said above: villian groups vanish. Issue 3 saw the end of the Fifth Column (an internal coup shattered them, and for a few days there was a massive war all through the streets as the Fifth Column battled with their replacements, the Council). Issue 3 also adds some nifty things like an enormous octopus monster in the Port and 2 new archetypes (shapeshifting aliens, kind of a Vorlon/Gou'a'uld combo. Have to hit level 50 to unlock them). And it's $15/month, with free add-ons every 2-3 months.