Champions Online: First Impressions

Let me begin by saying that it took me pretty much half of Monday to get the game working. Yes, the Patch servers were being hammered (it's expected in any game), so I don't hold that against Cryptic, but I do feel gypped that I had pre-loaded an unbeknownst to me broken ass copy of the game from FilePlanet like a good little lemming, only to find out I had to download another version. That was also broken. Slightly. Add into the mix that it took about three hours to download the final 200 KB of a 74 MB patch (it would restart itself at 99.6% over and over again), suffice to say I wasn't a happy camper.

But I, like many others, trudged on, after a good 12 hours, made it to a shitty loading screen with a giant flaming monkey on it.

Queue my internet crapping out on me.

Yay!

So, in rolls Tuesday and I finally begin to make my character.

Character Customization: As promised, Champions Online has an extensive Character Creation System. It's pretty awesome, down to adjusting just whether you want your left or right eye pupiless or what not, to the cool looking 'Mecha options for your Super Hero Gundam dude. But if you have ever played the CoX series, you will not be *that* impressed. For as many things they added to adjust, it seems that Cryptic also recycles as much from CoX which while annoying, is not a game breaker in anyway. Additionally, I found the face selection--even with the sliders--lacking, and that only by scrunching the crap out of my character's face (I had to use a Mood to trick it), could I make an Asian sort of character. Plus, I couldn't really give her anything but ho bag skin tight pants, which wasn't the look I was going for. On the other hand, there were more power sets to choose from, from Force to Sorcery to Gadgetry and more, so I ended picking up dual blading, just because it seemed to go with my whole generic Asian super hero concept.


Graphics: I wasn't that impressed with the game world that I saw, and I did have stuff jacked up to the highest setting that I could. The environment looked cardboardy and plain to me, but I think that's because you can't get that detailed when you can break most of the scenery (lamp posts, boxes, rubble etc). As for the character models, the faces really aren't that great, but the over all characters themselves, and the effects surrounding them look pretty nice, in a cell shaded way.


Gameplay: Once your character is made, you get thrown into a Tutorial area, just like in CoX. You begin with 2 skills, an energy builder, then a bigger attack you can only do if you have enough energy. That means that you're always attacking, and the more energy you have, the more you can chain in your bigger and stronger attacks, ultimately ending a mob's life with a huge finisher. Pretty simple, and very fast paced--no real standing around in this game. You also have a "block" button, because every so often, mobs will do a BAM! or some other cheesy Batman Comic Book SFX attack which does a ton of damage. You will get ample warning, not to mention this giant bubble above your enemy's head.

As you level, you get talent points to buy more abilities, improve your abilities, add stats and so on, so forth, and as you do improve your skills, they get flashier and flashier. Pretty sweet, though some of the skills kinda' suck, but I imagine, those are a work in progress. You also get a travel ability at level 6 (pretty fuckin' soon), ranging from the standard super jump, flying, and then, tunneling. Like a mole. Stupid looking yes, but it gets you there and safely.

Leveling: Questing is done through the standard kill, collect and FedEx quests. AND, if you've ever played WAR, a complete and utter rip off of the PQ (Public Quest) concept, except without the ability to win sweet lewtz. It seemed to go pretty fast though, leveling you up within a handful of quest turn ins.

Lewtz: Since your outfit is whatever you created in the Character Creator, there's no real "gear". What you instead get are items you "socket" into primary and secondary categories. These are 1X each of a Primary Offense, Defense and Utility socket, then 2x each of a Secondary Offense, Defense and Utility. And example item would be, Wand of Magic Missile, Primary Offense, +10 Nerdiness +5 Geekiness +1.5 Spell Damage. A secondary version of this would be weaker.

PVP: Can't write much about this as I don't know how the PVP is first hand (the days I was playing, the queue was broken, but from what I read, it's not a huge part of the game). There is a camp of those who have tried it say it's super (no pun intended) fun...while the another group blames it for causing a bunch of unnecessary nurfs to their PVE power sets and hate it. I'd like to try it later on this week before the end of Open Beta to make a decision for myself, but I'm thinking big ranged boomers will dominate over charge-less melee types like myself.

Miscellany: WTB new voice actor for Witchcraft. Oh, and you can't play a villain, which is much much MUCH more fun. And probably reserved for an expansion of some sort. (Maybe you get to play as your Nemesis in the future? Hmmm?)

Overall: I played CoV for quite a bit a few years ago. I loved my Mastermind, and I loved seeing the goodie goodie two shoes Super Heroes get beat the fuck up--unfortunately, after a little while, for a hard core gamer like me, there's only so many times you can beat the same Super Heroes the fuck up, so I moved on. And CO, unfortunately, gives me the same feeling. Don't get me wrong, the game itself is quite a bit of fun...as in a burst of fun. But will it have long term potential? (By which I mean, longer than it takes to create your character?)

The other thing that I've been alluding to, is that Champions Online is nothing really new. If they said CO was the new expansion for CoX, I wouldn't blink. I bet if you got someone to play COX and told them it was CO, they wouldn't blink. Heck, even the names, CO and CoX are similar. The gameplay and ideas are just not that new to me. That being said, if you haven't played the CoX series in the past, you'll probably appreciate CO much much more than me. As for whether or not it will make you want to plunk down money for the game, a sub AND THEN possibly the in-game shop too...is a whole other can of worms.

And I happen to hate worms.

But still a week to go before the end of Beta. Maybe Cryptic will find a way to WoW me. ;) Or maybe WoW will WoW me again with some seksi reports from BlizzCon.