Review: Champions Online

Jeffrey Philipp takes the recently released Champions Online for a spin in his review of the superhero MMORPG from Cryptic Studios and Atari. Hit jump to find out what he thinks about the game.

To the outside world a nerd is simply a nerd, but anyone brave enough to delve deeper into the culture will find that there is a whole ecosystem of nerdery just below the surface. While there’s dozens of varieties of fanboys and enthusiasts out there, the groups that this particular review are likely to be pertinent to are online gamers and comic book fans.

I had the opportunity to spend many very entertaining hours playing Cryptic Studios’ newest title, Champions Online. I will say from the outset that I have been having  a fantastic time playing this game, but I will certainly do my best not to let that colour my reporting.

I suppose we might as well start with the things that are causing me to enjoy myself so much. One of the first is the setting. It’s no secret that the fantasy setting is, to be charitable, a little bit overdone. There are dozens of games with elves and wizards and big guys with swords out there fighting dragons and goblins.

As an alternative, Champions Online is based off a pen-and-paper system focused around comic book superheroes. Fans of comics will very likely find that it’s quite true to the style, from the over the top dialogue and plots, down to the highly stylized graphics with the heavy outlines around characters. Fortunately for people who prefer slightly crisper graphics, the thick outlines can be turned off.

That leads me nicely into the next high point, at least for me, and that is the plotlines. Quest lines are not a new thing in online games, but in most games they trend towards epic fantasy scenarios. While those are excellent good fun, theres a certain thematic difference in comic books.

I’m hard pressed to put the difference into words that make much sense, but if I had to try I would say that the fantasy style is much more story driven, where the plots of the quests (or missions as they’re called) in Champions seem to be more character driven, pitting you against super villains and megalomaniacs.

One other interesting thing to note here, is that while most games start you out as a keen eyed aspiring adventurer, Champions has you facing off agains super villains and major players in the villainous underworld within the first few levels. Mechanically this doesn’t amount to a great deal of difference, but it does help to make one feel “super” very early on, rather than a fellow wearing tights and harboring delusions of superheroism.

One specific note about the plots of the missions, I had held off doing this review until I reached the ability to create my hero’s nemesis. Essentially constructing a personal villain for my hero. Mechanically this doesn’t particularly change anything, but from a flavour standpoint I personally feel it adds a great deal.

One perhaps downside to this is that once you’ve finished creating your nemesis you’re occasionally accosted by the minions you’ve selected, and this can happen at inopportune times, but other than that I feel that the nemesis is a splendid addition to the game world.

Speaking of tights, the character creator is one of the highest points of the game. The level of customisation is downright insane. With the exception of blatant copies of actual comic book characters, generic powered armours, and scantily clad angels and demons, it’s difficult to pick out any two costumes that are exactly the same.

The ability to customize goes down to fingernail colour on a single hand. In fact you can create largely anything you can dream up, I would suggest that the character creator is second only to Spore in it’s breadth. That said it’s not perfect, there are some bizarre and seemingly arbitrary limitations that can be a tad annoying when you run into them, and the sorting and grouping can seem a little nonsensical at times, but if you have the time and the inclination there is very little you can’t accomplish.

But what, truly, is a superhero without their super powers (besides Batman perhaps, he’s just cool).

Champions online has opted for a classless system of character creation. Rather than selecting a class and being beholden to the skills and abilities provided by that choice at the beginning of the characters life, you find yourself selecting from the entire array of powers available in the game, albeit with various prerequisites based on previous power choices.

The powers are certainly impressive to look at, and the options are varied enough that nearly any character concept you can dream up, should you choose to go that route, can be handily created and almost certainly will be viable in some fashion. If, on the other hand, you don’t feel like creating and dreaming up a back story for your personal comic book superhero, Cryptic has provided a number of ready  made “frameworks” in the vernacular, that possess all the powers that a crime fighter could reasonably require.

All this talk of selecting powers does bring us to the question of how well they work as a matter of playing through the game.

The traditional MMO style of combat is very much ingrained in my mind, and I am pleased to announce that fighting villains in Champions Online took some getting used to. Beyond simply being different and new, the combat system is also much more in depth than most. Continuing in the vein of players controlling things to a scary extent, beyond simply hitting the hotkey mapped to the power and having it produce it’s effect, many powers can also be “charged” to increase their effects, while also increasing their energy cost.

This simple act of dynamically controlling both your energy reserves as well as the time required for the big finish attacks causes combat to feel much more frenetic and intense than most other games, as well as providing a deeper and more tactical experience when used properly.

One other very pleasant surprise I found when first playing the game, was that I wouldn’t have to wait until level 40, or 30, or even 20 before being permitted some method of easing the burden of traversing the world. Indeed, one of the first things you do when you come out of the tutorial, is select your “travel power.”

The choices represent the most common powers of the comic book world, and a great deal of thought has been put into them. In fact there are five different varieties of flight. Beyond that you can pick some more unique methods of locomotion, such as tunnelling, and fans of the Spider Man style will be pleased to hear that swinging from rooftop to rooftop is included in all it’s glory. Indeed, I was very pleased to find that travel time was not one of the primary time sinks as is so common among MMOs these days.

All is not sunshine and lollipops in the Champions world, however. There are quite a few things that I might have reconsidered were I the design team, and a number of rather unpleasant, and I imagine unexpected, results from certain system limitations.

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