GenCon '08: Champions Online Hands-On

By DrRandle August 20, 2008 1 Comments

Championing the Way for a Better MMORPG

  Math isn't my strongest suit, but I'd say that from a sheer examination of the facts, the numbers are looking good for Champions Online. City of Heroes/Villains was their MMO until they sold it off to NCSoft to start development on what used to be a Marvel MMORPG. Now we have a company with many solid core values, a larger team, an entire license to work with, and (hopefully) the lessons learned from having already one rather successful game under their belt.
  

   At the most recent GenCon in Indianapolis, I had the pleasure of playing, and watching others play, a still early version of Champions Online, a super-hero themed MMORPG based on the Champions pencil/paper RPG. If you are not familiar with Champions, allow me to glaze over by stating that it is to super heroes what DnD is to fantasy: the best tabletop RPG of it's kind. With ever-popular characters like Foxbat and The Destroyer already lined up, Cryptic has been able to devote more resources to creating the world, physically, rather than creating it phillosophically.

   Part of that creation includes the already vast number of areas one can explore. While the only real place anybody was allowed to go to was a West World inspired theme park filled with haywire cowboy robots, just on this singular map you could see numerous other areas. There was a prison, a radiated wasteland, and a ghost town, just to name a few, and it was all on one map. While fans of World of Warcraft may be used to varrying terrains, one heavy complaint weighed against City of Villains is the fact that it doesn't really have any varrying locals. The overworld is all cities, and the instances are all office buildings and caves: not much to really work with. The newest expansion for the tabletop Champions showed off Monster Island, an area the staff of Cryptic on hand stated was inspired by the MMO version of the game. In fact, many of the monsters in the manual for this new realm were shown off through character models in the book, rather than traditional hand-drawn pictures.

    With that in mind, I was told that

many of the monsters, especially Dr. Moreau's animal-people, can actually be constructed, 100%, in the character creator. While I couldn't tell you what he was showing me exactly, I remember my jaw dropping when one rep showed me exactly what kinds of things I would be able to make. Okay here's a tasty bit, I remember a rhino-man. To say that Cryptic has gone above and beyond with their ideas of customization in this game is putting it dimly. Atop from the appearance of your character, you can change things like colors of your attacks, where a laser blast could shoot from, and even the types of running animations your character has. Want to make a zombie who actually shambles? A werewolf who runs on all fours? Now, you can!

   I didn't get a whole lot of time with all

the different power sets, and there wasn't a whole lot on hand. If you're unaware, you'll be able to pluck your powers individually rather than get shoehorned into a class. If you want to be a guy who lifts tanks but also can pull up bubble force fields, you can. If you want to throw fire and ice, you can. Likewise, if you want to focus on all types of healing powers, more power to you. It all goes back to Cryptic's idea of absolute customization. Along the way you can pick up armor pieces, similar to WoW, that allow you to customize your powers and maybe add to your sets. From there, you can choose whether or not these pieces display on your character, only further enhancing the level of customization even further. Instead of having to collect potions or inspirations, power ups appear out of knocked-out enemies and are used as soon as you pick them up, similar to the more action-oriented beat-em-up games that Cryptic is trying to recall in Champions.
  
   Your specialized character will come to life in the glorious cell-shaded visuals. Like a real comic book, the characters and special effects are bright and vibrant, really popping out from the purposelly muted backgrounds. Again, all I saw so far was the desert area, so it wasn't the most visually inspring: sand and sky. However, it still looked much more vibrant and lively than most any areas in City of Villains.

   There wasn't a whole lot else mechancially I was able to get out of them. For the most part, it is a relatively typical MMORPG. However, they managed to remove cooldowns on your attacks, when you want to attack you can, only a very select few powers have to cool down. In further trying to harp on the more action-oriented gameplay, you can reduce damage by blocking on the fly, as well as break out of holding moves by spamming the block button. Some powers use this more action heavy pace to their advantage. There are some pieces of destructable environments that brutish characters can pick up. The example I saw was watching a girl pick up a stage coach and whack a baddie with it. Tell me that's not awesome... Liar! You know it is. One last random thing, the game will feature what they're calling "Perks," similar to City of Heroes' badge system, so, achievement whores are welcome.

   My overall impressions are very positive. I personally hope there is a way to purchase the character creator seperate and before the game comes out, similar to Spore. I'm an alt-aholic as it is on City of Villains, and I know this game is just going to be way better at letting me create interesting and original characters. The game has plenty of time to come out, and it's already looking rather smooth. I didn't have a good look at a large majority of the group mechanics, though I was told that whoever starts a group has all their teammates level off to them to save the hassle of not being able to play with friends or what not. There's room for fatal errors as well as improvement, that much is certain. However, right now, it seems that Champions Online is right on track.

   Tomorrow: I rave about Killer Bunnies and the Journey to Jupiter, and Friday will bring about my thoughts on Bioware's newest epic Dragon Age: Origins.

I was struck by lightning
walking down the street.
I was hit by something last night
in my sleep
It's a dead man's party.
Who could ask for more?
Everybody's coming,
leave your body at the door.
Leave your body and soul at the door!
Oingo Boingo - Dead Man's Party

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