Since I brought you my Interview with Bill Roper last month, I taken advantage of my opportunity to bomb around inside the Champions Online beta. There are many things I have seen inside that I like, and some things I have not. I may be making an unfair judgment on the game though. After all, what I really want to see is an MMO that breaks the mold and gives us an experience we haven’t seen before. Of course, asking a developer to do this is like asking Spider Man to take on the Hulk. Some tasks are just too difficult, even for the best of us. But, to do what MMOs traditionally do and to do it well is still an achievement, and I think Champions Online delivers on at least some of these fronts. At this stage, I would have to say that the good certainly outweighs the bad.

To start with the bad though, I think it’s important to keep in mind that Cryptic Studios, the company behind Champions Online, is also the company that developed City of Heroes/Villains. Unfortunately, this shows. There are a lot of similarities between the games. The feel of the playstyle is very similar. How your character moves or flies in Milennium City is very reminiscent of how your character moved or flew in Paragon City. The character creator, while it does include countless different costume possibilities, feels like a more convoluted version of the one in the City Of franchise (which was already pretty complicated to master). For a game that is priding itself on customization, I don’t feel I can make my costume that much more personal than I could before. I can edit minute details like how thick my hands are or how deep my chest concavity is, but those spikes on my shoulders are still stuck dead center. I can’t move them around. I can’t put that chest detail higher up by my collar. In short, I can’t edit the things that I would actually want to edit with free reign over my costume. Maybe more of these features are coming, maybe they are not, but I think complete customization means something more than I am actually seeing here.

Speaking of customization, another selling point of the series is the ability to customize the look and feel of your powers. For example, multiple superheroes may have a sort of “Force Push” power. But, while one may fire a green force wave from the palm of his hand, another may project a pink one from the center of her forehead. Focus points and colors are adjustable (focus points on some powers, colors on all) which is very nice. Unfortunately, this could also fail to help set the new title apart. The City Of franchise has recently announced Issue 16, their sixteenth free expansion, which should be doing the same thing within their game. So much for new ideas.

Let’s leave the tired similarities alone for now, lest you begin to think that Champions has nothing going for it. As for customization, there are a few features I saw that I liked. First, you can mix and match power sets at will. Do you want to be a gunslinger who can shoot telekinetic bolts from his face? Sure, why not? Do what you like, and  look as weird as you want to. That kind of freedom is perfect, and I am glad to be able to create the kind of hero I want. Secondly, you get a travel power very early into the game. Right after the tutorial in fact, and they put a lot of effort into allowing you to travel the way you want to. The staple modes of transportation still apply (jumping, flying, etc.) but you do it the way you want. If you are a technology based hero who flies with rocket boots, you can set that, and you will look different than a natural flyer. They have also added several available travel powers like grapple swinging and tunnelling which are ever so much fun to play with.

The animation style is very comic-book esque. It looks like Cryptic used cel shading techniques to set the characters apart from the environments, and it has a wonderful effect. You feel like you are reading a graphic novel that pops right off the page. This is coupled with interesting explosion effects and icons that make me feel like Adam West will be jumping out of the Batcopter any minute to kick Burgess Meredith’s pudgy little penguin ass. Holy animation Batman!

As for the missions, we start to see some things here that are more reminiscent of World of Warcraft than anything else. You pick up missions from quest givers scattered around the world, which is pretty staple.  In a nice twist to keep things straight, the minimap and world map indicate with a green circle exactly where you can find the objects or enemies to fulfill a certain quest. I found this system immensely useful, as I am always trying to multitask quests and often getting myself turned around doing so.

Another interesting feature (recently seen in Wrath of the Lich King) is the inclusion of instanced zones. For example, Milennium City isn’t the game’s only locale. Right now the Southern Desert and the Canadian Forest are included as well. If you choose to take your hero over to the Southern Desert, you will initially  find it an irradiated wasteland. You must take steps to clean the place up (which includes an epic battle with a supervillain inside a desert vault, just by the way) and when you are finished, the desert will revert to its usual, sandy self. Naturally, you will only be able to play with other heroes who are on the same stage of the zone’s progression as you are. This may prove inconvenient if you are introducing new players to the game, but I doubt Cryptic, the creators of the “Sidekick” system, are allowing that problem to go unchecked.

All in all, the experience of Champions Online, although not entirely unique, is very fun. But, don’t take my word for it! Cryptic is opening up the beta tomorrow, August 14th, to 50,000 lucky fans who happen to get to Fileplanet first. You can also get an invitation to the beta by pre-ordering the game, so pick your poison. Instructions for getting involved are on Cryptic’s Website.  Have fun my friends, and remember: with great power comes great responsibility.

…Marvel, pleae don’t sue!

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