Nemesis System
Character Creator
Zombie Apocalypse
Makes you feel like a Hero
Great variety of powers
Cons
Lack of Content
Shallow Endgame
Broken PvP
Not enough restrictions on powers
Too expensive for the current content
Champions Online was released by Cryptic Studios on September 1st, 2009. It immediately drew ire from critics and beta-testers alike for a launch day patch that changed the balance around a great deal. Most player reviews as well as Official reviews were based on beta content. Many reviews are rush jobs that were put out without even going beyond the first few areas, heres looking at you Gamespot, CO review after 1 week, yet you wait over a month to review other MMOs, you bunch of paid hacks. Or they go the IGN route and review everything after a week and lack any clear picture of endgame (i.e. Aion 85 WTF? you shills never leveled past 15).
Anyways, back to the game. The PC requirements are as follows (min-rec):
OS: Windows XP SP2 / Windows Vista / Windows 7
CPU: 2.5GHz Single Core - 1.8GHz Dual Core Intel E8400 Core2Duo or Better
Memory: 1GB RAM - 2GB RAM or Better
Video: NVIDIA GeForce 7600 / ATI Radeon X700 - NVIDIA GeForce 8800+ / ATI 3850+
Sound: DirectX 9.0c Compatible
Free Disk Space: 5GB
Network: Broadband Required
Optical: 6X DVD-ROM or Better
One of the key features to this game is the character creator, which I will get into later, but I want to mention that if you have a sub-par PC (anything less than the recommended) you miss out on a lot of the nuances you get in character creation. I played with 3 different setups:
AMD X2 4000+ with ATI 4850 2 GB ram
AMD Phenom II X3 BE, 4GB ram with 9800GX2 and currently with an ATI 5850.
The first setup somewhat struggled with extras like AA/AF combined with high details. The choice was high detail or no jaggies. I generally go no jaggies. The other 2 setups run full blast. So IMO, if you have less than a ATI 4850 or 8600 Nvidia, you will be disappointed in the graphics and playability.
Character Creation
This is universally touted by everyone as probably one of the most customizable character creators ever placed in a video game. You can create pretty much anything you wish, japanese school girls, zombie hookers, Megan Fox, your favorite comic hero, or anything in between. You start out with 8 slots and you have the option to purchase as many as you like 4 at a time for about $8. You can and will, spend hours in the costume creator getting things just right. Another benefit of the Champions System is that each character gets multiple costume slots (unlocked at various stages), so if you wanted, you could be a japanes school girl, zombie hooker, or Megan Fox, all at the click of a button. Really the only faults of the creator is, no fat characters, which some players might like, but Blob fanbois will hate it.
Also in this first stage you will get your first look at the starting power sets. You start off with an energy builder. You have multiple to choose from and you can change the coloring of any spells and skills, so if you want blue fire, you get blue fire. So, Hellfire Yeah! Anyways, these energy builders are used to attack enemies and build your energy bar which powers your other skills. This is basically your auto-attack from most other MMOs. There are melee ones with punches and kicks, gun or arrow based based, as well as elemental ones like fire and ice. More than enough to fit just about any concept. For many of these you can also choose where the power originates, be it your chest, eyes, hands, palms, or fists. So yeah, if you wanted to, you could make a chick that sends ice bolts from her tits, how cool is that?
Next you pick your first starting power. Powers come in several various flavors. Some powers are maintained powers that do damage while you hold the button down. Others are 1 click effects. There are charge up powers, pet powers, healing, buffing, and DoTs. As of the current patch there is also a new Celestial power set that includes many new Healing powers.
You are pretty much unlimited in what powers you can choose. Many of the more powerful powers require a certain number of already picked powers, but it is not very limiting for the most part. Picking bad combinations of powers can have adverse effects on playability (making things too hard or too easy), but that is a small price to pay for such customization.
As you level up, you get power points which you spend on new powers. You get two travel powers (one after the tutorial and 1 at level 35). You also get talent points which are used to increase your stats and advantage points which are used to buff your powers with extra affects. At two stages in your development you get SuperStats.
SuperStats are the niftiest and also least understood feature (especially for newbies) of Champions Online. SuperStats are the two stats you pick to be your main stats. So you can be a magic user and superstat strength, where in other games this would gimp you to the extreme, in Champions your powers use your superstats for all damage calculations. Each stat does offer some side benefits though. Some of these are better geared towards certain powers or powersets. Strength provides knockback resistance, melee damage bonus, and the ability to pick up and throw heavy objects. Dexterity increases Critical chance and stealth. Ego improves Crit severity. Constitution increases health points. And so on and so forth. Each stat provides some extras if you choose them, so you can tailor your build without giving up anything that affects your powers. Some powers do gain some bonuses from stats, so it is still wise to look at your powers and plan accordingly.
GamePlay
Champions Online has 5 areas to play in. Canada and The Desert are the two starting areas. You then move to Millennium City, next is Monster Island, and finally Lemuria. Each of these areas are decent size. They would be comparable in size to a pairing in WAR, an area in AoC, or a small group of zones in Guild Wars. They take several minutes to cross even with the fastest travel powers. There is alot of action packed into these areas and you will see the first 3 areas for the better part of your leveling. Monster Island and Lemuria are your playgrounds for most of your last 10 levels.
Your first game experience comes when you are dropped into the tutorial area where you will fight to rid Millennium City of an Invasion by the Qulaar, giant bug eyed aliens. The tutorial is fairly standard as far as tutorials go and a nice thing is that once you complete it on one character, you can skip it on new ones (new feature recently added).
Once you complete the tutorial, you get thrown into a major Crisis Zone. Crisis zones are a key part of Champions Online in that they are the gateway to new areas. There are currently 5 crisis zones in the game. The tutorial is your first one. Next is the Desert or Canada, which are technically mutually exclusive, but you can travel back and forth between them until you complete one (nice way to get extra XP). Then there is Monster Island and finally Lemuria. One thing I would like to mention here, is that the Monster Island Crisis is one of the most enjoyable events I have played in an MMO and this is a key... [Read More]
