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Champions Online Hands-On Preview for PC

Champions Online Hands-On Preview for PC

July 13, 2009 – Anyone who is a fan of MMOs has likely already heard of Cryptic Studios. This is the company responsible for allowing players to bring their own superheroes and supervillains to life in their first two MMOs, City of Heroes and City of Villains. Following these titles’ successes, Cryptic began work on Marvel Universe Online but the project was eventually canceled. Fortunately, Cryptic continued to focus on the superhero MMO genre by picking up the rights to make an MMO based on the old pen and paper RPG, Champions. With the company’s pedigree and the nostalgia supplied by the Champions license, we were excited to be able to try out a portion of the feature complete Champions Online at a recent press event held in San Francisco.

Champions Online screenshot

Before we were able to play though, Cryptic had a few things they wanted to show us about the game. Character customization has always been a big part of Cryptic’s games and Champions Online is no exception. As we were walked through a few characters being created, the available options looked pretty staggering. Players will be able to choose their characters’ powers from a wide variety of possibilities including premade thematic sets such as fire, ice, and telekinesis. However, if you wish, you can also create a more original and diverse character by mixing and matching different powers to your liking. The example we were shown was a character that was able to launch fire attacks from one hand and ice attacks with the other.

Still, choosing your character’s powers is only the beginning. Players can also alter the color of their attacks, such as making energy bolts a pale yellow, a bright green, or any other color you wish. Where your attacks emanate from can also be customized, allowing your attacks to come from just about any part of your character’s body. These kinds of options may seem fairly unimportant to gameplay but they really help to make your characters feel more unique and allow players to better create their ideal superhero.

Your superhero’s physical appearance can also be fully customized, much like in City of Heroes. However, this time around the options are more robust, with better body morphing and costume customization. Every piece of your heroes body can be easily be adjusted using a slider. This makes it incredibly simple to increase or decrease the size of any part of your character’s anatomy, allowing for massive hulks with tiny heads or even Popeye look-alikes.

Champions Online screenshot

Creating the perfect costume is never easy but the options provided by Champions Online appear as though they’ll make building the perfect costume a simple matter of finding the right pieces and tweaking them as desired. We were shown a ton of different outfits and accessories in the demonstration and players can even unlock more options while playing due to loot drops, which are a new addition to City of Heroes players. Of course, not everyone will have the time and/or patience to sift through and tweak all of these choices. For these types of players there is the ability to click the random button to generate characters. While this is to be expected, players will also have the option to lock specific parts of their character’s outfit during this process. So, if you find the helmet you want, just lock it, click the randomizer, and the helmet will remain but everything else will change. This seems to be a pretty quick and efficient way to create a character’s look without the need to scroll through the hundreds of available options.

After this we were shown the game’s new duel system that allows two heroes to square off against one another. By right clicking on another character, challenging them to a duel, and the other player accepting the challenge, any two heroes are able to settle their differences. Once the duel has been accepted, a rocket will crash into the ground nearby, surrounding both characters in a large dome of energy. This dome will not only keep other heroes from interfering with the fight, but it also serves as the boundary for the duel. To win you can either fully deplete your enemy’s health or somehow manage to push them outside of the dome. It’s a pretty simple concept that should help players settle scores with one another without involving other players.

Champions Online screenshot

Once the demonstration was finished, we were finally able to get our hands on a five versus five PvP match. In this match we were all supplied with prebuilt characters and tasked with taking out the opposing team. The combat was surprisingly fast and fluid for an MMO. While I was stuck with a longer-ranged attack type character, I was able to witness some very quick and agile sword-wielding melee characters dashing around and basically cutting through the frontlines of my team. Needless to say, I think most of the opposing team had a bit more experience playing games on the PC. Besides the direct hero on hero confrontations, there were also team-oriented turret guns lining the enclosed corridors of the location that aided whichever team they were assigned to. Players could also interact with a few computer consoles found in the environment that would actually call in some computer-controlled backup if you were the first player to utilize it.

All in all, I came away very impressed with Champions Online. The sheer amount of options when creating your own hero seemed almost infinite, yet incredibly easy to navigate. Plus, with the almost action game speed of the combat, taking your customized hero to the streets to dole out justice should be more involving than the much slower paced gameplay found in most other MMOs. Given the way online players always seem to find ways of annoying each other, the ability to enter into a one on one duel anywhere in the game world should also prove to be an excellent feature. Fans of games involving superheroes, the old pen and paper Champions RPG, and/or MMOs will definitely want to keep their eyes on Champions Online when it is releases this September on the PC, with a possible future release on the Xbox 360 as well.

Game Features:

  • Hi-Octane Excitement: Champions Online delivers furious, fast-paced encounters previously reserved for action and fighting games. No more boring auto attacks and lengthy recharge times. Champions Online combat is instantaneous and electrifying!
  • Brains required: Every enemy and super-powered threat in Champions Online has its own unique abilities and combat specialties. Use your head or wind up dead!
  • Bring friends, make friends: The Champions Online universe will be jam-packed with thousands of heroes, facing thousands of threats. Join up with other heroes, create your own superteam, and prepare to take on the ultimate threats!
  • Total customization, at your fingertips: Choose from hundreds of different costume pieces, colors and body types to create your character’s one-of-a-kind costume and look. There are billions of possible combinations, and in a universe brimming with the fantastic and the unforgettable, you can still be completely unique!
  • Your powers, on your terms: There are a multitude of astonishing powers to choose from in Champions Online, and its flexible character creation system gives you total control over your hero’s abilities. You can even pick the appearance of your powers. Do you want purple force fields? Green fire blasts? Jet black claws? In Champions Online, you decide!
  • Keep your enemies close: Every hero must have an archenemy. In Champions Online, you design your character’s supreme adversary, choosing a name, powers and costume for a superpowered foe to bedevil your hero throughout his or her career.
  • Bigger and better: Vanquish evil, and your successes will be rewarded with costume pieces to enhance your powers and abilities. Then customize the appearance of those rewards to your vision of your hero’s look and abilities!
  • Endless exploration: The battle against evil in Champions Online rages across the world. No other MMOG offers players the chance to explore such diverse realms from the shining skyscrapers of Millennium City and the frozen wastes of Canada to the the hidden underwater city of Lemuria.
  • Evil most foul: Battle supervillains, aliens, giant monsters and secret, sinister organizations. Doctor Destroyer is launching new plans to conquer the world. VIPER lurks in the shadows, seeking chances to strike at humanity. The ancient Lemurians are plotting a return to power. Can you stop these heinous threats to humanity?
  • Make your mark: The story of Champions Online is constantly changing, continually evolving. Villains are defeated. Heroes rise and fall. Cities transform. Your actions may decide the future!


  • Spandex Rocks!

    May 7, 2009 – With City of Heroes starting to show its age, Cryptic Studios is prepping to break out its hot new superhero MMORPG to let players act out their heroic, bad-guy pummeling fantasies in style. Based on the tabletop role-playing game, Champions Online is an action-heavy, comic book-inspired effort that’s poised to show up the developers’ past work in the arena of ripped, super-powered guys and gals.

    Champions Online screenshot

    Beta testing is currently in full-swing, and the online game’s cross-platform launch is set to kick off in the coming months. We recently donned multi-colored spandex tights and dove into the crazy action in Millennium City. After spending some time cracking the skulls of humanoid insect warrior and helping the local citizenry alongside dozens of other strange-costumed do-gooders from around the virtual globe, our hands-on time with the PC Beta build of Champions Online left us wanting to go back for second, third, and fourth helpings of superhero ass-kickery.

    Creating an awesome superhero can either be as short and sweet or as long and complicated as you choose. Cryptics’ past efforts included a tremendous number of customization options, and Champions Online seeks to literally bury players under a mountain of choices for your character. After selecting from a few pre-set stat categories, I was presented with various frameworks to choose from. These determine your starting abilities and the abilities you can pick from later on as your power grows. Examples include archery, force, martial arts, munitions, power armor, sorcery, and telepathy, among quite a few others. Settling on telekinesis, I moved on to body specs.

    Here’s where things get overwhelming. You can adjust practically anything about your character, including their height, body mass, muscle size, and fine-tuning features for most body parts. That’s before you even get to customizing your costume, which offers a ton of awesome and ridiculous options. I put together a meagerly-statured muscle guy donning a reddish-pink suit, a whip-like tail, and a weird inhuman head that looked like a cross between a praying mantis and some kind of fish. You can hand-pick everything, randomize it all, or randomize specific elements. It’s even possible to customize the color of your superpower effects. In the finished version, you’ll also create a custom super villain character who will come into play as your nemesis throughout your time in the game, though that option wasn’t available in the Beta.

    Champions Online screenshot

    When my superhero arrived in Millennium City, all hell had broken loose. The city was under attack from giant alien spacecraft choking the skies above. The extraterrestrials, a medley of insect like humanoids and other creatures, were tearing things up on the street level, and other superheroes of all shapes and sizes were running around working to help the local cops keep the citizens safe from the invaders. Different levels of chaos were unfolding in various neighborhoods of the area of the city I explored, and each presented opportunities to take on unique heroic tasks to gain experience. Even the relatively small section of the city I tooled around in felt huge in scope. The game’s slick, cel-shaded art style is very attractive and definitely delivers on the intended comic book vibe. Checking out other player’s hero characters running around the city and the wonderfully designed environments themselves was a blast. But standing around sight-seeing while folks were in danger isn’t very becoming of a superhero, so I launched into the tasks at hand.

    After a few quick tutorial missions, I was soon using my limited beginner powers to zap and pummel away at the evil-doers while gaining experience and reputation to boost my abilities and level-up my hero. Since I chose telekinesis, my primary attack consisted of shooting laser-like beams from my fists. This was effective at various ranges, and scoring repeated hits on baddies boosted my endurance meter, which allowed me to trigger my secondary attack – a dizzying flurry of energized punches and kicks – in short spurts. I found it took a lot of battling to level-up enough to acquire the points needed to spend on new abilities. Leveling-up gains you points to buy new powers and advantage points to spend on customizing the powers you’ve already unlocked.

    Champions Online screenshot

    Who Needs a City When You Can Have the World?

    August 25, 2008 – There’s one thing you can say about comic book fans – they are some of the most diehard out there. I’d almost say that they are more diehard than Trekkies or Warsies, except they generally tend to be the same group of people.

    Champions Online screenshot

    Over the years, we have been treated to several comic book related video games. Some have flat out sucked and some of them have been pretty decent. However, in nearly every instance, they have always been about existing super heroes, their universes, and whatever current storyline is going on at the time (see the Maximum Carnage game for the Genesis as a good example). Of course, I did say nearly. There was one game, City of Heroes, that I played for no other reason than to digitally recreate the superheroes from my imagination.

    The major problem hindering City of Heroes, and even City of Villains later down the road, was the limited speed of everyone’s internet at the time. So, when you had your character running in the streets to go and find some “action,” they would look more like stop motion animation than anything else. Thankfully, we will not encounter such a fiasco this time around, and Cryptic Studios is in the driver’s seat again to give comic book fans, or the people that have always wanted to create the perfect hero, the game they wanted way back when.

    For starters, the customization options for Champions Online will be so grand that they will challenge even the most scrutinizing amongst us to find fault. There are billions of possibilities for your character, including body type, color variations, and costume pieces. Literally, it appears there will be no way you cannot develop the exact look of the character you have in mind. The customization won’t stop with the general look of you character either. Your powers and abilities will also be fully customizable, giving you complete control over everything thing, even right down to how your power will be displayed on screen. After all, who doesn’t want to make certain that “Ballerina-Girl” has the appropriate shade of pink and purple ribbons of death energy whips? These very specific customization options are the heart of this game. However, there is one other thing that will separate it from other comic book related MMOs; you’ll also create your hero’s worst enemy. The old adage, “keep your enemies closer,” rings true with Champions Online. You will create your character’s antithesis the same way you created your hero, developing their costumes, powers, and their back-story as well.

    Champions Online screenshot

    While your arch-nemesis will constantly hinder the progression of your career at every turn, they won’t be the only threats you will face in the game. The main, overarching theme of the game involves various villains with their own plans for world domination or the total annihilation of humanity. Of course, how can one hero stand alone against these evils most foul? While nothing has been confirmed, we can imagine that teams will be able to form in order to take on the various evil-doers of the game. We can also assume there will be the classic “two heroes meet, misunderstand one another, fight until one of them is hit with a rock to understand what is really going on” cliché. This is helped by the fast-paced combat system implemented in the game. Gone will be the traditional automatic power uses and pain-in-the-ass recharging of the abilities. Fast-paced combat will certainly aid in cutting back the time it will take before every hero is fighting one another, just like in comic books.

    Some of the more interesting aspects of exploration of Champions Online are that they won’t be based solely on the world. You will challenge evil across the stars, under the seas, and even some parallel universe action is in store for us would-be heroes. None of this would be enticing at all if the graphics were not shaping up nicely. Judging by some the already created heroes and villains of Champions Online, it should generate enough enthusiasm of would-be creators to eagerly await the games arrival. Aside from the character models already shown, the environments also are sharp and crisp. However, it does beg the question, how much detail has been thrown into all of the various locations that will be present in the game? I am excited to see the areas where I can cause the most damage, while protecting it of course

    Champions Online screenshot

    Just like a certain other comic book related MMO, there hasn’t been much talk on how the impending monthly cost will be handled on the console version of the game. However, with downloadable content becoming more of a staple for video games, I could see the benefit of destroying the monthly service cost and incorporating monthly scheduled DLC to pique the interests of the truly dedicated.

    Either way, with the inclusion of Champions Online, comic book fans wishing to explore a vast universe of either preordained creation or one they help create are in for a treat soon. Champions Online is a few points ahead of the respective competition, the largest being the freedom to help build a comic book universe from the ground up. Because of this, we won’t have to worry about any random “Crisis” events happening just because. Maybe that alone will cause some comic enthusiasts to wait until they can create their own Champion.

    Game Features:

  • Hi-Octane Excitement: Champions Online delivers furious, fast-paced encounters previously reserved for action and fighting games. No more boring auto attacks and lengthy recharge times. Champions Online’s combat is instantaneous and electrifying!
  • Brains required: Every enemy and super-powered threat in Champions Online has its own unique abilities and combat specialties. Use your head or wind up dead!
  • Bring friends, make friends: The Champions Online universe will be jam-packed with thousands of heroes, facing thousands of threats. Join up with other heroes, create your own superteam, and prepare to take on the ultimate threats!
  • Total customization, at your fingertips: Choose from hundreds of different costume pieces, colors, and body types to create your character’s one-of-a-kind costume and look. There are billions of possible combinations, and in a universe brimming with the fantastic and the unforgettable, you can still be completely unique!
  • Your powers, on your terms: There are a multitude of astonishing powers to choose from in Champions Online, and its flexible character creation system gives you total control over your hero’s abilities. You can even pick the appearance of your powers. Do you want purple force fields? Green fire blasts? Jet-black claws? In Champions Online, you decide!
  • Keep your enemies close: Every hero must have an archenemy. In Champions Online, you design your character’s supreme adversary, choosing a name, powers, and costume for a superpowered foe to bedevil your hero throughout his or her career.
  • Endless exploration: The battle against evil in Champions Online rages across the world, into outer space, and alternate dimensions. No other MMOG offers players the chance to explore such diverse realms.
  • Evil most foul: Battle supervillains, aliens, giant monsters, and secret, sinister organizations. Doctor Destroyer is launching new plans to conquer the world. VIPER lurks in the shadows, seeking chances to strike at humanity. The ancient Lemurians are plotting a return to power. And Mechanon won’t stop until it has wiped all organic life from the planet. Can you stop these heinous threats to humanity?
  • Make your mark: The story of Champions Online is constantly changing, continually evolving. Villains are defeated. Heroes rise and fall. Cities transform. Your actions may decide the future!

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