Alright, collaborate and listen to me talk about Champions Online. My brother and I got into the beta but that wasn’t the end of it. Remember how you were all happy when Mount Doom exploded at the end of Return of the King and then you were all like ‘wait…what happened to Mister Frodo and Sam?’. That’s kinda how the beta was. I pre-ordered the game, got the key and everything, downloaded the client, and everything was free and clear! Then I had to patch the game and let me tell you, I’d rather be shot in the leg than go through that again. I won’t delve into the innumerable amounts of problems the patcher had but it mostly consisted of a folder mix-up leading to a 3.6 GB download just for the patch and a constantly failing patch server leading to disconnect after disconnect. So let me lay it down for you, really long day of intermittent success that ended at 3 in the morning with an up and ready game to play. But, by that time I didn’t feel like playing.
Then tomorrow came. I woke up at the crack of noon and rolled out of bed to play Champions. It was all fun, the best part of course being character creation. There are tons of costume pieces, maybe even more than City of Heroes (Cryptic’s last venture into super hero MMOs) and you don’t have to wait 20 levels to get a cape! But I didn’t make a cape guy despite my elation, I made a bad ass robot who shoots equally bad ass bolts of energy and has a shoulder-mounted mini-gun. He’s that big billy bad ass at the top of the post. So I did a run through of the opening scenario and the desert zone that follows. I picked up the jet boots flight power, which is cool if you don’t mind the bad maneuverability. Then I made some triflin’ witch doctor bastard with a skull head.
I gave him a mix of the magic and supernatural power sets which turned out really good and thematic. I picked up earth flight with him, its pretty self explanatory. You fly around on a hunk of whatever you were standing on at the time, you do it in the city you’ll get a rebar-filled concrete chunk, and if you’re in Canada you’ll fly on a snowy chunk of stone. And then, as I told my friends I would, I made Broly.
You might not know him, so if you don’t I’ll just throw this explanation at you: 350 lbs. of shit your pants flying at Mach 4 shooting energy balls that destroy planets. Surprisingly, it worked out well. They had all the pieces necessary to make him and if they didn’t I found something real close to it. The ability to customize the color of your powers (and where they shoot from, for some) make making original guys a possibility.
The only problem I found through all my character creating adventures (minus the expected beta bugs) was taste-based. I’m not a Silver Age comics guy, I’m more of an Ultimates guy, where Hulk gets to eat people. So, obviously, I was a bit disappointed when I walked through fields of campy dialogue, enemies, and villains. It’s made bearable by the bad ass game play but if you like Silver Age stuff. you’ll love this game. In my honest opinion, I like the cast of villains and heroes for City of Heroes/Villains better.
The game comes out September 1st, pre-order customers get a head start (myself) and you should buy it if you like comics or superheroes in general. This game gets my GOOD stamp.
