I have a rather love/hate relationship with Champions Online.  On one hand, I love to sit at the character creation screen and make new heroes over and over (like Scorsese, pictured above), but on the other hand I hate how the game is bogged down by performance and balance issues.  Still, Champions is a solid offering from Cryptic, the same game studio who made the original superhero MMO, City of Heroes.  The fact that it is a subscription based game should also go in it’s favor, as most of the gripes I have with it will certainly be ironed out in a few months.

MMORPG games are a type of game that is best enjoyed with a group of friends – much like gang-banging a hooker or robbing a bank, and Champions is no exception to that rule.

Champions focuses on Player versus Environment (PvE) gameplay, where the majority of the game focuses on killing AI controlled monsters.  In this regard, Champions doesn’t really innovate much in the standard MMO structure – even in the futuristic setting, you’re still gathering ten boar testicles for some guy for the sake of more experience points and maybe some better gear, so don’t expect anything new here.

The game uses a single server for all players – which is pretty cool, but this also means that it relies heavily on instancing to achieve this.  One of the problems I had was that the instancing system doesn’t give priority to friends – so often times, I’d find myself trying to coordinate joining the same instance, which just seemed like an unneeded clusterfuck for a game based around grouping.  Performance wise, Champions was very stable, but quite frankly ran like shit.  Even on my high spec computer, I could only get 20-25 frames per second at times without sacrificing visual quality.  This is indicative to pretty much every MMORPG on launch days, but one can’t help but feel it could be avoided with just a tad more QA on Cryptic’s part.

Another glaring issue are the imbalances the game launched with – certain powers and abilities are more powerful or more desirable than others (like Minimines), and a couple power lines (like Defender and the Ice powers) were nerfed into the ground by Cryptic shortly after launch, again showing that the game needed more time in beta or with QA.  Usually, this would be fine, but Champions’ abnormally high respec cost makes this a hassle, even if Cryptic gave free respecs to players after the changes.  How this respec system could have made it into launch, I’m not sure – it’s a really counter-intuitive system in a very fun game.

These gripes shouldn’t scare you away from the game, though – Champions is still an extremely solid MMORPG, probably one of the most polished and entertaining ones that will be released this year.

Probably the best thing Champions has going for it is it’s character creation system.  Want to make a giant robot that shoots lasers out of his hands and kicks the shit out of bad guys?  You can do that.  Want to make a super hero like Wolverine or Spider-man?  Or maybe you like The Punisher more.  You can do those too.  The amount of powers Cryptic has included cover all the major super hero archetypes, and the character creation system is really second to none in terms of customization.  I’ve seen zerglings, Phoenix Wright, John McCain, Robo Cop, and any number of Marvel-inspired comic book heroes.  Along with the highly customizable appearance of characters, both the powers and way you advance your character is really up to you, although some frameworks are naturally going to make more sense than others (a big robot built around strength and constitution isn’t going to be as effective with guns or shooting arrows as someone with higher stats for those powers.)

If you’d rather play the game than sit around jerking off at the character creation screen, Champions improves upon the standard MMORPG battle system, adding in mechanics that make you feel like a super hero.  Objects in the world – from cars to humvees to street lamps can be picked up and thrown at enemies, provided your strength is high enough, causing a large amount of damage and generally making your character look like a bad ass.  Furthermore, enemies can drop health and power orbs upon death, (think God of War), resulting in a much shorter down time between fights and making the game pace feel a lot faster.

At level 25, you get to make your very own nemesis for your champion, customizing everything about him (using the same character creation system used when creating your character), and after doing this, you’ll be ambushed by your Nemesis’ henchmen and start receiving quests to find and defeat him.  It’s just another small attention to detail Cryptic has put into the game to make it feel a lot more heroic than your average MMORPG.

Aesthetically, Champions is an amazing looking game – it feels like playing a comic book.  The game could certainly use some improvements, but the framework for a fantastic experience is there.  It offers a modern, fast-paced alternative to the aging City of Heroes games, and all the small details come together to make the game feel cohesive and immersive, as well as fun to play – it’s certainly worth giving it a chance.  I could really go on for another eight or nine paragraphs and not even touch any of the other features in the game, but if you’re looking for a new MMORPG game to play, you could do a hell of a lot worse than Champions Online.