Getting Into Spandex

A couple of weeks ago, MMO Symposium received an invitation from Cryptic Studios to check out their newly released MMO, Champions Online. Although not a superhero and comic book fan myself, I decided that I would temporarily set aside my legendary weapons, flee the claustrophobic confines of Moria and don some very unflattering multi-coloured spandex – all in the name of blogging.

To tell the truth, I was very apprehensive about signing into the game server. This was truly going to be an alien experience for me, a die-hard fantasy RPG fan. All of the usual conventions that I am so comfortable with were about to be completely replaced and I was definitely going to feel like a noob. Therefore, it was with nothing less than utter trepidation that I logged in… only to find disappointingly that 80% through the sizeable client download that Cryptic had decided to perform ‘necessary system maintenance’ – Grrr… really, who takes their servers offline on a mid Saturday morning?! After not a few muttered curses I remembered that the game servers are U.S. based and therefore it was actually around 3am their time. Ok, I take it all back.

I returned sometime later to find that the client had finished downloading and I was now fully ready to go. Other than my earlier experience, installation and logon was a total breeze and before long I found myself deeply engrossed in the character creation screens. At this point, I really must mention that I have NEVER seen such a wealth of customisation options and such diversity of choice for creating a character in any game, online or otherwise. Cryptic have done an incredible job of providing the means to make your superhero look truly unique. Just clicking the ‘Randomise’ button a few times proves how almost infinite the possibilities are. Which is a good thing, because as I understand it, without visual mods available in-game then whatever world-saving look you create here is how you are going to stay looking. Although that’s not strictly true because I did later find that it’s possible to create additional costumes for your hero (for an in-game price) and Save/Load them for a complete wardrobe. Nice.

Sadly though, the mounting excitement I gained from the character creation process was somewhat short-lived as I dropped into the initial ‘tutorial’ area of the game. Truth be told, I was probably overly enthusiastic with the graphical settings I had intially set up because I found that I had to knock them back a fair bit in order to gain an acceptable frame rate and the reduced visuals sort of knocked off the first impression sparkle I was hoping for. There was also something very unceremonial about the way the game began, with no preface to my character’s background or history, no animated cut scenes and no narrated hand-holding. Despite being given the option to pick a set of key bindings that mirrored any previous fantasy MMO’s I may have played, I was genuinely confused for some time as to what I was actually supposed to do, as all manner of muscle-bound heroes and scantily dressed heroines blasted, pounded and vapourised what seemed to be an unending swarm of alien insectoids all around me. If you also combine that with some albeit minor issues of getting stuck in scenery, sporadic targeting of enemies and a rather annoying message of ‘InvalidEntityName’ popping up when your right-click on a mob you begin to feel that the game isn’t really out of beta yet. Seriously Cryptic, you do need to work on that starter area.

But it’s not all bad. The game does have a real comic-book feel and although like any new MMO there’s a learning curve, once you get what’s going on then the game is pretty easy to play. The huge variety of created costumes you see around you makes for some very entertaining play and I really enjoyed being able to wander into a multi-player quest area and join in with the shared goal without the need to enter a completely separate instance. I’m sure there are many other hidden gems that are yet to be discovered.

Will I play again? The jury is out at the moment. I don’t really think I’ve given the game a fair enough chance to prove its merits and therefore it would be wrong of me to write it off just yet. However, I do know that in order to attract me away from my current MMO, Cryptic are going to have to add a little more sparkle and depth to Champions Online to convince me to wear my pants on the outside of my tights.

//HoC