Earth’s first and best line of defense is its heroes. For generations, brave men and women have answered the call to protect the world from the villains who threaten its safety and security. Today, organizations such as VIPER, ARGENT and PSI use both superpowers and super technology in their dastardly plots to control the world. Creatures from outer space and other dimensions seek to enslave humanity. Super scientist Teleios is creating an army of clones and superpowered constructs to do his bidding. The greatest threat of all is Doctor Destroyer. A superhuman genius driven to conquer, Destroyer will not stop until all of humanity bends knee to his greatness. In 1992, Destroyer obliterated the city of Detroit and killed thousands. With years to prepare, his next attack is sure to put the entire planet in peril. Led by The Champions, protectors of Millennium City, the world’s heroes have launched a crusade for peace, security and justice. But they need allies. Defender is calling for a new generation of superheroes to fight in a war against evil that spans the globe - and beyond. Save the world. Be a Champion.

Cryptic has a long history of making good MMORPG games with City of Heroes and City of Villians. Plus they are working on one of the most anticipated games in a long while, Star Trek Online. When Cryptic announced that their current project is now Champions Online to say people became interested is an understatement. Those gamers who like to enjoy some heavy duty action in their multiplayer games we have a winner but those gamers who are looking for a bit more RPG in their MMORPG than this casual game probably will not appeal to them but it is certainly a game that everyone who likes comic super heroes should give it a good chance.


Gameplay

A word of warning about Champions Online, this is not your normal MMORPG and it might not appeal to everyone who gives the game a solid try. Champions Online is an action role playing game which is similar to games like Marvel Ultimate Alliance and not a true role playing game like The Elder Scrolls Oblivion, Fallout 3 or the Witcher, nor is it close to the standard Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games like Everquest 2, World of Warcraft or Lord of the Rings Online.

You will be clicking heavily in the game using your special attacks on a constant basis while building your power up by using your primary power. This makes the game feel almost like a comic book inspired Diablo clone at times. Is this a bad thing, no, not really, but it is not as good as Diablo. The game could have used a bit better combat system because until you reach the higher levels you will repeat the same attacks over and over again.

The best parts of the game include the great character creation system which allows you to make your own hero and eventually a Villain, the Super Group feature which allows you to get your own group together and it almost feels like your part of a real Super Hero team and the fact you can use a Xbox 360 controller to play the game. I actually found controlling the game with the Xbox controller better than the keyboard mouse controls. While it is not perfect I was able to control 95 percent of the actions of my character except for a few times when a mouse was better like talking to various NPC’s. The controller gives you the feeling like the game is a true action game and not a generic action MMORPG.

Crafting is simple, too simple and rather boring. As a diehard crafting whore I was hoping for a deeper system but the crafting’s simple nature fits with the action gameplay very well. You pick a profession such as Arms, Science or Mysticism and then a specialization and you are off. You will find items to build on various monsters and in crates and objects spread across the world. Use blueprints for more items and even Research and Develop to learn how items are created. The crafting system might just be basic enough to have even the most diehard haters of MMORPG crafting creating some new toys for people.


Graphics

Graphically, Champions Online ranges from outstanding excellence to epic failure. The game has some great features such as the ability to fully customize your character and create several billion different character variations to play with. You can create robots, beasts, athletic, vixen, tall, short, fat, demonic and anything in between with a ton of customization on every minor body part. Then your customization options can jump to adding different clothing, capes, horns, wings, jet packs, holsters, glasses and almost everything else imaginable. You character does not change their overall look by adding new equipment, like almost every other MMORPG on the market, but you can visit the tailor and customize the look of your hero and even add new clothing which unlocks as you play the game.

The animation of the heroes in the game are great and act exactly as you would expect them to as they fly, run and crawl all around. Where the animation fails is most of the NPC’s whose animation is jerky and sometimes they just stand around like statues and you have to wonder how or why Cryptic thought having everyone standing around doing nothing was a good idea.

The worlds level design is good but I have to admit it feels thrown together and very random at times as you begin to progress through the game. Even the tutorial, which should be put together better than everything else has these huge areas with nothing there and Main Street is packed full of monsters and civilians and various destruction locations but for a city under attack, the games initial impressions fail to impress.

Part of the epic fail side of things in Champions Online is that the lack of variety in how different the in game enemies look. In the tutorial there are maybe five different looking monsters and perhaps ten more in the next two areas of the game, Canada and the Desert. Even the original strain of MMORPG’s which came out 10 years ago had more of a variety. This baffled me the first time I got in to the game and saw how things look creatively and it left me wondering why they did not put more effort into the monsters by using the Character Creation side of the game.

Audio

Overall, Champions Online has some good audio that certainly makes you think this game is comic book hero game. Heavy punches sound like they have a ton of weight behind them, laser blasts, sonic booms, gun shots and sword strikes. The voice over work on the other hand is not so good and is very cliché, but thankfully the amount of actual voice work is very little. I am disappointed that the actual voice work was not more in-depth because if the characters you dealt with were more alive instead of just standing there with a limited set of animations and a lot of text to read.


Value

If Champions Online only provided a dozen or so class types the value of the game would be almost as low as a flash based Pong game. But with the amazing Character Creator, tons of abilities to create your own custom character or a comic classic based class you can have a ton of replay value until level 11 or so. Then the games content begins to thin out dramatically for a while and you have to search for quests or hope into some player versus player matches which get very old very quickly. It is not that Champions Online is bad it is just unfinished and needs a few content update patches. Once that happens I would expect the games overall value to rise dramatically.

Bottom Line

If you are into playing a purely action based MMORPG then this is one you should look at. But if you are into more traditional MMORPG games, such as World of Warcraft, Everquest 2, Age of Conan, etc. then you should look elsewhere. This feels more like a console action hero game than a standard MMO which is not a bad thing but I cannot say go out and buy it without putting down this one caveat. If you do buy it, then give it a serious chance and play it for a couple weeks before making a decision on it, first impressions are not a good thing for Champions Online.