Champions Online Takes Off



£24.99

Today sees the North American release of Cryptic Studios' latest title, Champions Online, the highly anticipated crime-fighting superhero MMO set in the Champions universe. Read on for the round-up of our coverage on the game.

Earlier this year, Cryptic Studios invited us to the Atari offices in London for a presentation and hands-on play session of the upcoming Champions Online. The demonstration, hosted by Cryptic's Bill Roper, included a full overview of the enormous character customisation process, in which players have a vast amount of choices to pick from when making their toons.

Unlike some other online games, you're really unlikely to see another character the same as yours while playing because there are literally thousands of different ways characters can turn out. You can pick from male or female, human, beast, android, insect or monster, then adjust the height of characters, their weight, muscularity, facial features, hairstyles, and skin/hair colours. Then there's the costumes, which will be the feature players probably spend the longest amount of time on. For a start, there's the choice of cloth, leather or metallic appearance for each costume part. Along with the standard items of clothing like chest, legs, boots and gloves, there's head-wear, capes, belts, shoulders, wrist-wear and more. You can choose colour themes for your outfit too, or individually colour each part.

Once the considerable task of designing the costume is sorted, you progress onto the powerset. This is where you choose which powers you would like your superhero to wield. They range from physical abilities like swordsman, archer or gun fighter, to mental powers such as electricity, telekinesis, fire or ice. The colours of powers can also be customised. You want green fire? Not a problem.

When in-game, the user interface will be familiar to most MMO players. The minimap, action bars and on-screen quest progress log are all in the expected places, enabling players to jump straight in to the game. Another familiar sight is the yellow exclamation and question marks over the heads of NPCs, marking quest givers and hand-ins. This also shows on the minimap.

The first quests players are tasked with involve the rescue of Millennium City, the base of the Champions, from an invading insect race. This is a nice introduction to your character's powers, combat and questing. When the mission to save the city is completed, you can select which travel power you'd like. Flying is there of course, self-powered or with the aid of rocket boosters, and so is swinging (think Spider-man). Other options include teleportation and burrowing underground, which is an effective method of stealth, allowing characters to sneak up on mobs or other players in PvP situations.

Champions also includes a selection of professions; Science, Arms and Mysticism. Items created from professions upgrade or modify characters' abilities and gear.

Around 900 quests currently await players, and these include public quests. While flying past the local prison in this dynamic world, you might notice a break-out taking place. Stop and help out with other heroes for a nice reward. If enough players do this to keep the streets free of crime, you'll notice a change in the city overall; reduced graffiti for example.

As players progress through the game, they will explore five major zones. Millennium City is the starter zone and home to the Champions. Lemuria is an underwater zone, and lots of information about this area and its inhabitants has been released by Cryptic. The Bleak Ones, old gods rejected by the stricken Lemurians, want their worshippers back and are willing to go to any lengths to get them.