Warps Web

So champions online open beta was released Monday. After downloading it and having patch problems along with most everyone else, I was finally able to play it last night. While I am not usually inclined to play Super Hero games of any sort, with the fantasy mmo market being stagnant, I thought I would give it a try. Here are my first impressions of the game.

The first thing you have to do like with any new mmo is create your character. The character creator for CO is probably one of the best ones I have seen. With the multitude of color, clothing, and accessories, you can easily create a character that will look like no other character in game. My only real complaint is that tehre are some items you cant select currently because of a bug, but a message pops up telling you that they are aware of the issue and working on it. Its nice geting in game notices like that instead of reading through pages of pointless posts on a forum to find the information you are looking for.

Questing is very simple and easy to understand. In my opinion its a little too simple. I like quests where you get a general idea of where to go but you have to do some exploring on your own. With CO you get the quest and it puts a small or big green circle on the map to where you need to go. Most of early quests involve killing mobs to get specific items, freeing citizen the mobs have captured, or finding items within the rubble of the various buildings. Overall they were pretty bland but you get some good rewards and you get a good feeling for how to play the game.

PvE combat was pretty standard. Click a mob, shoot with range skills or run up and use close combat skills, and wait for you or the mob(s) to die. Mobs like to group so you were usually fighting 2-4 mobs at a time. They are pretty simple so there is no real worries of dying at the lower levels. The one exception is when a mob grabs you in some sort of hold. You have to hold you Z button and try to break their hold. If you fail, you die (or at least take a whole lot of damage). I didn’t get a chance to try PvP as every time I tried to join it just sat there stuck on updating. Hopefully I will get to try out PvP in the days ahead.

Overall I would have to say the game is fairly decent. While it wont be the game I play forever, I could definitely see myself getting a few months enjoyment out of it. There are some bugs and graphical glitches but those will get taken care of and the game will probably be even more enjoyable. I definitely recommend picking up Champions Online if you like Super Hero games or if you are like me and are looking for a break in the endless stream of boring fantasy MMO games that have been thrown at us over the last couple years. Enjoy!