There’s one thing I don’t like about Champions Online so far… I can’t find any option to enable the UI to show while taking a screenshot! I’ll likely try again using windowed mode and doing a full screenshot, but that’s for another post. As I don’t have any shiny UI elements to show off or explain, I’ll just post some of the screenshots I’ve taken so far and a brief explanation of them.

Silia Wulfhart's First Costume

Gormlaithe's First Costume

Here is one screenshot option I do like. It seems during character creation if you save the costume the game will save it in this shiny comic book style picture.

Silia is a hybrid Munitions/Supernatural power set. I went with Gunslinger for my energy builder (dual pistols) and Lash for my ranged attack (you throw a chain). Having custom power sets is likely my favorite part of Champions Online. I love customization. For travel powers I went with Acrobatics — this is similar to Super Speed and Super Jump being used together, for those who have played City of Heroes. It’s not nearly as effective, of course, but it still looks cool. You get to do some flips. The other powers I have gained so far are Regeneration (passive heal over time, very very nice), Condemn (targeted Area of Effect, charge it up to stun and deal massive damage — huge energy cost), and Command Animals (summons two pet Wolves). So far I’m mostly Supernatural, and will likely pick up the other heal that set has before turning more towards Munitions.

Gormlaithe is my second character, and I went straight Power Armor for her. The starting abilities are both ranged, and both seem to be some form of wrist mounted gun. Not too terribly exciting but the damage is nice. The travel power I went with is the Jet Boots — the flying ones. The animations for flying with them is amazingly nice and having boots suited to it helps. The character is still very low so I’ve only gained one other power — Energy Shield. The shield replaces your regular block and looks pretty nifty. One feature in CO is coloring your powers and your shield can be any color on the rainbow.

Here we go again...

Champions Online uses the traditional quest hubs and NPCs we are all familiar with, and so the universal mark for quests — the exclamation point! The question mark makes an appearance, too. This shot is the very beginning of the tutorial — the first quest you get and the first NPC you talk too. Here you can already see the city is in bad shape — there’s an alien invasion going on, and you have to stop it!

Combat.

Combat is a bit different. You have an energy builder that works as told — you toggle it on, do auto-attacks and build up your energy. An interesting note — you often do not have a full energy bar. You have a soft cap that you’ll always regenerate or degenerate too. Stronger abilities require more energy, at times more than the soft cap allows — Condemn is one such ability. I cannot use it at the full strength unless I gain more energy first.

Smash!

This is in the desert, one of the two areas you travel to after you leave the tutorial. The big green thing is a sort of epic boss — Grond to be exact. He’ll jump all over, shout and kill you if you’re unlucky enough to be nearby. The two headed looking wolf is actually two wolves, the pets you get with Command Animals. They’re handy, can tank a bit and deal some damage — but they’ll die if they get swarmed. You may notice a drop in graphical quality — this is the low setting. The previous screenshots were of recommended, but I had to turn it down once I got into the larger zones and gained a travel power.

Gormlaithe

Here’s Gormlaithe posing. The graphics are really quite nice in this shot, I think. Really, if your system can handle it the game will look wonderful.

Public Quest.

There are public quests in the game, similar to Warhammer Online. The main difference is how scoring is done — it’s not random, it’s based on participation. Here I’m helping out Ironclad to defend and rebuild a cannon. There doesn’t seem to be nearly as many PQ’s in CO as in WAR, I’ve only seen this one and one in Canada — none in the desert so far (I’m up to level 12, so it’s likely there are some). Rewards didn’t seem that great when I got top score twice, but it was something.

Jet Boots

Lastly, I have the jet boots. This is also a picture of the start of the Canada zone — nice and cold. Flying around is fun, but it doesn’t have one advantage that acrobatics has — adjustable power strength. With acrobatics you can charge up the power when using it and get a stronger speed/jump bonus, or you can just tap it to get a smaller effect and still gain the defensive bonuses. That’s handy.

I’m working on a gadgeteering alt right now, I’ll see about trying them all out. Especially before making my mind up on the lifetime subscription.

More in the future.

I was hoping to have a post about Champions Online yesterday, but I couldn’t get the game to finish patching till then. So, I spent all yesterday evening and well into the night playing! As such I’ll see about getting screenshots posted later today — if I can stop playing long enough.

This is more of a heads up, but I’ll share a little bit of what I’ve learned. If you liked City of Heroes, you may like this. It’s not guaranteed — the game is different. But if you really like superhero themed games, I think you’ll like it.

Some of the differences I noticed: choosing powers not limited by set — can essentially craft whatever kind of superhero you want, travel power right out of the tutorial — level 6, combat is a bit faster — can move while doing a lot of attacks, I haven’t noticed any ‘casting bars’ but you can hold down some abilities to charge them up and get a more powerful effect, there are tons of zones but not nearly as many instances as in CoH — in fact there’s very few so far and the game play has taken place in the open world, you have equipment in the form of items that boost your stats/defenses, powers can have their colors changed on the fly, powers are customized differently — no enhancements — instead you buy different upgrades — these upgrades can be a higher rank of the same power or adding additional effects — for instance: Lash is a power that hits the target with some chain from a medium distance — it’s instant cast — but you can upgrade it to add a charged ability that increases damage and adds a knock-back at max power, contacts seem to be more traditional MMO quest givers — you won’t be building up influence with them, there is a central city — Millennium City — but the zones vary all over the world — the first two are a desert in the south western US or the frozen norths of Canada. If you made it through that piece of grammar hell, sorry! I’ll have screenshots later on to point out some of this.

As far as my liking the game goes: I’m really enjoying it. It is different from City of Heroes, but the customization and fun is there. If you want to feel like a superhero, this is the game for you.