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Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Champions Online: Not a Champion

Late last week, I downloaded the open beta for Champions Online. I just want to do a quick follow up to what happened when I was finally able to actually log into the game. The verdict? This game is just a slightly updated version of City of Heroes/Villains, a rather ancient massively multiplayer online role playing game by today's standard. I played those two games before and I got really bored after several months. Apparently, Cryptic Studios who is responsible for these games has never heard of the term "taking risks" before. From the character creation screen - the super power selection and the level of costume customization - all the way up to the tutorial area, the game smells CoH/V and I'm telling you, it's not that pleasant of a smell for me. The cartoon-ish graphics really lack impact and you don't feel like you are in an open world because you can see these tall transparent colors that act as borders to areas that you cannot go to. If you have never experienced CoH/V previously, you may get excited about the promise of this game - it's natural to be enticed by the idea of being a superhero fighting evil and injustice using your superhuman powers. Judging by my play session though and seeing the utter similarities between these titles, that excitement will not last that long because the idea that supports it is very gimmicky and the developer really didn't go far enough to utilize their previous experience to maximize this game's potentials.


How come they didn't release this an expansion to CoH/V?
It's all about rebranding.

2 comments:

Blake said...

I've never played a MMO. Mainly because I am afraid if I pay for a months worth of gameplay and then don't get any time to play it, I feel like money wasted.

I guess I have to get over that and try one. The Starwars old republic really sparks my interest. It may be the first MMO that I play.

Who knows.

Loner Gamer said...

The new Star Wars MMO from Bioware seems to play just like the old KOTOR games + Mass Effect, which is highly anti-MMO but I really like what I am seeing so far. They just better have tons of content available from the get go because of the whole cinematic conversation system or it will get real empty real fast.

The whole design makes me wonder: Why do they have to make that game into a MMO instead of one kick-butt Star Wars adventure (with co-op options) to end all other Star Wars games? But we all know the real motivation behind that decision... Money. And Bioware is going to make tons of it with that game.

Yeah, I am not a fan of monthly subscription either but if you like the MMO you are playing, believe me, you will make time to play it lol which could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how you approach it. Perhaps you should start with a "pseudo-MMO" like Guild Wars just to get a feel of what playing a MMO is all about. That game does a pretty good job portraying the illusion of a real MMO but without the monthly fee. It's real cheap too and the community is still pretty huge.