So... How about them superheroes?

I'm lazy. I'll just come out and say that right now. I am lazy as fuck. Seriously. Like, to the extent where I exert more effort to BE lazy than it would take to avoid laziness. I actually exercise cause it's easier to do things without being fat for crying out loud!

Why do I bring this up, you ask? Well, that's hardly any of your business, but I'll tell you anyways, and since I'm feeling generous, it'll only cost you one testicle.

Here's a knife. Knock yourself out, Chachi.

I'll wait.















You done?

Good.

So, I bring this up because the NDA for Champions Online dropped about two weeks ago, but I was too goddamn lazy/busy playing the open beta to read any reviews.

Before I say anything else, I enjoyed the game. A lot. I HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE Muh-mor-puh-gahs, but the superhero hook was enough to get me playing. The combat system was more intuitive than just "click on an enemy once, then either it or you dies," and actually encourages combo use, the character creation system is ridiculously robust (I spent an hour and a half designing my character. Yeah. I could have taken longer, but I wanted to actualy PLAY.), and the level design is fun and just the right mix of corny and awesome to evoke the feeling of a golden age comic.

I created my character, Berzerker (based off of the ulfsarks of norweigan fame), and gave him the ability to claw peoples eyes out. (Okay, not REALLY, but that's what I IMAGINED him doing, anyways.) Power selection is just one of the sections where Champions really shines over it's predecessors CoH/CoV. Just like those two games, you can pick a preset power pool, but the real fun, unless you want to play a generic, boring, single-focus hero like a loser, comes in the new option-create your own power pool. You pick an attack that boosts your energy pool, and a more powerful attack that drains it. I went with a basic physical raking attack and an attack with claws. Then, after filling in his name and backstory (his parents were killed by a writer's convenience and he decided to be a superhero.), I started the tutorial.

And the fun began. I ran about, chucking cars at aliens (yeah, most things in the environment can be picked up by a suitably strong hero) and saving civilians, before I was asked to help with a situation at the headquaters of the prominant superhero team of Millenium City (a lampshaded stand-in for Detroit).

Head-cracking ensued, and after crushing a big bad in what looked suspiciously like the powerloader from Aliens, I emerged from the tower of sheer awesomeness to see a whole detachment of soldiers and superheros praising me.

Me. Just me. For taking on the baddy. No idiots running around yelling "0MGZ I WUNZERD."

I actually felt a definite sense of accomplishment. The game uses different instances of areas so that once you've destroyed an alien spaceship or whatever, it's not hanging in the sky. Once you've stopped the malignant force animating a horde of Canadian zombies, they aren't still attacking (Maybe that has more to do with the Canadian part than the zombie part, but still.)

In short, I accidentally felt like a hero. And later, when I killed the big bad in the Canadian wilderness, and again in the New Mexican desert, I felt like a hero again. That was something else Champions did far more effectively than all but a few of the many games I've played.

Travel powers, as well. In CoH/CoV, you only received the effectual ones at level fifteen. In champions, you can super run, super jump, fly, teleport, websling, whatever as soon as you finish the tutorial. And it is AWESOME.

Then I got online to see what other people had to say, and everyone, EVERYONE, was whinging about graphics issues, or that the patcher wasn't working right, or that, and this was my favorite complaint: "It's too easy to level up!"

Well, excuuuuuse me. If you want a mindless grindfest to get experience, allow me to direct you to WoW. Champions is NOT a serious muh-mor-puh-guh, and I can't believe I used those two words in the same sentence. It's for comic book geeks, like myself, who just want to have a little fun with superpowers.

I haven't even GOTTEN into the awesomeness of the fact that you can create your own nemesis at level 25, design their powers and minions, eventually subdue them, throw them into prison, then start the whole process from scratch.

The fun really starts when earlier Nemeses (Nemesi? Nemesis'?) break out of prison and come after you, eventually earning you a rogues gallery that would make the Dark Knight proud.

In short, the best thing I can say about Champions Online is that I'm willing to fork over money for it, which for a mmo is essentially the same as saying I would give it incredibly hot oral sex, but don't want to get a veneral disease, so I'm not going to, just in case I wind up riding down a slippery slope and bedding elderly gentlemen for cash to spend on World of Warcrack.

It looks like a subscription service is in the cards at the moment, which is sad, but I still think it's worth it.

You can mercy kill me now.

Edit: They reopened Open Beta! Cryptic, I vow that, whoever is responsible for this, I will give them head. Fuck. Yes.

Later, losers.