See first trailers, screens from Champions Online

by Justin McElroy { Feb 25th 2008 at 12:00PM }

OK, we know a lot of you are going to judge us for this, and, yes, it does bear a striking resemblance to City of Heroes (another heroic MMORPG from Cryptic) but we really, really want to play Champions Online. And this new trailer and screens from the game's official site are doing nothing but increasing our urge to tie a towel around our necks and start the revolution.

This preview from IGN has some interesting details too, including the fact that you'll be able to design your personal arch-nemesis, in addition to your hero. The wait until the slated spring of 09 release seems so long that we're tempted to start playing the tabletop version of the game. ... No, no, we kid of course. We'd wear a towel cape before we'd fall that far into the nerdiness rabbit hole.

Tags: champions-online, cryptic

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Intentless @ Feb 25th 2008 12:07PM

Will it be cross platform playable? Cause that would be cool... I have a bud I know will be getting this for PC but I'd prefer getting it for the 360...

NATO_Duke @ Feb 25th 2008 12:17PM

Rumor is yes, but there are not that many details out there as the game is newly announced.

todd @ Feb 25th 2008 1:26PM

Ya, read the latest Game Informer.

tmacairjordan87 @ Feb 25th 2008 3:43PM

heard it was, but not sure why you'd want to play an MMORPG on a console against a PC player they'd have such a huge advantage. The only solution would be to limit both platforms to a small handful of buttons.

Picture playing WoW on 360 against a PC user who not only has more buttons, but likely has mods that give him/her many many more. The battle wouldn't be very pretty for the 360 user.

Jerk Face @ Feb 25th 2008 12:17PM

I like the ced-shading. It looks pretty okay. I'll be interested in getting more details as they come out.

ThornedVenom (Ludwig Defense Force) @ Feb 25th 2008 1:05PM

Sorry, could you repeat what you just ced?

Jerk Face @ Feb 25th 2008 1:13PM

Ha ha... Nice. Well played.

mr nimblewick @ Feb 25th 2008 12:21PM

The logo reminds me of eternal champions.

I doubt they want that comparison.

Chris @ Feb 25th 2008 12:29PM

so... generic...

WiNG @ Feb 25th 2008 1:16PM

Agreed. I don't see how this is that much better than COH.

josh @ Feb 25th 2008 6:08PM

It's better because the champions character creation system has been tested and refined over 20 or so years... it's by FAR the best superhero character creation system in all of pen and paper RPGs, extremely balanced and customizable. you can create basically any sort of character from the comics you want, really. and it remains balanced. it will be interesting to see if they REALLY ported the rules system over, or just bastardized it.

Marty @ Feb 25th 2008 12:30PM

There's something about MMO games on consoles that just doesn't sit well with me. In current popular MMO games, one of the largest draws is that you have thousands of players to interact with, and most of the time, you've got to be able to communicate with them via text entered with your keyboard. Voice chat takes up too much bandwidth to be used in a large world with hundreds, or even thousands of players... and it can serve to destroy the suspension of disbelief. So how do you play a game like this without a keyboard?

NATO_Duke @ Feb 25th 2008 12:33PM

The 360 messenger kit would allow text and thats the console they are talking about it for.

Intentless @ Feb 25th 2008 12:34PM

consoles support keyboard in this day and age... And yes sometimes I would prefer text chatting in COD4... but oh well...

WiNG @ Feb 25th 2008 1:17PM

Back in MY day we played Phantasy Star Online.

With a keyboard.

Over the internet.

Marty @ Feb 25th 2008 1:46PM

Yeah, I know about the chatpad and the fact that you can plug a keyboard in, but that defeats the entire purpose of putting it on a console. I play my 360 because all the games use the same controller to play, not because I want to swap out all sorts of peripherals when I change games.

Besides, playing a game like WoW with only the chatpad as communication would be a mighty frustrating experience. I just don't see it being that much fun.

josh @ Feb 25th 2008 6:10PM

why would voicechat be a hindrance for 1000s of players? im sure it's implemented so that you can only voice chat with people either in your party or within a certain radius of your character. also, the voice chat is probably handled peer to peer, with the server simply dictating who is in range for you to send your chat too, not routing all the traffic.

josh @ Feb 25th 2008 6:11PM

also, as the game informer article said, most adventures in the game are instanced anyways, so you would not be actually in one instance with 1000s of players, just your party.

Joe Smith @ Feb 25th 2008 12:37PM

I hope they make it more interesting than City of Heroes. I liked CoH a lot at first but it became incredibly boring very quickly.

Zertoss @ Feb 25th 2008 12:56PM

During the CoH beta, I actually had more fun just creating heroes in the character creator. I came up with some really awesome looking ones as well as some absolutely hilarious ones. The gameplay was incredibly boring.

I have a feeling that Champions Online won't be much different for me.

StrangeBum @ Feb 25th 2008 12:51PM

Looks nearly identical to City of Heroes to me, aside from the more comic look and feel, which is done very well in my opinion. I don't know, I think it could be a nice diversion from other MMO games that all have such a similar feel and I did like City of Heroes at one point.

I'll keep an eye open, especially for the 360.

mundox @ Feb 25th 2008 12:58PM

What the... I already played this! It was called City of Heroes/Villains.

Well it does look exactly the same, which means I'll play it for a while.

ThornedVenom (Ludwig Defense Force) @ Feb 25th 2008 1:18PM

If I were to play that game, I'd be a Power Ranger.

Vegeta (aka Ska Oreo) @ Feb 25th 2008 1:44PM

Man. This game looks pretty amazing.

LeChuck @ Feb 25th 2008 1:55PM

I'm definitely excited for it. I always wanted to play CoH but don't have a gaming worthy computer. The main reasons I prefer consoles is you never have to worry about having the gear to play a game. If it's for your system you can play it. So Champions Online on 360 is right up my alley.

Even though it is similar to CoH it'll at least play differently with its more action oriented battle system.

Cidan @ Feb 25th 2008 2:25PM

I think the key thing to remember about this game is the ways it will differ from CoH/CoV. The main website for the game even slams CoH in an indirect way for being boring.

In CoH, battle is like most other MMO's where you click and wait for your hits to happen. This game promises to be more Exteel-esque; that is to say you will have to actually move around, click to attack, no more waiting for cool down timers to attack, and so on.

Time will tell if it makes the difference. My self, I'm excited about it as I love the way Exteel (and DDO, for that matter) handles combat, however it's definitely not the only thing they need to improve from CoH.

Scoo @ Feb 25th 2008 3:54PM

CoH's big deficit in my opinion is the repetitiveness of it's environments. City blocks all look the same, there are only like 3 different cave style dungeons and so on. The character creation tools are superb though. WoW has the opposite problem: absolutely stunning art direction for the environments, lots and lots of variety, but a paucity of options for the look of your character's skin and build. Brawny mages just don't feel right!

Both games suffer from the supers outnumbering the civilians 10-1, although imagine this is more a computing power issue.

CoV addresses this to some extent as far as I can tell, though I have only visited a few of the Rogue Isles so far...

Gavin @ Feb 25th 2008 4:04PM

Tabletop is a term you use to refer to a boardgame. Champions is a pen and paper rpg. I hate to be this big of a nerd, but there is a difference.

josh @ Feb 25th 2008 6:16PM

Everyone who is unsure of the reason for this game, see my comments above about the Champions RPG system, and check out this wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champions_%28role-playing_game%29#Description

This game is more than 20 years old. The rules system is EXTREMELY well-tested and the character creation system is about as customizable as you can imagine. You can craft literally any sort of comics character you want, I played this game for about 4-5 years weekly in middle school and high school and I never saw someone come up with a character concept or power that could not be replicated in the rules system.

IF (and that's a big if) they have managed to take that level of customizability and balance, and bring it to a MMO... this will be an amazing game.

Seriously, though it's not very well known outside of pen and paper RPG circles, this is a masterpiece game system and Cryptic made a very good decision trying to use it as the basis for their new game. We shall see if they did it justice.

Batzarro @ Feb 25th 2008 10:05PM

Um... I've been hyped!

Taco_Hell @ Feb 25th 2008 10:06PM

What is this tingling feeling? Am I excited over an MMO?! BUSHWA! Anyhow it has pricked my curiosity but as stated before, I'll wait to get more details to see if its a must-buy, and if they do implement the much revered Champions character creator system PERFECTLY...then they just got a buy.