Champions Online 9th Anniversary!

Happy anniversary Champions Online! It's hard to believe you are 9 yrs old and you're the longest and only active superhero MMO today! You are also a slightly unbalanced and generic MMO with uninspired questing, a terrible cash shop and f2p restrictions.

9 years ago I was fortunate enough be given a copy of CO to review for a site named Gamesquad, an opportunity I am grateful for. Unfortunately the website doesn't exist anymore so I'll have to dig up a copy of the review to see what I thought of the game at launch. I have spent quite a bit of time with CO the past three weeks, I hit level 38 which is a couple short of max so I might write-up a re-review just for the heck of it.

What I will say about Champions Online right now is the questing is bland and generic. CO is highly reliant on gear which makes the early levels really tough. If you don't have a gold account or lifetime sub you are limited to pre-made archetypes, some of which from what I've read online are plain bad. Did I mention the questing is generic? There is very little in Champions Online that makes you feel like you are a superhero in a comic. Replace the superhero gimmick with a fantasy setting, or a sci-fi setting, or anything that comes out of Korea and the game would be the same. It's so generic that at times I struggled to get excited to login and play.

So yes, Champions Online is 9 years old this year, it is a time capsule of MMO game design from almost a decade ago.

Weekend Edition

What am I going to play this weekend, good question. For the first time since Mass Effect 2 came out I find myself in a transition type period. There are no new games I plan on buying and the ones I did buy I have finished, so where to go from here.

EVE Online continues to be my only paid sub at the moment. Because of a few other games, my time with EVE was relegated to just logging in and updating my skill training que. The other day I noticed that Steam has my play time listed for EVE in the last 14 days at just over 13hrs, that's not good. So these last few days I have been spending more time with EVE and trying to finish the Sister's of EVE epic story arc.

I did have a couple of milestones happen with EVE recently; I surpassed the 900k skill points mark which means now I had to get real insurance and not the noob insurance, and I lost my first ship while doing a mission. I was happy about the first skill points, not so much when I lost my ship. It would appear that no amount of passive shield tanking in a Merlin will hold against what I think was 16 drones when you are both webbed and tackled at the same time.

My goal this weekend with EVE is to work on the epic story missions and try my hand at some mining, I could use some ISK and I hear mining is the way to do it.

I did finish Chaos Rising about a week ago, so hopefully I will be able to get some coop campaign play time, and if not maybe try the multiplayer for the first time or just do some Last Stand mode which is a ton of fun. With the NHL playoffs just around the corner I find myself being drawn back into some NHL 10 for the Xbox. My hockey alter ego who plays defense for the New York Islanders just swept the Ottawa Senators 4-0 and took game one from the Boston Bruins this morning. I get the feeling I may be playing a lot of NHL 10 this weekend. Somewhere in there I'm sure I will be jumping into some action with Bad Company 2, and Champions Online has a free play weekend for everyong so I might jump in and see how that game has come along.

So to recap; there should be some EVE online, possibly Chaos Rising and hopefully a bit of Champions Online, most likely some BC2 and a crap load of NHL 10. If only the days were longer and I could live off less sleep!

Champions Online Blood Moon is Live!

The new Halloween event Blood Moon for Champions Online starts today. There's a pretty significant patch that not only includes the event but some other content and of course fixes and tweaks. I am not going to list the patch notes, you can read those here.

Not only is there the new Blood Moon event, but the new Celestial powerset can be unlocked early and all characters created before today will receive a free retcon. I am really pleased with the changes to the mission sharing and the addition of some level 18 content in Millennium City.

I think I will be playing some Champions tonight, I want to get that new powerset! In case anyone missed it, here is the trailer for the new Blood Moon event.

It's here!

Well it's here, my review copy of Aion showed up today. This was met with some anticipation and excitement, and with some sadness as well.

The problem is that I have three MMO subs going right now, some single player PC games that I have been wanting to play, and a NHL 10 season to play through.

So this means that I need to make a few tough choices, do I stick with Age of Conan, Lord of the Rings Online, or even Champions Online and run the risk of paying for a game that I am not playing. I was also looking forward to getting Fallen Earth in a few weeks, so add that to the mix as well.

I do know that I committed to writing a review so I will be playing Aion for a few months I'm sure, and Champions has just over two free months still left, so I think I might have my answer to my question.

Champions, Aion and Fallen Earth sound like a good mix of games to play!

Champions Online Review

Well it's happened, I have written another game review, this time for Champions Online. The nice people at GameSquad were kind enough to humor me and post up the review on their site. You can read the review here.

A few words about the review, I stand by what I wrote, but it doesn't change the fact that I have fun when playing the game. The review was written a little over a weak ago and there has been some improvements in the game even in that short amount of time.

When a game is bad it's easy to give a low score for it. But when you really like a game and see that it has alot of potential, it's hard to overlook the negative aspects of the game and give it a really high score. The fact is that Champions could have used more time in development.

I like Champions because it's not fantasy based, it's easy to pickup, the combat is fun and you can play casually and still feel like you have accomplished something.

The Henchmen.

Netflix is a beautiful thing. Tonight I was watching one of my Chow Yun-Fat movies that I received from Netflix called The Corruptor, not a bad movie. As it was coming to the end, there is a small firefight on a container ship between, in the process there were alot of these evil gunman who get shot and die.

My first thought was why don't the good guys ever pick up the weapons of the dead bad guys? Why can't movies be more like first person shooters?

The my second thought was how come these bad guys are always bad shots? In fantasy movies they are always unknown swordsman who gets hacked, in Star Wars it's the Stormtroopers, and in G.I. Joe they would be the Cobra soldiers. What do these all have in common? They are all henchmen! They couldn't hit the broadside of a building if they were standing two feet away.

So why is it in Champions Online that three henchmen can waste me like some scrub? Would Superman be so super if he had to respawn at a restore point because he had a little trouble with a few henchmen?

Adventuring in Champions.

A few screenshots of my adventures in Champions Online.

This one is of Xerxes, my powerarmor character standing over the carcass of Black Talon.

This is me and Defender, he's such a great guy!

This is Dirk. Dirk was just admiring the public service announcement.

Pulse here has somehow found his way to the sub-level of Millennium City.

Release day blues...

Champions Online releases today, and so far the server hasn't blown up. But what is blowing up is the forums. This morning there was a release day patch, and apparently the game was too easy and fun before, so the patch made the game hard so that you feel less like a super hero and die alot. Oh yeah, it has made the game not fun all of a sudden, go figure.

End of the month.

I've been enjoying the Champions Online headstart thus far, and am looking forward to seeing how the game handles all the non-preorders tomorrow when the game is officially released.

The game is fun, looks good, runs like crap and still has bugs, everything you want from a MMO at launch. My only concern would be that I am not sure if I could see myself playing this game for a long amount of time, but for now I am having fun.

So now comes the hard decision, I have too many MMO's and I need to trim down, which one's do I keep, and which do I cancel...

The Headstart has begun!

The Champions Online headstart began today, and even a little early as I was able to log in around 0930 this morning. The cool thing is that there will be an event for the duration of the headstart up till the actual release of the game. I was able to play some before the server booted me off, maybe it melted from all the players trying to log in at once, who knows.

There were a few last minute updates to the game including raising the XP from mob kills, something many on the forums were asking for. But I did notice that some bugs carried over from the beta into to the live client. Still, I'm having fun.