Champions Online GC Previews

GameSpot and GameSpy have both dished up new hands-on previews of Champions Online based on what they saw of the superhero-themed MMORPG at this year’s Leipzig GC. A snip from GameSpot’s article:

During our demo, two players were exploring an instanced stronghold (read: dungeon) named Teleios Tower. The instance will purportedly support and offer a decent challenge for up to five players in the finished game, but the demo version was clearly designed to be quite easy for just two. The tower belongs to a twisted genetic scientist who has been attempting to create a perfect clone army using material gathered from all manner of creatures, including dinosaurs and aliens. He hasn’t succeeded yet, but his failed experiments roam the halls of the tower and don’t take kindly to superheroes going after their creator.

Before skipping ahead to a boss battle against a cloning machine with a brain, we got to see the superheroes doing battle with enemies that looked like armored dogs, tech-savvy raptors, and large, translucent worms, to name but a few. It’s unfortunate that the demo appeared to offer little challenge for the Cryptic Studios representatives playing the game, because they appeared to spend much of their time simply standing still and hitting a fire button until the enemies surrounding them were all gone before proceeding to the next area. It’s true that MMO games aren’t known for fast-paced combat, but we definitely got the impression that Champions Online is probably a lot more exciting than it looks when it’s being played with some kind of no-damage cheat in effect.

And a snip from GameSpy’s article:

The dungeon culminated in a battle with a giant brain surrounded by clone-spawning generators (you’re intended to direct a party member to destroy them ASAP), who emits a periodic area-of-effect attack. Since the attack was called “Ultimate Mind,” we can assume that it would be pretty devastating if you aren’t in god mode.

One other interesting tidbit that emerged from the demo was a brief mention of a “tailor” feature that might allow players to tweak some of their avatars’ visual elements after they’re created. Our host didn’t make it clear exactly how drastically you’ll be able to tweak, but implied that it would stop somewhere short of “wholesale.”