Champions Online Preview - Open Beta and About to Release - Thoughts and Analysis

Written by: Michael Hartman • Edited by: Michael Hartman
Updated Apr 10, 2011 • Related Guides: Xbox 360 | Mmorpgs | XP

This preview is written at the end of the final open beta of Champions Online This article looks at game in its effective release state. Pros and cons are analyzed and some areas of improvement are pointed out. The desperate need for full character respecs is addressed.

Not Quite a Preview, Not a Review

This is not quite a review of Champions Online, but it is close. Look for a review soon! This section will eventually link to the full review of Champions Online, so go ahead and bookmark this page so you can check back shortly.

A Note About City of Heroes

Cryptic's other Superhero game is City of Heroes. As it was their first game, and there are a lot of similarities, this preview will compare Champions Online (CO) to City of Heroes (CoH) quite often. That is simply because it is a logical comparison and it serves to illustrate points very aptly. Make note of those abbreviations (CO and CoH). They will be used occasionally throughout the article.

Graphics in Champions Online

Champions Online is a pretty game. With that said, the graphics are nothing ground breaking. If the graphics are better than CoH, it is not by much. The power effects show evidence of a few more advanced high end graphical features, but that is minor at best. It is worth noting that the CO engine was designed from the beginning to support power customization, which is certainly a plus.

RECOMMENDATIONS: By default, the game comes with "comic book style outlining" enabled by default. In my opinion, this feature makes the game look terrible. It causes things to have a washed out, hazy look. I highly recommend that you turn OFF the comic book style outlining in your graphical options.

click to enlarge

I also recommend turning off shadows or at least turning them down. The performance gain is huge, but more importantly the game just looks better. Shadows are really overdone and are incredibly obscuring of the otherwise nice looking environments (and faces).

Controls

Controls in the game are well designed and responsive. If you played CoH or just about any modern MMO you will be familiar with the controls. Unlike Guild Wars, you can jump, which is an important bit of information for many gamers. Customization of keybinds and such are standard and expansive. The macro system is also similarly robust as the one in CoH.

xbox 360 controller works in Champions Online

click to enlarge

One very interesting facet of the controls is the built in support for XBOX 360 gamepad controllers. While this controller is not "officially supported", it works quite well. You will need to use your keyboard and mouse for some things, but you can play most of the time with just your XBOX 360 controller. This is a nice option for some people.

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Groovymarlin Aug 28, 2009 3:09 PM

Chat and A Few Other Items

Yes, you can resize the chat window vertically. Drag it upwards, and then drag the bottom frame down. This is not intuitive, but at least it works. Also, if you click on the chat "bubble" in the upper right corner of the chat window, you get some menus. Choose "options," and you can change the scale of the font to make it bigger or smaller as needed.

I liked the game enough to buy it and a lifetime sub, but I agree that a full respec is desperately needed. Hopefully that will be coming soon. The other problems I noticed had mostly to do with graphics. For instance, if you change your UI scale to make it larger (if you're running at a high resolution, for example), some options in the costume/character creator screen disappear! They fall off the display and can't be scrolled to. The other problem I had was graphics performance in general. My video card, which more than meets the recommended specs and runs every other game at high settings with no problems (including CoH, WoW, HGL, AoC) just performs terribly with full graphics in CO. I've heard this might have been an issue with the beta code or possibly server stress, so my fingers are crossed that this will see some eventual improvement as well.

Great preview!

Michael Hartman Aug 28, 2009 1:28 PM

RE: Champions Online Preview - Open Beta and About to Release - Thoughts and Analysis

If by content you mean another couple of warehouse missions.... well that's not content.

The game plays exactly the same as it did 5 years ago. There have been very few new forms of gameplay added. The only new form of character development was the IO system (which was great), but that's a pretty poor track record for 5 years.

Level 50 character are still dull and there is almost nothing to do with them.

After 5 years of content releases, CoH is still the most content-light of all the AAA MMOs. It really is quite sad.

PeterD Aug 28, 2009 1:03 PM

A correction and some befuddlement

Just a quick correction -- CoH has had the ability to save costumes to a file for quite some time, so that's actually something CO carried over rather than initiated.

And some befuddlement -- I'm not sure how you can list 'lack of new content' as a failure for CoH. They've added far more content over the years than most MMOs do without creating expansions. There are a plethora of things to do at all levels that simply didn't exist when the game released. Now, if you're complaining they're all the same types of things, that's true, but what game has fundamentally changed their gameplay after release (short of SWG and the NGE - ugh). Even after two expansions WoW (the industry leader, I guess) still plays exactly like WoW did at release. You do quests, you run instances, you level up.

AlaCarcuss Aug 28, 2009 4:59 AM

Let them hear about it

I sure hope you've let the developers know your thoughts on what's wrong with CO atm, especially the respecs. Also, post a link to this article on the official forums perhaps?

I agree wholeheartedly by the way....

Logstar Aug 27, 2009 12:47 PM

Chat window height

Actually, you can resize the chat window height. The Do it at the midpoint along the bottom of the window - your cursor will turn into a vertical arrow showing you can resize. It took a lot of looking and asking around to figure this out, and does definitely needs to be improved anyway.

Champions Online Preview - Open Beta and About to Release - Thoughts and Analysis

Not Quite a Preview, Not a Review

A Note About City of Heroes

Graphics in Champions Online

Controls

Comments