It is way too late right now, but I figured I’d get this posted before I called it a night.
Got the Open Beta client working at about noon and logged into Champions Online for the first time. I have to say, to start this with, I have been waiting for this game (and alternatively posting wildly or stalking the games forums) since I first heard about it Feb of last year. It was worth the wait.
My computer right now is actually running at below the minimum specs for the game. I lack ram, my processor is a bit slower than it should be and my video card not only lacks video memory but is outright unsupported. To get the game to run I basically had to turn every video setting down as far as it could go. The game still looks good. I can’t imagine how damned nice it must look on a high-end machine. Going to have to find out for myself sometime in the next month or so, depending on shipping time.
I have made two characters so far, I won’t talk about the appearance of either of them except to that the character creator may have fewer costume parts in it right now than CoX does (to be fair, CoX has had years of time for animators and artists to add new ones) but the amount of customization is far greater. Tons of sliders to change the shape of the characters body and the characters head. Lots of color customization options. It really is the best character creator I have seen to date, MMO or non-MMO. Seriously.
The first character I played started out with the Might powerset user with its energy builder and starter power (Clobber and Beatdown). I believe I chose the Hero background but I wish now that I had gone Heavy Hitter instead for the stronger more focuses bonuses. My superstat at 5 was STR. Later powers I took were the Power Gauntlet and Invulnerability from the Power Armor line, and for flight powers I started with Rocket Jump but found I didn’t like it very much (I was lagging too much at the time so I wasn’t able to guide myself at all) and switched that with a retcon for Rocket Boots (go-go-flight power!).
Honestly, I think I should have skipped Power Gauntlet. It didn’t feel like it added much to me as if an enemy was close my melee powers did just fine and if they were far away I ran out of energy pretty quick and had to close to melee range anyways. But still, it was a ton of fun to play. Being as strong as I was, when doing the ‘Desert Disaster’ missions I was able to do fun things like pick up a truck and throw it at my target. The enemy basically died on the spot and then the truck would blow up damaging other foes in the area. A very fun brawler character that made it to level 8 (might be 9) and is currently at the lair (instanced mission) that ends the Desert Disaster storyline.
My second character started with Munitions powers (Gun Slinger and Two-Gun Mojo) with the Untouchable background I think (at least that is the one I think I should have taken). My superstat at 5th was DEX, I took Hoverdisc for a movement power (again, a flight power). I also took the Shotgun power and for defense at 8th took Super Reflexes.
Being a ranged character played a lot differnetly than melee, plus a friend of mine from my CoX days teamed up with me (player of Parallax Hunter and Darkthorne) and he was also a munitions user so lots of ranged gunplay going on. Was fun the 2nd time through the tutorial because I did find things I had missed the first time (a perk I hadn’t seen the first time) and had some ‘duh’ moments too.
At one point you have a mission to rescue some citizens trapped beneath rubble. My first time through my character was strong enough to lift the rubble off without a problem. The second time I was focused not on STR but on DEX instead and couldn’t lift a single piece. Was perplexed for a while before I realized that you could just destroy the rubble by shooting it and it worked just as well.
My second character is level 9 right now and did the Crisis in Canada mission line instead of the Desert Disaster.
Not sure which of the two ‘crisis’ zones I like better yet. I know I am mission a mission still in the Desert that I didn’t find (“Grond something something”) and I am still missing some crash survivors to find in Canada (haven’t unlocked the perk for finding them all yet). Will have to explore both zones some more still, but they both have a wildly different feel and are fun. I think the Canada zone may be a little harder simply because foes will root and hold you more than I remember seeing in the Desert, but again that may be more because of the differences between my two characters than the zones themselves.
Lots of things I could ramble on about but it is late and I need to get up in a few hours to head off to work or else I’d likely still be logged in and playing more. Given that I have just scratched the surface of the game so far (tiny tutorial zone and just the first crisis zone) I can’t imagine how much cooler the game will be in the later levels.
Edit: Oh, crafting is moderately interesting too. At the low levels I have done it at so far, the items I can make are on-par but not really better than the mission rewards or drops I am finding. But I believe the big payoff is later in the game where you can apparently specify the stats of items you craft to better boost your character. My first character kind of ignored it and I think is only skilled in the teens, my second character played with crafting a bit more and is skilled at 79 or so and that is mostly from researching and de-constructing upgrades I had outgrown or mission drops I choose but never intended to use because they weren’t an improvement.