Eventually the game opens up a bit and allows you to choose how the character's story will progress with a binary choice of instances. This design choice also feels a bit different than the traditional open world setting – unlike WoW or other similar games you can't simply run off into the world and find trouble, the nature of the game and its narrative structure somewhat prevents that early on. Instead you can choose initially to visit the irradiated desert to combat mutants or head to icy Canada to face dangers of another kind.
Completing these branching paths eventually opens up your choices a bit and allows more freedom but the game and its instance oriented approach lacks the open sandbox feel one might be expecting. If players keep in mind that this is a super hero title and it takes the comic book storytelling pretty seriously you can accept that each mission is like a single issue of an ongoing comic book featuring your character.
I've not progressed to the high levels of the game yet but so far I think I'm enjoying the game. The comic book setting and colorful environments are fun to explore but I'm already beginning to become a bit lulled into sameness by the simple combat and limited story options early on. I've played around with a few heroes, all with varying powers just to get a feel for the difference but so far Power Armor, Magic and Darkness powers don't really feel that different in execution even though they offer wildly different power choices.
The biggest surprise for me however was the lack of a community feeling in the game. Through the early levels and first scenario I never felt the need or compulsion to join up with other players – Champions feels like a massively single-player online game much of the time. Those few team-up opportunities I experienced often resulted in my partners thanking me for my help and blasting off to continue their solo adventuring as soon as the quest or task was completed. I'm glad the game supports the solo player so well but it was not immediately apparent or encouraged that heroes would form the great super teams of the future – though I have to say that my play experiences are from an early game perspective where climactic fights are on a rather small scale.
Champions Online is not your traditional online RPG. It feels tailored to a more action-oriented crowd of games and maybe will serve to attract players more used to
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance style combat who would never spend hours calculating DPS in a Molten Core raid on Wow.
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