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I suggest you consider this statement.

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The PvE isn’t quite getting boring yet. The tutorial zone is boring, but I can run through it in about 40 minutes, so it is Not A Big Deal. Then the starting area in the desert / canada takes another hour maybe. Nothing in any of the starting areas remotely resembles a challenge. Those few boss missions that are a challenge typically aren’t hard to find a team mate for.

That said, having a dedicated team mate is equally awesome because of the themed superhero pair opportunities.

PvP is completely unbalanced and some builds that are great in PvE just don’t work in PvP, and without cheap respecing, you’re hosed.

Also, people need to get more creative. Ive only seen one well done iron man and warmachine, the other hundred were poor attempts. The army of Mech warriors is getting old to. Make your own hero. It is more fun and allows you to create it, rather than question at ever ability pick whether or not So and So could do that.

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When CO works, it’s a blast. I find it succeeds best when it deviates from norm – stellar character creation, nemesis system – but it still clings too much to the genre’s “rules”. As in, there’s lots of combat – which, while painted in 4 color strokes, onomatopoeia madness and a twinge of Freedom Forceish environmental destruction – ends up being repetitive and unrewarding. The combat model feels light but graceful and the whole power-up dropping gives it a rather arcade touch (which I like) but at about level 15 upwards you’re stuck in a spiral of pointless violence. Aggro mechanics seem a bit hit or miss – mobs are often too close, G.I.Jo–er, VIPER infiltrators spawn out of nowehere in gangs of six or eight at a time, and yet it’s quite possible at times to make short work of mobs surrounding a BigBad before taking him down.

I think currently, the biggest disappointment to me is how travel powers and combat are like distinct entities when they should work together. Sure, superspeed has Impact but… Maybe I had a different set of expectations from this, or maybe I tried too hard to imagine creating a homage to The Flash would actually pan out, but… I’m running at high speed past grunts whose bullets and knives follow me like heat-seeking missiles, even bending corners to hit me. And this also happens with flight and teleporting, which is just hair splitting. Teleport *does* allow you to get a moment to breathe quite well but speedsters are usually screwed. If Barry Allen played this he’d probably think twice about being the fastest man alive.

(Btw, I have to confess. I was recently reminded of a story by Richard Fleming and Carmine Infantino in ’88 which I read when I was a pup, which revised and condensed The Flash’s origins. It was awesome and probably one of the best origin stories ever – Champions needs something like this. I love creating costumes, although I’m not enamored with screwing builds over the general lack of info on power synergies, but what I think it lacks the most is identity. You can create your visual but there’s not an “origin story” that helps you stand out from the rest. Writing a text blurb isn’t quite the same.

Ideally for me, the tutorial would be a very different thing, with both hero and nemesis facing for the first time – thus sparking the hatred between each, along with explaining how we got such powers in the first place. But I’m old and crazy, so what do I know)

I generally enjoy the game, though. You just can’t go wrong with Foxbat’s craziness (“Help me and I’ll give you a beta key to my MMO, Foxbat Online”, said the cheating bastard) or Grond (which is like the Hulk in his earlier years, a pissed off mutated monster roaming deserts and barely talking). There’s a lot of homages and spoofs that happen across the game, from the predefined quests (“World of Witchcraft”), the general types of enemies (enemy names are usually fun, from Mr. Zombie to Electric Eel Supersoldier – the latter complete with a v1.2 doppelganger later on), or situations that happen out of serendepity (like when my speedster, Bolt, teamed up with a character named Arrow – a reminder of the The Flash and Green Arrow’s ocasional partnerships; or when I met Jesus and Conan O’Brien dishing out JUSTICE to robot cowboys).

I’m sure no one’s gonna read this, haha. But still, I enjoy the game but there’s a lot to improve. We’re still errand boys, collecting/killing/escorting through fields and cities. If the game had kept the pace of the introduction sequence – as in, working in tandem with the Champions, rather than having them like signposts stacked with quest notes around Millennium City – it would be great. And there is always A LOT to do – fighting, questing, crafting, grouping, exploring – but most of these activities still lack in punch. Some do their best to move the superhero inside us – like that open mission in the city, where you’re tasked with killing Mega-Destroyer. I just could not believe it. 600k HP, regen, 4 groups of henchmen. Of course me and my temporary group couldn’t do a damn thing.

Player 1: “600k hp!”

Player 2: “it regenerates :/ ”

Player 3: “lfg megadestroyer ends in 10min”

Player 4: “notnx, gonna find sumthin else 2do”

Meanwhile, Kinetix, Defender and god knows who else are waving to people with exclamation marks over their heads across town. Wouldn’t it be great to have, like the loading screens suggest, the Champions dealing with this kind of menace and were assisted by players? Maybe even appeal to specific powersets or travelling powers. “While we distract Destroyer, we need a speedster to go into the base and shutdown… Whatever”. But alas, no. You’ll be cleaning out radioactive pools and messing with the Powerhouse, ocasionally typing LFG and no one answering, and going about solo.

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You log on, you pick the hero you want to play with and you go find something you want to do in your short gaming period and log off and feel you achieved something with your game without relying on any large group of people. And btw, most of the best superheros and comic heros are all solo types or at least have a partner/sidekick/occasional hand/part time member of a superteam.

Batman, Superman, Judge Dredd, Wolverine, Deadpool, DArkness, Blade, Johnny Alpha, Spawn, The Incredible Hulk, IronMan, SPiderman, The Green Lantern, The Silver Surfer, Thor, The Punisher.

Such a great game that you can customise your character to be your own minds interpretation of your favourite superheros, and then act out your own heroic stories with your super hero/ant-hero and just go to town. It is a shame you reminisce over COH playing with your mates and let that cloud over your own enjoyment of a comic book simulation such as this. Sad Face.

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Believe it or not, it was the PvP that kept me interested, all the way back when I first started playing in Closed Beta in April. There was just something about the combat system, and the dynamics of hero vs. hero combat, that I simply found absolutely fascinating.

But now… After the thousandth time getting chain-held and chain-KBed around an arena time and time again, I’m sick of it. I’m sick of the brokenness. I’m sick of the neglect. What amazes me is that at one point, holds were NOT ridiculous (17-second duration, really?!) and for some bizarre reason they decided to make them impossibly powerful. Oh, and then there’s *teleport*, a get-out-of-jail free card that grants you virtual invulnerability from defeat in any instance. And the only solution to those is, you guessed it, abusing the holds and chain KB.

So PvP is no fun for me anymore. I’ve made a character specifically to abuse the flaws present in the system, but it just sucks the fun out of the game beating on people who are completely incapable of responding back. And PvP is one of my primary motivations for advancing in the game, so now the repetition of content is really starting to get to me (though granted, this is, what, the 30th time I’ve gone through the low-level zones?).

Oh, and the endgame is broken. No wonder they did everything they could to keep people from reaching it.

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