Anjin Unleashed: Played Lately: Champions Online

The end-of-beta event for Champions Online kicked off Monday with Dr. Destroyer's robot minions invading Millennium City. I read enough ahead of time (thanks Ardwulf and Syp) to know about the level boost available, so I ran right over and was granted about ten million experience points. It was amusing to pick up three different leveling perks at once. Powerhouse was my next stop to fill out my hotkey bars. It didn't take all that long to train all my new abilities. And since I had little idea what they all did or how to use them, I left two power points unspent.

Outside, I found a Mega-Destroid, a level 40 Cosmic baddie. I'm guessing that Cosmic is CO code for Raid Boss because he killed me in short order. I figured that 18 people in the instance wasn't good enough to get a bunch of people together, so I switched down the line. Lucky for me there was one with 99 people in it so I jumped in and immediately found a huge group sieging one of the monsters.

Wow, he's big. It was funny to see all the heroes floating around him and blasting like a fleet of gunships. I guess mobile combat will have to wait for another day.

Here we see my Arcfire recovering from a bad lunch. (Come on, like all my jokes can be winners.) Anyway, I took down two of the giant beast just to make sure it counted. Actually there's no way to know if it did until it's too late to change anything, so expect a lot of wailing on the official forums.

I logged off soon after since there was no way I was going to use my ill-gotten levels to spoil the endgame experience. I want to look forward to the level 40 content so I said goodbye to Arcfire until Friday. This week is going to drag.

I had one final insight to share about the game. It came to me in the shower where I do all my best thinking. I would blog from the shower if I could get a computer in there. Does anyone make waterproof computers? Or keyboards at least? Wow, this tangent isn't going where I expected.

Anyway, I like that this game plays like a console game. That's not a bad thing. Console games require both ease of usability and ease of accessibility. I don't need every game I play to be a deeply tactical and immersive experience. Sometimes (okay, most times) I just want to log in, kick some pixilated booty, and look good doing it. Champions has that in spades so far. Can't wait for launch!

P.S. Speaking of wailing on the forums, did you all see that lifetime and six-month subscriptions are now sold out? Hope you jumped in early like Ardwulf did. Thanks for the news!

Anjin Unleashed