Played Lately: Champions Online

• As I mentioned in my first impressions post, one of the things I've been looking forward most to in Champions Online is the Nemesis system. From everything I had read about it, designing your own opponents seems like a perfect way to give soloers like myself an endgame of perpetually generating content. And leveraging the character creator, one of the highlights of CO, is a stroke of genius.



• Meet Necrosis. (Stop chuckling. I'm really bad with names.) Since my hero's powers come from the fire elemental possessing her and keeping her alive (I said stop laughing!), I thought the demonic slaver that the elemental was fleeing from would be an excellent first nemesis. I made him a mastermind, gave him infernal minions, and gave them all darkness powers. Sounds like that's a popular combination. It's also a powerful one because the Darkness power set has a life-draining power. Oops.



• Right after creating my nemesis, the police captain lets me know there is a disturbance at the museum. What a coincidence! So I hop over and get into the hugest fight I've seen in the game.


• This museum is absolutely crazy. Mordicus on the CO Forums has already stated that they're reconfiguring minion groups to to cut down on the number of villains. Some of the groups in there were two villains and two henchmen. It took everything I had to make it through. When I did, though, it was very satisfying. Who says you can't make solo content challenging?


• As an aside, the secret of beating Darkness minions is Block. I've become good friends with my Shift key.



• After besting my nemesis (after a long, long fight, damn life drain), I was suddenly running into groups of infernals everywhere I went. And they loved to pop up right in the middle of a fight with another enemy. I wiped out several times that way, which only made me angrier at my nemesis.


• The real purpose of the attacks is to give you missions to stop your nemesis's schemes. For some reason, his infernals were scavenging a downed Qularr ship. I also had to blow up some chemical filled trailers again guarded by a legion of infernals. Then Necrosis decided to take over the city with mental control waves broadcast from WCOC. Time and again, I confronted him and his minions and saved the day.



• Finally Necrosis flipped his lid and decided to blow up the city. So much for his grand plans. I almost felt sad for him. Up until the point where he blamed me for all his failings, as if he weren't such a lame villain to begin with. So I had to put him down for the count. Defender and the police showed up and locked Necrosis away in prison.


• In the recent dev chat, Bill Roper mentioned that we'll be creating a total of eighteen (18!) nemeses over the course of our heroes' careers, but I was still sad to see my first locked away. Of course, this may not really be the end of his tale. Who knows? That is exactly why I love discovering games for the first time.


• With this first nemesis in the bag, I'm ready to declare the Nemesis system a win. I like getting to customize my experience. And I absolutely love that it is tailored as a challenging solo experience. As long as there are enough potential missions to keep it from becoming repetitive, I can see this keeping me busy for a long time to come.

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© 2009 Marty Runyon. All rights reserved.
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