So, my take after messing with it for a half hour or so.
The Character Creator:
Has some options I want. Triple or quad tinged costume pieces were nice, and additions like thigh armor, customizable left and right arms, and backpacks were
nifty and I want them in CoH now, please. The pose thing is also nice, though I had no way to know that pose is basically locked in once you finish your
costume, which left my attempt at Sylia spending the half hour I spent in the tutorial running around on all fours except when she needed to, y'know, use
her weapons. However, Cloth/Leather/Metal = no appreciative difference to me, and I really felt like my build of Sylia's costume was spandex with metal
plates bolted onto it and a helmet, rather than an actual armored suit.
Manipulating the character creator is an exercise in patience, as it is unintuitive in the extreme and whoever designed the drop down bars needs a swift kick
and to be told to start over. Perhaps, with time, I could learn to master it, but the simplicity that CoH's creator has seems lost on this one. It's
like by adding more options, they forgot how to organize them in any orderly manner.
Third, and most damning, is the fact that because my computer's graphics are suboptimal, I apparently get to play with the graphics engine Champions By
Clay Fighter. I felt like I was crafting a hero out of play-dough, and I shudder to think of trying to render Sylia's face without the helmet in the
character creator.
The Tutorial: Large hams abound. This thing is written in the Silver Age, and it shows. Got a few chuckles out of me, but between the clunky interface and
difficult to understand objectives and the like, I just didn't make much headway. I basically ran around killing things, getting killed, etc. The voice
acting was...painful, to a degree. I'm kinda grateful for CoH's purely text based cut scenes now. Less chance of actors....overacting.
Again, the Claymation Engine really took me out of it. CoH is by far not the prettiest of games, but it at least does metallic textures and such well without
requiring me to have the latest, greatest graphics card.
This felt less like a MMO and more like an action game, which is nice, but deceptive. Getting shot even if I wasn't in the path of fire a second ago, and
the classic "delayed impact blow" where an enemy had a move with a longer wind up than it took me to walk away, which meant I still got hit, or
worse, blocked after it no longer mattered.
The power builder attack setup is okay, but relying on it would drive me nuts, even if the attacks are randomized. The charge feature is another "can we
haz in CoH, please?" feature, but not a game seller.
Picking up and hurling barricades was kind of awesome, I will admit, but again, one tiny diamond shard amongst what really came across as a roughly put
together game.
In general, I did not know what a majority of my interface did, or in fact what all these "resources" and the like do. I even scanned the various
tutorial balloons and found myself lacking in knowledge afterwards. It's like throwing someone into a tutorial that starts with Coyote and moves upward
from there, without telling them anything else. I was bewildered and generally learned by trial and error, rather than any effort of the game to educate me.
Maybe all the info was there, but I certainly couldn't find it. I'll take CoH's "LISTEN TO US, DAMMIT" clue-by-four any day over that.
Overall, between the graphics that make me long for CoH and the general feel that I'm in the beta or something, Champions didn't sell me. It just told
me ways CoH could make itself better and overall hold onto me tighter, should they choose to do so.
---
"Oh, silver blade, forged in the depths of the beyond. Heed my summons and purge those who stand in my way. Lay
waste."
The Character Creator:
Has some options I want. Triple or quad tinged costume pieces were nice, and additions like thigh armor, customizable left and right arms, and backpacks were
nifty and I want them in CoH now, please. The pose thing is also nice, though I had no way to know that pose is basically locked in once you finish your
costume, which left my attempt at Sylia spending the half hour I spent in the tutorial running around on all fours except when she needed to, y'know, use
her weapons. However, Cloth/Leather/Metal = no appreciative difference to me, and I really felt like my build of Sylia's costume was spandex with metal
plates bolted onto it and a helmet, rather than an actual armored suit.
Manipulating the character creator is an exercise in patience, as it is unintuitive in the extreme and whoever designed the drop down bars needs a swift kick
and to be told to start over. Perhaps, with time, I could learn to master it, but the simplicity that CoH's creator has seems lost on this one. It's
like by adding more options, they forgot how to organize them in any orderly manner.
Third, and most damning, is the fact that because my computer's graphics are suboptimal, I apparently get to play with the graphics engine Champions By
Clay Fighter. I felt like I was crafting a hero out of play-dough, and I shudder to think of trying to render Sylia's face without the helmet in the
character creator.
The Tutorial: Large hams abound. This thing is written in the Silver Age, and it shows. Got a few chuckles out of me, but between the clunky interface and
difficult to understand objectives and the like, I just didn't make much headway. I basically ran around killing things, getting killed, etc. The voice
acting was...painful, to a degree. I'm kinda grateful for CoH's purely text based cut scenes now. Less chance of actors....overacting.
Again, the Claymation Engine really took me out of it. CoH is by far not the prettiest of games, but it at least does metallic textures and such well without
requiring me to have the latest, greatest graphics card.
This felt less like a MMO and more like an action game, which is nice, but deceptive. Getting shot even if I wasn't in the path of fire a second ago, and
the classic "delayed impact blow" where an enemy had a move with a longer wind up than it took me to walk away, which meant I still got hit, or
worse, blocked after it no longer mattered.
The power builder attack setup is okay, but relying on it would drive me nuts, even if the attacks are randomized. The charge feature is another "can we
haz in CoH, please?" feature, but not a game seller.
Picking up and hurling barricades was kind of awesome, I will admit, but again, one tiny diamond shard amongst what really came across as a roughly put
together game.
In general, I did not know what a majority of my interface did, or in fact what all these "resources" and the like do. I even scanned the various
tutorial balloons and found myself lacking in knowledge afterwards. It's like throwing someone into a tutorial that starts with Coyote and moves upward
from there, without telling them anything else. I was bewildered and generally learned by trial and error, rather than any effort of the game to educate me.
Maybe all the info was there, but I certainly couldn't find it. I'll take CoH's "LISTEN TO US, DAMMIT" clue-by-four any day over that.
Overall, between the graphics that make me long for CoH and the general feel that I'm in the beta or something, Champions didn't sell me. It just told
me ways CoH could make itself better and overall hold onto me tighter, should they choose to do so.
---
"Oh, silver blade, forged in the depths of the beyond. Heed my summons and purge those who stand in my way. Lay
waste."