Disassembled: A Review in Pieces – Champions Online 2

Welcome to the second review in pieces. Today I will be reviewing Champions Online levels 6-10. Will the review be better or worse as you ascend the ranks in Cryptic’s second Superhero MMO? Find out after the jump.

Disassembled: A Review in Pieces – Champions Online

Welcome to the first of many reviews in pieces. The basic premise here is that I am going to be taking a game, most often an MMO, and reviewing it as I go. You will follow me through my reviews, around ten levels at a time depending on the game, and at the end I will condense it all into one final review.

For the first issue of Disassembled we are going to be reviewing levels 1-5 of Champions Online with levels 6-10 coming tomorrow. If you have been following the blog you might have noticed that we already did a comparison between Champions Online and City of Heroes. I thought about continuing the comparison through the levels, in five level increments, but I realized that the core things that separate the two games wasn’t going to change that quickly. Instead I came up with this. Let’s hit the jump and get into this review of Champions Online: Levels    1-5.

Comparing Champions Online to City of Heroes

I recently downloaded the demo for Champions Online and the trial for City of Heroes. I call what Champions Online offers a demo because it is ONLY the tutorial area. That is levels 1-5, with the ability to get to level 15 (or so I have heard) by grinding level 2 aliens.

City of Heroes offers a more traditional MMO trial. It lasts 14 days and as far as I know has no level restrictions. The usual deal applies here, so you won’t be whispering anyone, trading or talking in general chat for the most part, but those aren’t really necessary to decide if you want to pick up a game, at least not right away.

Let’s get the age difference out of the way first. City of Heroes is showing it’s age. The graphics aren’t terrible by any means, but when compared to Champions Online it looks dated.

That is if you like the graphic style of Champions Online at all. The cell shading is a huge point of contention with fans of the two games, though I can’t really see why. I don’t know how people can be fans of comic books enough to want to play a super hero game, and yet not like the cartoony look. Then again maybe they are fans of super hero movies.

Pictures after the jump.