Champions Online (Xbox 360)

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Character customisation will be one of the game's plus points

Champions Online is clearly not intended to be a sequel to City of Heroes, but that doesn't mean some of the more celebrated elements of the MMO haven't been taken on board. Although we didn't get to see it for ourselves, Aaron promises that the incredibly in-depth and fun superhero customization seen in CoH will return. "We're giving you as many knobs as we possibly can for you to play with," he says, enthusiastically. "Everything you can think of aesthetically we would like you to be able to change."

He points to your character stance, a key differentiator you'll be able to pick from. In our demo only two male superheroes were available, providing the standard beefy heroic stance, but you'll be able to pick from a number of stances, say the vixen for a female character for example. "We hope that you would not be able to easily find another one of you in the world," he says. "It would be a pretty special day."

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The customisation extends beyond the aesthetic and infiltrates the way you'll play the game, too. In most MMOs picking a class corners you into a particular play style, but, according to Aaron, Champions Online won't work like that. You'll be able to choose any power you want from across the entire power spectrum, whatever class of superhero you pick. So, as you level up from 1 to 50 (the planned launch level cap) you'll be able to mix electricity-based powers with power armour powers, or even mix light powers with dark powers.

Battle-hardened MMO veterans will rightly point out that that while this class customisation is a nice idea, it sounds like it'll create all sorts of problems when it comes to balancing. Fear not. Cryptic is aware of that fact and is working hard to prevent balancing issues regardless. "I don't think it's been done before and I think it's really important in a super hero game to be able to make your own superhero," Aaron says. "Sometimes it makes sense to have a guy with darkness and light."

Cryptic is using World of Warcraft style persistent zones for Champions, as opposed to player hubs. In traditional MMO style you'll get your quests from one of the many bases generously dotted throughout the game, areas "where we can hold your hand and show you all the stuff that we've created". Each zone is made up of several neighbourhoods, each of those delivering its own style of gameplay. Area 51, for example, is home to a crashed alien space ship as well as a Stronghold Prison exploding with rioting prisoners. "There's very different gameplay in those two spaces but they're all part of the same larger persistent zone," Aaron says.

We're loving Champions Online. Over to you DC Universe Online!

Things are looking good for Champions Online. We like the emphasis on console-style action rather than pointing and clicking and the character customisation will be something that needs to be seen to be believed. The big question is, of course, how the game will compare with DC Universe Online, an MMO that's bound to attract a hell of a lot of attention given the strength of its license.

Cryptic, however, sees the DC license as a potential hindrance. It says that Champions won't try and "fit" players into a predetermined, constrained world, like DC Universe Online will, and that you'll be able to enjoy its open world as whatever superhero you want to be. That be fighting talk worthy of the superhero face off we're hoping for.

One more thing. It occurs to us that Champions Online might be an odd choice for Cryptic given it's already more than covered the superhero MMO genre with City of Heroes. Not so, says Aaron.

"There's so much more to do! I think that the superhero idea is just so broad, it's huge. There's just a ton there. I think there are a lot of things that we've learned from those previous titles. I think that we just want to keep expanding that universe. Cryptic Studios is dedicated to MMOs, so we have other titles as well, but this is going to be our next big one. There's just a lot more. Those previous titles didn't cover everything that we wanted to do then. There's always a schedule. There's always a budget that reduces the final product. This time we took everything that we learned and we're just doing more, doing everything we can with it, and taking a lot of the feedback from users to try to make it more of what our audience enjoyed previously, and just do more of that."

More of that, we imagine, will do just fine.

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