The Powerhouse

At this point in Champions Online I'm right where I would be if I had chosen "Take me to a crisis!" instead of "Take me to the tutorial!" at the end of the character creator. Everything up to now has been completely skippable, but if you skip the tutorial entirely, your game starts in either the Southwestern Desert crisis or the Canadian crisis and you go from there. The only real difference is that, having gone through the tutorial, ol' Iron Will's a good two levels higher than he would otherwise be at this point.

He's not going to need them, exactly, but it's generally a good idea to soak up experience levels whenever they're available and not a grind to get, as later on in the game there aren't quite as many missions available as you'll need to level up appropriately. Better to be constantly plowing through areas that are scaled for a level or two below you than wind up like my first character, always doing missions scaled for four levels above him because those were the only ones left.

As I may have mentioned before, the size of this game is it's main shortcoming.

While we're circling to land, a Director Kaufman who sounds encouragingly like Chief Surhoff in general demeanor and gruffness comes over the radio to explain the situation at Project Greenskin, the name of this for we're apparently landing in. According to him, a giant "radiation shield" went up around the base recently, and ever since then it's been being attacked by swarms of irradiated mutants. I admit, that does sound like a bit of a pickle.

The irradiated mutants I think I can help with, depending on just how irradiated they are or what definition of "mutant" we're going by here. I don't know much anything about the effects of radiation on metals, but I'm assuming given no evidence whatsoever that if I can survive bullets and laser beams, I ought to be able to survive high doses of radiation. More relevant is what kind of mutants we're dealing with, if it's typical malformed people inundated with cancerous cysts or, like, the Hulk. The first type would be the only ones that would make sense with this much radiation everywhere, so we're probably dealing with the second.

I have no idea what a "radiation shield" is or how to fix it. I assume that has something to do with the sky being neon green in this area, but that's all I can figure. Is it like a forcefield? I don't think radiation works that way, but maybe. Or is it just a cloud of radioactive gas that's so dangerous nothing can pass through it to get away except this specific helicopter...?

We land and the copilot hops out to give me a hand and tell me what I ought to do. Nice of him, I suppose.


Alright, fair enough, but first Witchcraft told me I've got to go to this "Powerhouse" place. She marked it on my little map here...

Oh, there it is.


It's just a short quarter-mile away, past the soldiers pretending to hold guns, over the sandbags, and across a hundred foot fall to an irradiated battlefield crawling with mutants and green fire of questionable health effects. Hrm...

Oh, or, there's a teleporter right here on the landing pad. Hot damn! Somebody actually thought this through.


I strongly recommend this route.

I find myself face to face with a giant spinning gear full of lightning. I guess that's the door to the Powerhouse? Seems unnecessarily dangerous, but nothing's managed to hurt me yet, so I plug my nose and step through, trying to remember my Interdisciplinary Science 101 class's lecture on conductors and whether or not a giant metal wire shaped like a half naked guy would be damaged by absorbing a large amount of electricity or be able to simply distribute it through itself without harm.

Evidently, without harm. I'm in a weird metal room with matching superhero looking guys in all four corners. So, this is the place where they're going to help me perfect my powers. I guess it's like a gym...?


Actually, the Powerhouse is more like a store wherein you spend your gained levels on new powers, stat boosts, or power enhancements.

It's also the best place to test out new powers, because while you're still in the powerhouse you can get a full refund on a new power if you try it out and don't like it. Once you step through the giant electrified gear of death, though, the powers you've picked out in the Powerhouse are permanent, and will cost you in-game money to replace. This wouldn't be so bad, except they make you pay to unlearn your powers (or stat boosts, power enhancements, etc) in reverse order. So if you had a bunch of level to spend and got your guy sonic arrows, ice blasts, fireballs, and lightning bolts, left the powerhouse, decided the sonic arrows didn't fit, and then came back to replace them, you would have to first pay to unlearn the lightning bolts, then the fireballs, then the ice blasts before you would be able to pay to unlearn the sonic arrows. Prices also scale up the higher level your character is. Seem pointlessly difficult? Might be some laziness on the game's part to prevent you from getting a 2nd or 3rd tier power and then going back and unlearning the prerequisites or something, I dunno.

Anyway, since Iron Will went through the whole tutorial and stuck around for Battle Of The Ironclad a few times, he's got more levels than most characters do to play with here. Let's pimp him out a bit.

The first menu seems confusing at first and then gets pretty intuitive pretty quick. "Powers" are moves like the two you choose at the very beginning of the game, stuff like ice blasts, eye beams, summoning zombies, whatever. They're divided into the different power sets like Fire, Telekinesis, Sorcery, etc, and having more powers from a specific group unlocks more advanced powers from the same group. For example, if you want a second-tier fire power (Like Fire Breath, I think, but don't quote me on that) then it's unavailable at first unless you have one other Fire powers already, OR two powers from any set. More advanced ones require three from the set or five from any, etcetera. This means that you have access to all the powers in the game and don't have to choose one powerset to stick with while leveling up and choosing powers, but specialization helps you get stronger powers faster. It's fairly well designed, I think.

Travel Powers are a separate category. You only get one of these until pretty late in the game (Level 35, I think?) and they're all available up front. These are chosen separately because they have no effect on the functioning of most of your non-travel-powers and are in some cases a little redundant with each other, but offer a pretty good variety for flavor purposes. More on these in a minute.

Ranks and Advantages are enhancements you can apply to powers you already have. Using the same fire powers example, say my new Fire Breath is already pretty good, but if I wanted to blow all my ranks on it, I could bump it up from rank 1 to rank 3 and make it much stronger, or I could instead choose to spend them on a specific enhancement FOR Fire Breath, like Spitfire, which would apply the Clinging Flames status to everyone hit by Fire Breath, igniting them and causing additional damage over time. The catch? Every power only has room for so many ranks or advantages, so you'd have to choose. You couldn't, for example, have a rank 3 Fire Breath WITH Spitfire. Maybe rank 2 with Spitfire or rank 3 without, after that it's full. It's a good concept, but I really wish it would just let me blow all my ranks on one ridiculously buffed power, since I'm usually the type who'll stick with one or two signature moves once I've got 'em, but oh well.

Your Characteristic Focus is which Stat you want to be your Super Stat. It'll give a sizable bump to one of your eight basic stats that will increase with your level. A few levels later, you'll get another, but that's it. Generally it makes sense to choose the same stats for your super stats that you already have an advantage in from your Innate Characteristic way back at the beginning of character creation, but you could mix them up too.

Finally, talents are a kinda strange feature that lets you pick another stat to boost by 8 (a smaller number than the bonus you get with Characteristic Focus) or two by 5, four by 3, etcetera. It's kind of just one more way to incrementally build up your stats. However, unlike a Characteristic Focus, you keep getting these throughout the game, but you can never choose the same one twice.

Why not a simple point-buy system with which you could choose to focus on stats or powers, specializing or generalizing as you see fit? ... like... y'know... because.
Righto, first things first, no more jogging around everywhere. We're gunna pick a travel power for Iron Will. What are our options, trainer?

That's actually a pretty good selection. Some things that aren't immediately obvious about the powers until you've tried them out on an embarrassing number of alts. Obviously, they don't all handle the same; some are faster, some are slower, some stay on the ground while some go through the air, etcetera. But not only that, they also don't all control the same. Flight, for example, you simply point in a direction and then you can leave it, focusing on other things like the chat window, inventory, making yourself a sandwich and forgetting you're playing a video game, etcetera. Swinging, on the other hand, has you hitting the "shoot a new cable thingy" button everytime you reach the apex of a swing, or you rock back and just kind of dangle there limply. Also, you have to keep holding the button down, or you'll fall.

Actually, you know what, I'm just going to go through them all one at a time. Bask in my knowledge of trivial things.

Flight: Pretty self explanatory, you can soar around unassisted like Superman, Thor, Angel, pretty much the entire Legion of Superheroes, etcetera. In comic books, this it typically the fastest possible way to get around, as it's in as straight a line as the curvature of the earth will allow and the friction of air would do much less than the ground to stymie their continued acceleration. However, in Champions Online, it's actually one of the slowest, primarily as a balance thing, I assume. Still, it's quite a bit faster than running, you can maneuver well even indoors, and as long as you gain some altitude early on and point towards a spot above the horizon, it keeps you well above danger in most areas, so you don't have to pay any attention until you're above your destination. Definitely the easiest and most relaxing way to get around in a hurry, if not actually the fastest. Fun extra: if your costume incorporates wings of some kind, they'll flap automatically while you use this power.

Superjump is just what it sounds like; the character jumps a ridiculous height and then lands a fair distance away, at which point they can immediately jump again, bouncing along like a giant superball, the Hulk, or any character in an anime where there are streetlights. It's actually significantly faster than flight (doesn't make a lot of sense, but again, balance) for overland travel in a straight line, but unlike flight, the topography has an effect on the travel itself. If, for example, you jump to your maximum altitude and then land at a significantly lower altitude than you took off from, your character will take falling damage. However, while in travel mode, you can simply step off a ledge without jumping and land without taking any damage, provided the total fall was less than your optimum jump height. Also, you can't set it and then leave it like with flight, as superjump requires you to re-tap the jump key everytime your character lands, unless their destination is one jump away. So, you have to actually stick around and DO it, which is much less convenient for longish trips, but significantly faster. ... Also, as Champions Online is so small scale (my main complaint) there really aren't any longish trips, at least not on the scale of other MMOs.

Superspeed, as exemplified by the Flash and mimicked by Quicksilver and a few hundred others, is one of those powers that you'd think would be an automatic win button if anybody actually utilized it intelligently in comic books. (I mean come on, you could take out a fully mechanized army with a straight razor.) This is why, in the comics, it tends to be limited entirely to waving one's arms or running really fast, but not too fast, for no discernible reason. As a travel power, that's all it really is, the character sprinting along faster than anybody else can move on the ground. Now technically, this might be the fastest power in a straight line with no obstructions (if not, it's second only to teleportation) but there are very few straight lines with no obstructions in the world. With Superspeed, you'll still have to maneuver along whatever paths you'd have to take walking, go back and forth up switchbacks to climb steep hills, watch out for ledges, and be careful not to run through too many enemies, because attacks that can knock a character out of travel mode are ridiculously common. Furthermore, the animation just looks silly.

Acrobatics is basically a combination of superspeed and superjump, scaled way down. Think Batman, Captain America, Catwoman, Deadpool, any character loosely based on a ninja or martial arts, or, you know, real life gymnasts. You can run around faster than normal characters but not as fast as any other travel power except maybe tunneling, jump high enough to clear most obstacles but not any imposing landmarks or walls designed to keep you out, and basically just get around in a hurry without looking overtly supernatural while you're doing it. I get it as a flavor choice, and it kind of works in a place like Millennium City or Vibora Bay where there are a lot of opportunities to jump from rooftop to rooftop and run along ledges and the like, but in most places in the game (wide open desert, tundra, jungle, etcetera) it's kind of a waste.

Teleportation, on the other hand, is just this side of broken. Teleportation is one of those powers that varies a whole lot in comics, from two-seconds-to-mars guys like Dr. Manhattan to guys that just sort of blink around like Nightcrawler. In Champions Online, it's more like the latter, but kind of misses that mark too. Now, in a game like City Of Heroes, teleportation worked by clicking on a distant spot (within the power's range) and charging up, and then instantly appearing there, the only slowdown caused by having to charge up for the next jump. Champions' method requires less pointing and clicking but doesn't really make a lot of sense. You basically turn into an invisible (but not quite, characters with a high enough Perception can still see you) mote of light that can fly for a few seconds, and then turn back. Seriously, that's it. It's more or less identical to flight except that it doesn't last as long, you can fall to your death if you don't hit the key again fast enough, and it's a little faster. When I think teleportation, I think instant travel (like, say, clicking on a point on the map, having to wait a reasonably long amount of time to charge up a teleport, and then disappearing and appearing there) not a weird energy form. It is, however, incredibly useful in PVP, in which every cheap built-for-PVP character can use it to escape an enemy when they're getting low on health and heal up somewhere removed from combat before teleporting back in. It's also fairly handy for getting past enemies you don't want to have to fight, as you're invisible for a short period while you use it, so your mileage may vary. Just bugs me that it doesn't feel like teleporting so much as phasing through stuff.

Ice Slide is... weird. It's obviously inspired by Iceman, except unlike Iceman they don't actually create a slide out of ice so much as a surfboard, so it looks more like the Silver Surfer(NO RELATION), except the board constantly falls if you don't work to pull it up and it's very slippery. You have to go forward to gain any altitude at all, and you need a wide arc to turn do the the aforementioned slipperiness. It is, however, quite fast, and the poor handling actually serves to make it a bit more exciting to get around with, but it's just not as useful or convenient as most other airborne travel powers.

Swinging! Swinging looks really cool. Think Spiderman or Batman or Daredevil or any character that uses a grappling hook, rope, or some kind cable gun. It would go really well with Acrobatics, but alas, you can only use one at a time. It, too, is faster than flying, but it's a bit of a pain in the ass. You have to hold down the jump key to hold onto your little swingy rope, release it at the end of it's distance (maybe fifty feet?) or else rock back and dangle in place, and then hit it again immediately or begin to fall, which does a lot of damage. If you have a spotty connection, avoid this power completely, as you'll spend most of the game peeling yourself of the ground. And, alas, though the animation is really cool looking, the rope simply fires up into the air where it sticks a ways above you whether anything's there or not. Generally this works from the player's perspective while going through urban environments or forests and the like, but all the other characters can plainly see the line coming out the top of your character and vanishing into a random patch of sky. Looks particularly silly when you're swinging along a quarter mile in the air above, like, the desert. Still one of the better looking powers in it's element, though, but it's element is rare, and still a pain in the ass.

Tunneling is, I think, highly underrated. With Tunneling, you can dive into the ground and then tear around as a mound of disturbed dirt like Bugs Bunny or the Street Sharks. This is both slow, going only slightly faster than a normal run and slower than virtually all the other travel powers, and limited, since you can't leave ground level at all. In fact, it doesn't even allow you to go everywhere tunneling logically would: you can't tunnel up steep hills, for example, or even under things like park benches or curbs. These stop you dead as if you're actually just a two inch tall invisible guy (which is, I suspect, how it actually works mechanically) rather than under them. This one aspect of it blows (I can't tunnel under the damn hedge? I'm six feet under the grass!) and blows pretty hard. Why I love it, though, is that, like teleportation, you're invisible to enemies. But unlike teleportation, you're perfectly visible to other players, including opponents, but only as a lump of dirt and broken pavement, and you still can't be hit by anything but area effects. This is so funny sometimes I can't even describe it. Plus, unlike teleportation, you don't have to randomly pop out of the ground every few seconds for air; if you're in a hostile area and need to go afk for a few minutes, you can tunnel into the ground and just chill there, enemies walking right over your head. Great for missions where the objective is guarded by a bunch of enemies that you don't want to have to fight. Warning, though, the unable to tunnel under chairs this is pretty irritating, and for some reason enemies can still attack you after you go underground if you stay in the exact same place; you have to move a foot or two to either side before you're inaccessible. No idea why.

Jet Boots! Jet Boots are basically what you'd expect, with an animation fairly obviously modeled after the recent Iron Man movie (hands out to the sides to steady, legs wobbling a little bit, etcetera) and an undeniable cool factor. They carry most of the same advantages as Flight, such as the ability to just set a direction and leave 'im, good maneuverability both indoors and out, etcetera. They're not quite the same, though, in that jet boots have to "gear up" after you activate them. You don't go right to full speed the way you can with flight if you charge it up first. Instead you start at a low burn that kind of just lets you hover around, and after a few seconds crank it up to the next level, and then finally full speed a few seconds later. Overall it takes about the same amount of time to get up to full speed in jet boots as it would to fully charge your unassisted flight power and catch up to the guy who'd just left with jet boots, so it's mostly just a flavor difference, but it looks really good on robots or power armored guys. Tied with Flight for sheer convenience, in my book. Although, as you're about to see, a lot of travel powers are tied with Flight.

Rocket Jump is not one of them. I can't actually think of an example of a superhero that uses something like rocket jump, but I imagine I've seen something like it in some old platformers. Rocket Jump handles much the same as Superjump, except the arc is much narrower and the overall airtime is shorter. They go about as high as a superjump, but they shoot you right up there, and then have you fall back down a comparatively short distance from where you took off. Lots of vertical motion, not that much horizontal. But, as it's also much faster, you can do two or three rocket jumps in the time it takes to gracefully arc one superjump, and the overall miles per hour overland are somewhat comparable. I actually don't know which one's faster, but rocket jump seems both zippier and less constructive. It is, however, a great way to exit a scene quickly and dramatically... provided there's a wall or building or ledge or something nearby that you can land on the other side of.

Fire Flight is flight with fire all over you. No, seriously, that's about it. Think the Human Torch or Green Lantern. It really handles exactly like normal flight except that your character gets a nifty cloudy glowing aura of a color of your choosing and leaves a trail of the same for a fair distance behind him. Looks good for an energy-based character or possibly a telekinetic or sommat.


Hover Disk is another of the ones that handles basically like Flight. Like Flight, it takes you high up off the ground and like Flight you can simply point in a direction and then let it take you there without having to worry about doing anything else. Unlike flight, it doesn't quite stop on a dime and seems to slide a little bit when you turn, give you the barest impression of what you have to deal with if you pick Ice Slide, although the Hover Disk won't drop you if you don't keep pulling up. Plus, it just looks cool, like riding around on a little flying saucer. Good for gadgety characters, futurey characters that don't quite feel right with jet boots, or guys you just want to be able to fly without actually flying. I gave one to Bushido Jones because he, I don't know, got one as a reward from aliens after saving their culture by challenging their evil overlord from the future to a duel or something. Yeah.

Finally, Earth Flight. I can't think of a good example for this one either, although it seems like something that an Earthbender from Avatar ought to do. This one handles pretty much exactly like Hover Disk, except a piece of the ground below you tears itself up with you on top of it and then floats you around. The animation for this looks really cool, and a few (I think three?) littler chunks of rock kind of float around you in a circle while you're riding on the main one. Also, the chunk of rock itself mimics (to an extent) the color of the ground you were standing on when you activated the power, which while hardly necessary is just kind of neat to me. I don't really know what inspired them to add this power, as there aren't any rock or earth related powersets in the game, but I've found that it has just the look I'm usually going for with a telekinetic character (who, of course, doesn't touch the Telekinesis powerset) or some kinda naturey druid type.

So, we have a few ways to go faster on the ground, a few ways to travel stealthily, and half a dozen ways to fly. For Iron Will, I think flight's out, although it is the most convenient way to travel. Just doesn't fit with the concept. Neither would teleporting, anything roboticky, or, hilarious though it can be, tunneling. I think, given his vastly increased strength and already impressive fitness level, that superspeed would be the best match for him. I'll just buy that for him and test it out to make sure that pfffffftHAHAHA!


Look at this jackass run! I forgot how silly the animation is. He's got his arms rigidly stretched out behind him in some weird imitation wing formation while his legs rotate around like a cartoon ninja or Sonic The Hedgehog. Okay, okay, nevermind, sorry. Let's see here. Maybe superjump? Having super strength and incredibly powerful leg muscles could conceivably be used to superjump. Works pretty well for the Hulk.

Okay, yeah, that looks quite a bit better. He kinda powers himself up into the air and then lands in a stomping half-crouch that crushes a big chunk of the floor below him. Looks convincingly heavy. Think we'll go with that.











Plus, it's much closer to my original inspiration for the Iron Will character, who was conceived while playing the 2008 Incredible Hulk game for XBox, in which the titular character got around via superjump. It was pretty good for $5 out of the bargain bin. So yeah.


Alright, travel power's been chosen. Now I've just got to figure out everything else.


UP NEXT: More Powerhouse!

The Final Showdown!

... of the tutorial of Champions Online.

Right, so, into the Champions Building to shut off some beacons. This shouldn't be too hard compared to the constant crunching of alien bugs and running errands for deranged superheroes.

The Champions Building itself is a little hard to miss.


The Champions' bravery is apparently matched only by their humility. This should be interesting.

At the top of the stairs is some kinda rock garden fountain and the front door, which Dr. Silverback's codes open right up. There are no aliens around or anything, so I don't even have to look for a side entrance or a hidden hatch on the roof or nothin'. Smooth sailing so far.

The inside of the Champions HQ is a giant metallic temple place that sort of feels like a monument in D.C. colored in blue and orange with inadequate lighting and a ubiquitous humming sound. As soon as I open the door, I find that the Qularr have somehow made their way inside even though the door was sealed until half a second ago. Presumably, a building this sizable and ostentatious has multiple entrances and exits, though, so I suppose that makes sense. Fortunately, the Champions' security robots already seem to be fighting them off. About time the Champions did something right! I jog over to help, but a transmission from Doctor Silverback interrupts me.


I have no radio that I'm aware of, so this is freaky as all hell. It's impossible to tell whether Doctor Silverback has hacked the PA system that this weird monument probably has or if he's somehow beaming his thoughts directly into my brain without my permission. It's helpful information, I suppose, but I shudder to think what could happen if Socrates ever gains access to this technology.

Okay, right, so the competent robots are of course in no way affiliated with the Champions and are instead apparently the minions of their arch nemesis, who hatched a brilliant plan to activate the doomsday devices the Champions were just sitting on for the last several decades and had no means of disabling remotely. These guys, man... whatever. So I'm up against alien bugs AND futuristic robots. I have no idea how to deactivate a robot, but hopefully their weapons can't bust through my new metal skin and I'll have some time to figure it out.


Oh, okay. Turns out, by punching them.

Whatever, I dive in, indiscriminately punching robots and insects. There's probably some strategy to be hatched here of attacking the winners once they've had it out amongst themselves or waiting until both sides are worn down and almost dead before wiping them all out or something, but I seem to do okay just rushing the nearest one and moving on to the next once it's down. I proceed through the Champions' creepy monument to themselves like this for several rooms before I come across this.


A massive hall dedicated entirely to housing thirty-foot holographic statues of the Champions themselves. In their own base. No, seriously.

When I have an Iron Will secret base (probably one room somewhere underground) know what it's not gunna have? A room full of statues of me. I can almost guarantee you that.

Anyway, I wade through this crowd too, busting exoskeletons and armor and generally contributing to the mess of machine parts and dead bugs that's been covering the floor here since before I arrived, and discover none other than Defender himself at the other end of the room, shooting blue lasers at a few of the robots. I lend a hand and together we finish off the last of them in the Hall of Humility. Least he's doing something. Once we're done with that, he runs back to the doorway and frantically waves me over. Um, okay.

He tells me that it's actually not Dr. Destroyer, but a guy named Black Talon who's just wearing his armor. Fine by me, I just learned that Dr. Destroyer was a guy about thirty seconds ago.

So now me and Defender, leader of the Champions, are going to embark on an epic quest to destroy the inhuman minions and stop the vile machinations of the evil Black Talon (who he's heard of even if I haven't) and save the world. This promises to be a long and arduous journey, but I think it'll be rewarding. Where do we start, partner?


Oh. He's in the next room. Defender just blows up a pair of his own massive golden doors and there he is, a guy in a big honkin' black robot suit.

We got this.

... Or rather, I got this. The first thing Black Talon does is unleash a volley of little spinning missiles that pepper the entire area with ineffective little explosions. They mess up my already-shredded jeans tatters a bit more, but I barely even feel them. This is going to be easy, eh, Defender?

... Defender?


He's lying on his back writhing off to one side. He calls out to me in a strained voice, telling me that it's up to me, now. ... Champions. I swear.

I kinda stand there stunned at how unimpressive the world's premier team of superheroes is (Ironclad excepted) and try to put into words how uncool it is to bring a newcomer along on an epic showdown and then go down in the first round. Black Talon keeps shooting me in the side of the head with a 20mm Gatling cannon, though, so I'm a bit distracted. Eventually I decide to go over there and shut him up. His suit is huge, so it takes significantly longer than any of the robots or Qularr did, but eventually I manage to batter through it's knee joint and the whole thing topples face-down onto the ground, trapping the pilot under the inoperative machine. Alright then.

Defender, apparently not actually that badly hurt, manages to get up now that the danger's over and congratulate me on singlehandedly defeating Black Talon, who I've still only ever heard of in the context of this one unimpressive fight. I kind of have my doubts as to whether he was actually even hurt in the first place or was just pulling a soccer player, but either way, we're on to the next stage of the mission. The beacons that Silverback told me about are apparently all located in this room, which is also full of various other trophies of questionable wisdom. We need to go around to all four corners of this massive self-esteem gallery and turn them off.

It's not that easy, though, as the room is also filled with Black Talon's robots, who apparently weren't actually being controlled by him at all, as they still put up a fight. I pick up some weird metallic panel thing that's probably another potential threat to the human race that the Champions have decided to keep around for aesthetics and smash them up.


Then we switch off the beacons, and... that's it. We don't disassemble them, we don't smash them up, we just turn them off and Defender runs off towards the next one. Um... dude? What if someone comes in here and switches them, say, back on?

Well whatever, we're short on time, I guess. I'm sure they'll be taken care of the next time I come back here, right? ... Yeah, probably not.

That dealt with, Defender leads me into their control room, which contains a massive bat-computer looking thing and a holographic floating globe that's actually pretty nifty.


Defender directs me over to the computer and tells me to launch "the Ironclad defense". I like the sound of that, that's the one member of the Champions so far that I have any confidence in whatsoever. I hit the button that Defender points to and watch what happens on the view screens.


I'm um... I'm not sure quite what I'm seeing, here. It looks like Ironclad just climbed into one of those massive bullet things that were scattered around the cannon and then we shot him into the underside of the Qularr mothership where he... exploded?

Did I just kill Ironclad? Please tell me I didn't just kill Ironclad. Did Socrates plan this defense?

Defender seems unconcerned, though, leading me out a side door that leads back outside. Is Ironclad okay? Does he have some kind of can-blow-up-multiple-times power? Could I get some kinda reassurance, here?

Outside, though, they've apparently set up a celebration in my honor.


This is a pretty significant ego boost, I must admit, and I'd be having a pretty good time if I wasn't so worried about Ironclad. Has anybody heard from him? Can Doctor Silverback raise him on his creepy direct-to-brain radio thing? Can we send Sapphire up to look for him, make herself useful for a change? Can somebody give me some kind of Ironclad-related information?

I assume if they're this big into celebrating me for helping out, though, that they'd have some kind of massive memorial for Ironclad if he'd been killed. Still, that's my only assurance that he's okay, and I'm still pretty nervous. Everybody's at the celebration, Griswold and Foxbat and Silver Avenger Mayte Sanchez, soldiers and police saluting me and the mayor waiting to shake my hand. There's really only one guy I want to see, though.


No, thank YOU, Chief Surhoff.


After talking with the mayor and getting a key to the city, those two superheroes in the back take me aside to talk business. The one who identifies herself as Witchcraft I recognize as the last member of the Champions from her giant holographic statue, the other appears to be some sort of male go-go dancer with a vaguely northwest tribal theme who goes by Ravenspeaker. They both ask for my help with other crises that have apparently sprung up on the same day as the Qularr invasion. Witchcraft needs my help in the southwest desert, where apparently an army of radioactive mutants has suddenly laid siege to a military base stationed there for the express purpose of studying and suppressing said radioactive mutants, while Ravenspeaker needs help suppressing a supernatural blizzard attack on an outpost in Canada. These both sound entirely out of my league, but I think I'd be more confident beating up mutants than trying to tough out dark magic in the frozen north. Plus Witchcraft, while a Champion, isn't a male stripper, so I'm gunna go with her.



A helicopter's waiting off to the side to take me to whichever place I want to go, and while I'm tempted to just have them drop me off at home and go get an actual superhero to help deal with the mutants, I figure I might as well see how far this superpower thing can take me and tell them to fly me to the desert, waving goodbye out the window at the small army of fans I've somehow made in the last two hours.

This is a weird day.

Next: Crisis in the Southwest Desert!

Gun-Related Shenanigans Part 2!

In which our hero sees the light at the end of the tunnel that is the Tutorial.

I wander back out of the alley directly into twin beam weapons from another of the tall alien bug types. They push at me a bit, and I find my feet sliding along the ground, but it still can't seem to hurt me. Sighing, I look around for any signs of Kinetik, but he's long gone. Not terribly interested in redeeming himself by engaging any of the alien invaders, then. It takes a few seconds to walk up to the guy with both his beams on me, but it doesn't hurt any more than walking upstream in the lazy river at the waterpark. I eventually walk right up to him and punch him in the brain. Right, okay, gotta find the good doctor.


Another way that Champions Online's combat is a bit more interactive and a bit more strategic than it's contemporaries is it's liberal use of knockback effects. At this early point in the game your character will still only have two moves, which for most powersets won't yet include any of these, but they're fairly common later in the game. Things like positioning of your character relative to the enemy and the proximity to any sizable ledges or holes comes into play, and the relative strength of your attack usually dictates the distance of the resulting knockback. These twin plasma beams (which are actually a power you can get for yourself later on) exert a constant pushing effect that can be struggled against for as long as they're maintained. Most of the knockback powers that ol' Iron Will here is going to be getting will be of the single whallop variety, which will only impact once and send a character a given distance, and can't be canceled if the initial attack wasn't successfully blocked.

There're also neat ranges and areas that attacks are effective in, like some that will affect one target directly in front of you while others do damage in an arc or a cone, some will affect everything on a line, some in a radial burst around the character, and some in a radial burst around the target, which can be a character or a spot on the ground depending on the power. It can get reasonably strategic, but seeing as we don't have any of those powers yet, I'll blather about it in exhausting detail later.

Fortunately, Doctor Silverback's hologram is visible as soon as I set foot on the street, so I walk over there. I pause for a minute before handing over the Sonic Pacifier to this guy. On the one hand, he's a gorilla in a lab coat, which strikes me as not only powerfully amusing but also completely trustworthy. On the other hand, he's a hologram on a pedestal, which has usually meant a murderous artificial intelligence in the past.

In the end, the fact that he's a gorilla in a lab coat wins out and I hand over the Sonic Pacifier, which can apparently be analyzed by the same machine that projects the hologram. Handy. I try to remember all the sign language I know from high school, but then Silverback starts talking. Embarrassing.

Wait, wait, shooting oneself out of a cannon? I should have known. Every holograph in the game seems to want me dead... but wait. He might let me pull the trigger? Does that mean I wouldn't be the projectile? I'm a little confused.

Well, I'll help this guy repair his doohicky, anyway, but I draw the line on stupid self-destructive missions at shooting myself into orbit.

I head up the ramp behind the holographic Silverback and find myself in a courtyard in front of a massive blue building that seems to be the Champions headquarters. There are Qularr flying around everywhere fighting armed army or national guard soldiers while AA guns fire at the various Qularr fighters filling the sky and bombarding the ground around them with some kind of explosive energy weapons. Several other superheroes, including the one who I recognize as Ironclad, are running back and forth amidst all this chaos taking down as many of the Qularr as they can, and in the middle of it all is a giant cannon angled up towards the massive Qularr mothership. A wild shot from one side or the other blows a massive chunk of concrete out of the wall right next to me, showering debris all over the ground around me, and just a few paces to my left one of those little orange beetle things has just immolated a soldier who's still firing his rifle at the aliens even as he burns. Right. Guess I have some work to do.


One of the coolest things about Champions Online is it's Public Missions. The best comparison I can think of is that these are basically like pick-up games of basketball in the park. A chunk of the map will be designated as the mission zone, but it isn't instanced or anything; players are free to come and go as they please. The mission goes on and on in an endless loop, and passing heroes can just sort of drop in to help or play through the whole thing once or several times if they prefer. In this particular public mission dubbed "Battle Of The Ironclad" the players have to defend the cannon from the aliens by first killing thirty of them (this can be accomplished by five players getting six each or by one getting thirty while everyone else stands around and watches) and then by opening ten crates to find repair parts, which again can be divided up amongst present heroes however they like. In this particular public mission, the majority of players seem to want to keep going around beating up aliens and it's up to one or two people to actually go around and collect the crates. There's nothing wrong with this, but the mission won't progress to it's next stage until all ten crates are picked up, so one instance of Battle Of The Ironclad can last for hours if everyone wants to let it continue. After this, there's a two minute countdown during which players have to protect the cannon, and then the mission resolves, everyone gets an exp reward and an item and it ranks everybody's contribution on a little scoreboard that appears in the lower right corner, then it resets a minute or so later and starts all over again.

These are some of the coolest things ever. First off, it allows people to just come in and contribute a bit and then leave again, if they prefer. If I'm into killing Qularr but not so much sticking around for the whole mission, I can just drop in to kill three of them and then leave, and my contribution would still be counted towards the overall mission. It also encourages teamwork among random strangers, as you don't have to be in a team or anything when starting the mission, but most of them are difficult enough to require the cooperation of at least two or three heroes. This one being in the Tutorial section is an exception, and the entire mission can be completed by one hero if preferred. Also, they keep playing out whether anybody's there or not; several times I've come across a public mission with half of the objectives completed and nobody around.

Most of the public missions in the game follow a similar formula: kill X number of something, activate/collect/destroy/use X number of something, and then survive a countdown or beat a boss within a limited amount of time. The bosses are almost always immensely powerful and will require you to call for help to beat them within the time limit, but not always. Exp, Item, Scoreboard. And that's how they go: basically an unending pick up game, except that other players can't pull a knife on you if they don't like the way you ball.

It's a pretty awesome idea in my humble opinion that really puts a focus on the multiplayer aspect of MMOs, and one I hope to see other games shamelessly imitate in the future.

We've got a guy who looks kinda like a raver in snowboarding pants over on one edge of the courtyard shooting green lightning at the bugs, a huge guy in purple armor running back and forth and pounding the Qularr into submission whenever he catches up to one, a mobster with a pair of six-shooters gunning down most of the flying ones, some kinda robot covered in blades, and of course Ironclad, another of the Champions. Okay, yeah, we got this.


Ironclad, as it turns out, is nothing like the other Champions. Instead of standing around carefully avoiding doing anything helpful, he's running around like a madman beating the living snot out of aliens faster than I can, ripping chunks of concrete out of the ground and throwing them at the ones he can't reach, and just generally kicking so much ass that I start to wonder if the rest of us are even necessary. I'm starting to feel more like a sidekick than a savior, and it's refreshing as hell. Now THIS is a superhero I can get behind.


Between the six of us we manage to wipe out the first wave of Qularr in record time. Then Ironclad shouts that we need to recover parts to repair the cannon from the crates scattered around the courtyard. Yes sir Ironclad sir!


The mobster guy and the raver guy manage to keep the Qularr ground troops off my back long enough for me to pry the crates apart and recover the spare parts. So far so good! Now we just need to defend the cannon long enough for the mechanics to do that voodoo that they do so well.


Me and the bladey robot guy go back-to-back with Ironclad, who keeps yelling out inspirational sayings about the glory of battle and defending the earth while he slings chunks of concrete at the aliens. I can't see what the other guys are up to from where I am, but whatever they're doing, none of the bugs even get close to the cannon before it's repaired.


And that's a flawless victory for me, Ironclad, and whatever the other guys' names are. I'm feeling pretty damn good about this. Plus, I think I've finally settled on a name for myself. I'm going to be Iron Will, in part to honor Ironclad, mostly because it's an old saying anyway. I like the sound of it.

I head back to Doctor Silverback to report our success at repairing the cannon, desperately hoping he doesn't try to shoot me out of it.

Oh, jeeze. It turns out the Champions are basically responsible for the whole thing, after having kept some Qularr homing beacons after their last fight with the alien invaders. Now these beacons are apparently drawing invaders from across the galaxy directly to the building right behind me. Champions... man, I don't even know about you guys anymore.

I'm betting Ironclad had nothing to do with this decision.

So my job is pretty straightforward. I'll have to sneak into the Champions HQ building and shut the beacons down to basically call off this whole invasion. Sounds simple enough. The door is apparently still sealed, too, so there shouldn't be any aliens inside the building for me to deal with. All I've gotta do is go in there and flip some switches.

What could possibly go wrong?



Next: Something goes wrong!

Gun-related shenanigans 1!

Our continuing playthrough of Champions Online picks up where it left off: like fifteen minutes into the optional segment before the game even officially starts.


Around a corner and down an alley from Surhoff's encampment I find the friend he was talking about, a woman called "Silver Avenger Mayte Sanchez". I can't really tell if she's a superhero and Silver Avenger is like a code name, or if it's the name of the outfit she's with, or if perhaps Silver Avenger is a rank like Corporal or Captain. Maybe that would put her second in command of her organization after Gold Avenger so-and-so? She's not dressed like a superhero, so you never know...

Oh, shoot, she's been talking. I should pay more attention.

Okay, so... alright... so, she wants me to use a gadget called a Sonic Pacifier to stun some of the aliens, but only the angry ones. And, at the same time, this Sonic Pacifier will also scan their stunned angry brains. Their brains need to be scanned because these angry aliens are being angered by aliens, and we need to figure out exactly how, except that we know how because we can see their alien anger transmissions. But these angry aliens are also setting up an alien transmitter that will stop alien transmissions and possibly make them less angry. This is a bad thing because we need the aliens to be angry to find out why the aliens are angry, other than what we know, which is that the aliens are angry because angry aliens are transmitting something that makes them angry that they're trying to block with an alien transmitter. These are orders passed down from a guy named Doctor Silverback who I've never heard of before. This is particularly upsetting because my back is silver and this is one more name I won't be able to use as a superhero.

Man, she didn't even get into how this gizmo works and I'm all kinds of confused. Even though I'm fairly certain that there's been a miscommunication somewhere along the chain of command, I figure I'll do what the possibly-superhero-possibly-soldier says and just assume that she'll get blamed instead of me.

Before I leave, though, I notice an old woman standing amongst the soldiers staring at me. When I talk to her, she explains that she can't find her cat, Reggie. I hand her the mindless ball of murder with the easily personified face that's been trying to slash my wrists for the past half hour and she squeals with delight. Some people, man.

Okay, so, I take this Sonic Pacifier and set out to use it on aliens and break some of their stuff. Simple enough on my end, I suppose. It only takes about half a minute to find some of the big angry bug guys stomping around at the end of the street. I pull out my handy Sonic Pacifier which looks basically like a gun, point it, aaaaand...

He explodes. Holy shit. His buddy looks at me, mandibles agape, and then charges in looking like he wants to tear my head off. I suppose that's fair. I point the dread device again and, you know, pacify him. Sonically.








This is a little disturbing. There's burning chunks of exoskeleton fluttering down through the air and dousing themselves on the thick coating of alien blood that's all over my skin, and I can't imagine that the device has had enough time to get any sort of a detailed scan of their brains... which appear to be all around me. I look for the little display on the gun, but only find a decal that says "FoxBat's Limited Use (TM) Explosive Foxbat Ping Pong Ball Gun." Um. Oops.

The way that item use works in Champions Online is actually pretty handy in general. Rather than having to go through your inventory bag and double click on an item every time you want to use it, you instead have to drag that item to a smaller ready-to-use bar on the bottom of your screen next to your powers and moves 'n errything. Think sort of like the "belt" slots from Diablo, where you would put things from your backpack that you needed to get to quickly. If there's nothing else in your ready-to-use bar and you receive a usable item (as distinguished from equipment or mission items that you can only use at one place) the game will automatically put it there instead of in your equipment. In this particular circumstance, I already had something there from the Foxbat's Weapon Case mission and had forgotten about it, but the Sonic Pacifier went in the slot right next to it, so no problem. Just need to keep track of which icon's which.
Well that's embarrassing and gruesome. I fire the last exploding ping-pong ball in the general direction of some more Qularr down the street and huck the expended gun over into some rubble. When I'm telling the newspapers about today later, I think I'm going to have forgotten the "thought the Sonic Pacifier was a handgun" part. What was I thinking? I dig around in my pocket and pull out the actual Sonic Pacifier, which is... a weird handgun looking thing. Oh. Hrm.

Well alright then, take two. I make my way a little further up the street from the gooey crater that was my last attempt at taking some readings and fire this newer, sleeker gun thingy at one of the giant insects. It seems to send out this transparent beam of... I guess sound?... that makes the big tough insect guy shrivel up into a wan husk of his former self, paw uselessly at the air, and then collapse to the ground and die wheezing. This um... this doesn't seem much better than FoxBat's anti-tank handgun I was using a few seconds ago, but apparently it's taking the readings we need, so I keep doing it. Science is gross.

Okay, so now that unpleasantness is taken care of, I have to find and destroy the transmitter that was making these guys so big in the first place. Or, destroy the transmitter that was going to make these guys less big. Or something. It's pretty hard to miss, though, as it's a giant pulsating mushroom thing next to a big pink vaguely Giger-esque spider antenna thing just a little ways up the street. I probably should have saved the last Foxbat Ping Pong Ball shot for this thing, but whatever it's made of, it's probably not as hard as my fists! I run up to it and start pounding away at it, putting a bunch of hand-sized dents in it until it's lights go out and it quits humming and, you know, shuts down. Except that doesn't happen. Instead, the damn thing explodes in my face.

I'm getting pretty tired of being sent on missions designed to kill me. I mean, I suppose it's possible that Silver Avenger Mayte Sanchez didn't know that the thing had a bunch of explosives in it... which, I admit, is pretty unintuitive... but I have a sneaking suspicion that she and all her swat team guys are either having a good laugh at my expense, or being scolded by Socrates for failing yet again to kill me. I suspect my next mission is going to be something along the lines of flying a fighter plane full of nukes into the alien spaceship or running up to hug some of the Qularr ground troops with a belt full of dynamite.

Heading off to deliver the pacifier's scan data to Doctor Silverback, though, I hear the squawk of a radio from inside a police car asking for help. I rush over for a better listen.


The look on my face here pretty much says it all. Apparently Kinetik, another of the vaunted Champions, has gotten himself captured and put in a cage by the Qularr. Kinetik, as I understand it, has Super Speed as his one and only super power. If there's one superhero on earth who shouldn't be able to be captured, it's Kinetik. But then, I have no idea what sort of forces were brought against him or what kinds of weapons they had, so I probably shouldn't judge. I run to go find him behind the Magic Lantern bookstore, which is only about a block away.

There's some minor resistance along the way. Good ol' fists still seem to be getting the job done faster than that pacifier thingamapoop, although admittedly less completely than Foxbat's gun. That guy must be a hell of a superhero when he's in his element and has time to prepare. I wonder if he'll need my help more often when this is all over. I'm starting to think I probably won't need an alter-ego superhero identity, since I'm probably going to be pretty recognizable all the time. So what should I go by that I'll actually remember? I like William, but it just doesn't sound all that heroic. I still haven't run into anything that can actually hurt me, so I should probably use that somehow. Invulnera-Bill? Nah. Indestructi-Bill. Hrm. Invinci-Bill? That rolls off the tongue better, at least...

I'm batting aside Qularr so easily that I almost don't notice that I'm already behind the bookstore. I look around and see Kinetik in his cage... which is a flimsy looking thing made out of the same Qularr tubing as all their other machinery that I've been destroying, and guarded by a single soldier, one of the tall ones.

... That's it. That's the entire force preventing him from making his escape.

I dunno about these Champions, man. So far I've only met two of them, but one didn't realize people were in imminent danger fifteen feet in front of her eyes and the other can't take a single Qularr soldier or figure out a way out of a cage I could probably squeeze through without having to break in the first place, at normal speed. I mean, seriously, one guard? I killed one of these guys a little while ago by punching him in the crotch. Once. For plane tickets.

Well, alright then, I'll help this guy out, but I'm getting pretty disillusioned so far. Maybe after all this they'll let me onto the Champions and trim some of the fat. Or maybe I can get on whatever team FoxBat's on. Or work for Surhoff. Yeah, that'd be better.

I run right past the alien and up to the cage. He flips out and starts shooting me with some kinda blue energy beams that I can't actually feel, so I mostly ignore him and focus on springing Kinetik. There looks to be some kinda complicated locking mechanism that I probably couldn't figure out if I tried, so I just tear the door off.

Woo, yay, you're free. Now that you're out, all we have to do is kill this bug guy and-











Oh, you have got to be kidding me.

Alright, so, I guess, I guess you're just gunna use all that superspeed and just run away, then. That's great. That's very impressive. Go Champions.

I kill the big bug guy and wander back out onto the street, shaking my head slowly. I didn't want to get a big head, but you know what? This city DOES need me.

UP NEXT: Gun-related shenanigans part 2!