Champions Online Preview: Monster Island Walkthrough

Champions Online won't be the first MMORPG to use an alternate modern-day setting, but few games could rival the scope of its setting. In Director of Creative Director Jack Emmert’s words, the Champions Online game universe “is set all over the planet and even off the planet, everywhere from underwater to outer space. Unlike City of Heroes, which is based solely in a city, we are taking you everywhere.” Case in point: Canadians rejoice! You’ll have a zone to call your own... and don’t let your national pride by sundered by details like the name of the zone (the Frozen Wastes of Canada) or the creeping alien presence slowly subverting the great white north.

Despite the size of the game world and the promise of travel methods both modern and super-heroic (if that’s a word) - Cryptic focused on a small slice of the game world for our walkthrough at Cryptic Media Day. In the game, the appropriately named Monster Island was created as the world’s wildest wildlife preserve by Japan’s Agency 17 - a group tasked with dealing with huge, nigh indestructible lifeforms. It’s a fitting task for the culture that gave us Godzilla and Mothra, but unfortunately (or fortunately, for the sake of numerous Champions storylines) these monsters are in the habit of escaping their confines.

Monster Island

Before the tour kicked into high gear, we enjoyed some a few of Cryptic’s favorite monsters in this zone, starting with Teleosaurus - a creation by the villainous genetic mastermind Teleos. Next, a giant flaming gorillla, because a giant regular gorilla was said to be too boring. Then there’s Kweegeebo (email me if you have the correct spelling!)- termed “our own little special thing” by Jack Emmert, whose usually found stomping around near the elder worms, a prehistoric race being given new life (literally) by The Slug, whose conversion of innocent humans to worm-form has earned the character supervillain status.

Our tour continued around the perimeter of the island, whose size was pretty impressive just on its own. From appearances it looked like Monster Island is easily a 10 level zone, or perhaps even as large as a 15 or 20 level area, figuring in Stronghold. Zooming in a bit, we happened across the first of the island’s “neighborhoods” - though there’s nothing too neighborly about the hybridized creatures surrounding our first stop - Dr. Moreau’s lab, (that’s the grandson of the Jules Verne protagonist). Continuing on, we passed a few alien ships populated by some nasty insectoid Kular - which had their own version of an extraterrestrial bay of pigs fiasco in the 70s and are giving it another go..

In the distance we could see the glass encased ARGENT hunting lodge - a corporation dedicated to the pursuits of the rich and famous, that is, if those pursuits involve hunting gigantic, genetically enhanced game. VIPER has its own facilities nearby too,and if VIPER makes you think of COBRA the enemy, CHAOS, or pretty much any other supervillain organization, you’ve got the right idea (though, according to Emmert, no one can remember what the letters of the acronym VIPER stand for). Apparently VIPER is trying to get in on the genetics game by hatching their own super-monster.

Anderthal

The next stop was one of a set of vaporizers slowly terraforming the island, and Anderthal, or what might be termed Mother Nature’s revenge for all the crazy subversion of the natural order going on here. Anderthal is a volcanic area spouting lava meteors every five minutes that do area-of-effect damage, so players will have to be on their toes around this part of the island. Adding to the hostility are the Lemurians, another ancient race that likes the raw destructive power modernity brings, are building their ziggurats and tunneling into the Anderthal volcanoes to build their weaponry.

Next, we focused a bit on some purely humanoid villainy with a fly-by of Stronghold - the super-max for supervillains and an multi-tiered instanced dungeon for one or more players. Bad things happen when the lights go out, and Stronghold - with its many dampening field generators that keep the bad guys in check - is no exception. Later this month we’ll be posting our hands-on impressions of Stronghold and Snake Gulch, so we won’t spoil the surprise now.

Stronghold

The Boneyard was up next - an area where huge monsters “for whatever strange reason” go to die. The area has also attracted a number of Dr. Moreau’s creations - some may be good, some evil, and the two sides are locked in a constant struggle. Perhaps players can tip the balance, at least temporarily.

Returning to Moreau’s lab for some combat and commentary, Emmert explained that there are three defining things for Champions Online:

1. Total customization, both with lots of different costumes, loot that optionally affects character appearance (the first time in a Cryptic game), and different superpowers that players can select.
2. Console action gameplay (using weaker abilities to build bigger attacks and abilities, “boosts” - seperate from loot, these are dropped “power-ups” (or “power-downs”) that last a short period of time, and blocks - for when an enemy is powering up a special ability), and
3. The vast (and vast variety of) environments, from deserts to tropical islands to dungeons to snowy wastes. The instances will also include integrated cutscenes.

So far, mission accomplished in the few zones that we’ve seen. Monster Island is a great example of how Cryptic has taken ready-made material from nearly three decades of Champions lore and developed something cohesive and interesting. While we’ll be waiting to see how the rest of the Champions Online play experience comes together over the next 8 or so months, Monster Island is proof that Cryptic is definitely more than a leap and a bound into production.