Revenge of the Free Weekend

Rising up from the depths of the sea like some ancient, eldritch god, it's the return of the most terrifying event in my PC gaming history...

THE REVENGE OF THE FREE WEEKEND!

...the horror.

Ever since my last experience with a free weekend on Steam, I've been wary of them, although this has been about as effective as telling a magpie to lay off the shiny things; I'm generally attracted to the word "free".

After giving this post such a bad intro, it actually went quite well. You may or may not know the superhero MMO "Champions Online" is getting a new update quite soon, and to promote this (as well as the game itself I suppose) there was a free weekend. And so, I blindly plowed in, although this time I expected to be stopped in my tracks at start-up.

However, getting to the start up turned out to be quite a challenge. Observe;

Now, this might not seem like a big deal, but this was after 4 hours. FOUR. HOURS. 50% in four hours. I actually slept over night and when my laptop went into low power mode, it stopped the thing so I had to restart the entire process... Fortunately when I did, it went a lot faster, only around 45 minutes. When I finally did start the game, as I expected it froze and sent me back to the desktop, but fortunately, this helpful window popped up;

This cheered me up, as most games (I'm looking at you, Portal) throw a hissy fit and decide that my computer doesn't deserve them. So after clicking this option, the game started running and I made it through to the main menu, and then onwards to the character creation screen.

In CO, there are a ridiculous number of customizations options that you can choose from. Everything from nose postion, to colour of your socks to the shape of your shoulder pads. It took me a while to get to used to all of the options, but once I had, I designed a pretty cool character... Although I forgot to get a screenshot of him on his own. So instead here's a picture of him shooting some giant alien bugs called the Kula or something;

As you can see, he's basically a private detective, although he does have a cyborg hand. Who says that amputees can't be superheros?

So after shooting a million more of these things, and then fighting a giant robot and blowing up an alien mothership (which sounds really exciting but essentially requires pressing the 1 key a lot, and then every now and again holding down the 2 key) I headed into the desert... For some reason.

At this stage, I finally got to "buy" more superpowers, something that had been confusing the hell out of me. I'd been leveling up for ages, and yet I still only had my "shoot" and "shoot for a bit longer" moves. When I got to this so-called Powerhouse, I got to trade in my points for more moves. After careful deliberation, I settled for "Bullet Ballet", because that sounded the coolest. Unfortunately, this move seems to comprise entirely of elbowing the bad guy in the face, which was a massive dissapointment. However, I did get the jet boots power, so I instantly flew as high as I could. This became a problem when I realised I couldn't get down, so I turned the boots off, and ended up a very broken robo-detective on the desert floor.

Overall, CO has got a lot going for it, but it's just not implemented in the right way. Powers are distributed badly, quests are nothing new, and the combat isn't breaking any major convetions. If I could afford it, and I had the time, then I might look into playing it for a few months, but right now, Renegade, cyborg gunslinger and licensed private eye is going to take a crime-fighting vaction.

See y'all at the headquarters!