Champions Online offers action-packed combat exhaustive character creation tools and brilliant visuals in a polished, humour-laden package.
Without exception, anyone who’s ever been bitten by the comic book bug will have at some time imagined what it would be like to possess super powers.

We’ve all fantasised about gripping the teacher or boss in a telekinetic chokehold, turning invisible and slapping a thug twice our size upside the head, or mocking everyone else’s physical shortcomings with our newfound X-ray vision. Or maybe it is just me, and my inability to transcend the restraint of daydreaming as most people can the moment they hit adulthood. Either way, if you’ve survived thus far into this review for Champions Online, then chances are you’ve at one time or another mused about being something beyond “normal”.

Champions Online, the spiritual sequel to Cryptic’s City of Heroes, is at its heart a superhero simulator, one which features character creation tools so robust that players can design almost anything their imagination is capable of. Fortunately, the game surrounding this vigilante designer itself isn’t too shabby either. While it doesn’t break drastically from the unapologetically static grinds of its contemporaries, as far as multiplayer online role-playing goes Champions succeeds on most levels, offering a colourful and diverse virtual world, amusing characters and production values that put most other online realms to shame. More importantly it’s fun with a gamma-radiated “F”, containing arcade-style gameplay and superbly written objectives that are entertaining enough to just about hide the fact that you are still forever grinding up, delivering Secret Serum C from one generic NPC to the next.