Now that Champions Online is free-to-play, Staff Writer Paul "LockeColeMA" Cleveland decided to fly into the game and take a look around.

After Millennium City was saved from the invasion and I received a mini-parade for my heroics, I was released into the world at large. At this point a bunch of other tutorial missions opened up, such as finding a trainer to learn how to craft and being sent to landmark areas such as the auction house and the bank. One of the best things about finishing the tutorial was getting my travel power, an ability that would increase my character's movement through the world.

Hmmm, what to pick... acrobatics? Super jump? Hell no. Ken the Manager would not be complete without the power of flight! In all honesty I just wanted to see how flight worked in the game. I have been disappointed in a lot of other games when it comes to flight; Aion in particular made flying combat a gimmick and turned me off. If Aion's designers had followed the formula made by Champions Online, I would have really liked that game. Flight is done right – you can still fly in battle, but enemies will switch to range, with many long-range attacks if you attempt to flee. I loved the possibilities, and swept down among gang members in Millennium City just because I could.

After checking out much of the city, I decided to visit some of the other zones. From what I had read, it seems that the Free For All patch had revamped the tutorial progression; after the invasion event, a player would be whisked off to Canada or the Southwestern Desert for a “Crisis” mission that continued the tutorial and included advanced mechanics and crafting. The Crisis mission in the desert is now around level 14, so I instead went to Canada, which also skipped the Crisis mission and skipped straight to working with Justiciar after. The enemies in Canada started hurting a bit more and some of the quests became pure grinds (killing 150 Hunter-Patriots? Ugh...), which made me think I had moved up too quickly. As I said before, the combat isn't really rewarding, so finally getting grind quests seemed like a welcome break from running away... until I realize how long 150 kills would take. I haven't quite gathered the gusto to get back on since!

Although I only experienced a bit of Champions Online, I felt it was easy to learn the game's style: it strives to be an action game with an MMO twist to keep players coming back. With that goal in mind, I believe the free-to-play move was a good one. Champions Online is a lot of fun in concept: I enjoyed the customization, and even the limits due to silver level access allowed for plenty of head-scratching and theory-crafting.

The ability to create new characters and try completely different combinations of powers really makes the free price tag appealing. At the same time, it makes the game longer due to low combat experience rewards, as well as offers fun items like customized characters, purchasable powers, and additional adventure packs with new content. This will create a constant stream of revenue by committed players who might want to pick and choose some items without feeling a need to log in every day to enjoy their purchase.

While I enjoyed the customization, combat and flying, the cartoony graphics and stale grinds would have kept me from paying a monthly subscription. As it is, I now feel content knowing that I can log on whenever I'd like and let Ken the Manager fly through the skies above Millennium City.