Last Year's release and subsequent success of Champions of Norrath proved that Snowblind Studios seemed to have the Midas touch, The online world of EverQuest could be translated to an offline experience and that the hack and slash action RPG was still a popular mainstay amongst gamers. But more than that it proved to be somewhat of a miracle in my house; My wife, who could care less about any of the hundreds of console titles littering my office, and who likened playing games to an elaborate excuse on my part to spend less time with her, actually fell in love with this game. It was the first and only console games she has played in her entire life, and I felt like a proud father who had finally taught his child to walk for the very first time. Oh and she was right about the excuse thing, but I digress…



This year's iteration would also be a miracle in my household, but I've decided to "forget" to tell that special someone about it for obvious reasons.. Champions: Return To Arms, delivers a solid, albeit familiar experience with a handful of improvements to online play (one of the more unpalatable features of CON), two new character classes, the ability to play good or bad plot paths and some new mini-games thrown into the mix for good measure. Some have likened Return To Arms as feeling more like an expansion than a full blown sequel.

While there maybe an inkling of truth to that line of thinking, it still does take away from the fact that the gameplay moves the EQ spin-off series in a forward direction - and let's face it, for every original game sequel there are ten more that don't serve up anything more than marginal changes to the overall gameplay (the AD&D gold box games that I faithfully collected from 1988 - 1993 spring to mind). So with all that cynical nonsense out of the way, let's look at what Return To Arms brings to the table..

Return To Arms delivers some advancements over its predecessor that fans will appreciate. The most notable thing is that you can import your characters from Champions of Norrath to Return To Arms and star the game out with a slight advantage - at least in the early stages of the game. The game also serves up two new classes (in adition to the originals) including the melee focused Vah shir Beserker spellcasting Iskar Shaman. The Vah Shir Beserker is a tiger-like character that uses strong melee combat skills with the ability to use thrown weapons. At advanced levels this class can create magical axes which he can throw at enemies for pretty decent damage- and can handle two wepons at the same time. He also gets a number of offensive and defensive skills specific to his class that come in handy. The snake-man Iskar Shaman uses a combination of magic spells and melee combat that offers a nice balance. This class has a nice balance of summoning and unique offensive spells that make him a fun choice to play out.

After you decide whether or not to use one of the two new charcters (or the tried and true originals) or import a high level character, you'll soon find yourself in the heat of the battle fighting new monsters, meeting new characters, exploring new (and somewhat familiar) locations and collecting loot - the first part of the game is obviously a bit more difficult if you start a new character, but don't let that deter you from giving them a whirl.

There's some real truth to the word on the street that CON's core gameplay hasn't changed all that much, and that some of the previous games elements have been reused for better or worse. There are a number of small features that do add some flavor into the mix, but ultimately players will have to decide if they've had enough of the hack 'n slash formula that made the first game so addictive.

One of those cool new things I mentioned is the ability to play the storyline out as good or evil. By choosing to join the rabble that are trying to ressurect the evil god Innoruuk or the forces of good that stand in the way of that apocalyptic event, players get expereince a whole different plot path filled with different challenges and enemies. There's already a hundred hours worth of gameplay per character, so adding this devided plot path adds another way you can get some replay value out of the game.

Whatever you decide at the beginnign of you adventure (good or ill), you venture through the various Planes of Power and try to meet your goals, unlocking new planes as you go. As you unlock these planes, players cna unlocknon-linear mini challenges, earning extra expereince, skills and stat points, medal rewards and - as you go deeper into the challenges to each plane - powerful unlockables. The aditional content is nice and completely optional. The other completly optional option is the Arena, which lets you take on waves of bad guys for fun.

Champions of Norrath's online play was less than stellar, being prone to technical problems and offering an interface that was barely existent. SOE has fixed a number of problems that plagued the first game's online play. The game now offers multiplayer that is less prone to the whims of cheaters by saving characters on the server side of th equation, offers a real interface complete with chat, buddy list, etc. The cheating problems have been minimized by putting character data out of the hands of players once a caharacter is either created or imported from your memory card. These changes make the game safer to play (as it pertains to cheating) and offer a real interface that makes finding people to play with a hell of a lot easier.

The game also offers support for a USB headset so you can directly communicate with other players (which is a good thing for focusing the action in a more timely fashion or slinging one-liners); head-to-head combat or co-op play. For those that either don't like online play or don't have a broadband adapter, you can also enjoy multiplayer via split-screen multiplayer for up to four players if you have a multitap device - or two players if you don't have that either.

Return To Arms' storyline isn't epic by any stretch of the imagination, the cutscnes are often brief, and the NPC interaction is kept to a bare minimum - just like it predecessor. Players will note some familar faces from both Champions of Norrath and the EverQuest online universe, who make brief cameos. The game also serves up locations inspired by the online world that is EverQuest (Planes of Power) that will have them exploring all kinds of varied abnd decent looking enviornments including underwater caverns, junkyards, caves, hellish compuonds and more. The game's graphics hold up surprisngly well when you consider that the technoly they are using isn't exactly fresh from the oven. Still, the game enviornments do look good and manage to hold their own a second time around (with some slight modification from SOE and Snowblind no doubt).