It really wasn't much of a secret, now was it? My biggest gripe about City of Heroes has long been the fact that I can spend 300 hours putting together a unique costume, but at the end of the day I'm just another guy shooting green stuff out of his hands. Well soon I'll be able to shoot red stuff or pink stuff....oooo, a pink superhero in hot pants who defeats evil with the power of love!

Okay, getting a bit ahead of myself.

Just about every power with a visible effect will be tweakable come Issue 16's release, with more physical powers like Martial Arts and Super Strength scoring different animation sets to help set Karate Man apart from Karatte Man.

Other changes coming in the next update include the unlocking of various power sets previous unavailable to certain archetypes, and the ability to tweak the difficulty to your liking, telling the game you want to be treated as say, an 8-person team.

Those aren't nearly as interesting as the Pink Avenger. Love beams away!

Issue 16 Details [City of Heroes]

"We prepared a very detailed customization system that will allow you to create your own character," said Capcom's Jun Takeuchi. "So you can create your own character and put it together in the game and you yourself become the main character of the game."

Lost Planet 2 allows you to select your character's head model, body model, back pack and legs. You can also make the character a man or a woman.

"Every one of the parts will have many dozens of variations in them," Takeuchi said. "You can also change the color of each part."

As he spoke the character quickly slipped between an eclectic, and sometimes bizarre, selection of body parts including a square helmet with spikes, what appeared to be a fully enclosed helmet based on a World War I trench helmet and a few unadorned heads.

The female body types includes quite a few revealing outfits such as a bikini with chains wrapped around the woman's bust. When the character moved her body noticeably reacted to the gravity.

The game also supports quite a few customized weapons, Takeuchi said, which can be placed in the right or left hand of the avatar. The weapons are divided into categories like normal, gun, disk and support.

Finally gamers will be able to assign gestures to their characters.

"You can have standard or flashy poses," he said, while the female avatar started grinding and humping the air and then began to smack her own ass on the television behind him. "The developers will make sure that the gestures and poses don't affect the game's rating."

A big issue for me in City of Heroes, which was also developed by Cryptic, was the fact that I had a superhero with a cool-ass visor shooting beams from his hands. Every comic book fan knows cool-ass visor equals eyebeams. Champions Online looks to fix this flaw by allowing players to place their beams wherever they'd like.

The current plan is for players to be able to choose emanation points, hues, and alternate effects for some powers. For example, if a player chooses a force beam, they can elect to have it originate from their character’s eyes or as a chest beam instead of coming from the hands. The color, or more specifically the hue, of the force beam can also be set by the player. For powers that don’t have such obvious effects, such as Martial Arts, the sweep of color that trails behind the move is what would change.

For the non comic-book savvy this might seem like a piddling thing to worry about, but trust me - it's a huge difference. You cannot have The Green Glove shooting plasma out of his nipples. I mean, you could, but that would be just a bit disgusting...yet intriguing at the same time.

Ask Cryptic - January 6, 2009 [Champions Online via Massively]

Hit the jump to check out six possibilities.

So what would it mean to build a game *for a specific customer*? I'm not sure. But I'm not talking about binding it to the user's machine with DRM. No, people will find a way to strip it out anyway. No, the personalization has to add value in some way. DRM doesn't add value for the customer, it adds inconvenience at best and outrage and resentment at worst (one need only to look as far as the numerous postings about the PC release of the otherwise-wonderful BioShock for an example).

It's an interesting thought. Clearly, it's just an idea and while I think the Build-A-Bear-esque customization idea is an interesting one, I'm at a loss as to how designers could implement such a thing in your average game of whatever stripe.

Can A Stuffed Bear Hold The Secret To Game Piracy? [Gamasutra]

Last weekend I brought you the colored Wii Nunchuck shells (lovingly dubbed Chuckii by it's creators at Extreme Enterprise) that will soon be available for customizing your Wii peripherals. Today, NDS announces a new nunchuck "color", Clear. Well, technically, "clear" isn't a color, but if you've ever felt the urge to see the inner workings of your nunchuck, now is your chance. The clear Chuckii shell will join the ranks of the other "clear" greats of our times, the clear neon telephone and the mother of all clear products, Pepsi Clear.

Make the jump to check out pictures of NDS's initial prototype for the Wii-mote shell, but be warned, it's not very pretty. However, as NDS reminds us: "This is only a prototype, you may not like what you see. These images are not suitable for unimaginative people."

Indeed... Flynn De Marco

CHUCKii - Strat Clear Nunchuk & Wiimote Shells Prototype Release [NDS-Central]

These makeovers aren't like the ones on ABC where inevitably someone's nose gets broken and remade in the image of the gods these are for your PC and should be far less painful. The catch? Any recently purchased MGE PC case or external power supply (keep the original UPC code) entitles gamers to an XG Extreme Mod kit for free. There's LEDs, fan grills, lit performance fans, a 12-inch neon light, all kinds of stuff to pimp that ride. To redeem the kit, head to XGBox and fill out the form, include the original UPC and make your computer glow like a '94 two-door Civic.