9:31 pm - Tue, Nov 15, 2011

10 notes

DC Universe Online (sorta kinda a review)

OH how I wanted to love this game. The concept was absolutely brilliant (kinda). Make your own superhero (or super villian) with your own unique set of powers and fight along side thousands of other user created heroes (and villians) and (here’s the kicker) DC Comics Legends such as Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, et cetera.

I expected a name brand City of Heroes or a big budget Freedom Force at the least. What I got was the DC Ultimate Alliance MMO where you play as a super-nobody and collect tacky pieces of armor and get beat up every time you log into the PvP server by someone who had enough pocket change to purchase the actual armor that Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman (never actually ever) wore.

Basically

You start off by picking a server, PvC (where people with money don’t beat you up regularly and you do what feels like the same quest over and over again) or PvP (where you’re more likely to get kamehameha-ed into a sky scraper than complete a quest) or both, the free version of the game lets you make two characters, essentially one for each.

I choose PvP (big mistake especially on a free account because free accounts are like the bastard children in the MMO world, you basically get all the other players hand me downs) and made a character who pretty much looked like the Action Comics blue jeans Supeman but with a beard and the same body type that Bruce Timm draws all his male characters with.

Gave my character Superman as a mentor, ice as a special power, flight as my bonus power, and bare knuckle brawling as my fighting style.

My good buddy made a tiny character with Batman as a mentor, nature as his power and super speed as their special ability.

But regardless of who you make your game experience will go something like this:

1. Boot up the first mission wide eyed and eager, feel the rush of excitement as your custom made superhero smashes through dozens of Brainiac’s robo-goons.
2. Blink confusedly as you’re handed about 14 pieces of dollar store, World of Warcraft, awfully colored (based on what colors your picked for you character at the start of the character creation screen) armor that covers up all the hard work you put into making a character.
3. Defeat the final boss of the first mission with a clever combo of throwing barrels and mashing square.
4. Reach your first level up screen and squee as you’re faced with a galaxy’s worth of choices only to sigh as it costs real money to get any signature powers and all the other powers are about as interesting as a Deathstroke comic.
5. Spend the next 3 hours lost trying find the next quest location and occasionally fly, run, or backflip, into an ass whooping.
6. Find a quest and proceed to press square until you’re allowed to participate in an instance or an incident, I’m not sure what the difference is, where you’ll be locked in a room where waves and waves of enemies will fall before the mighty muscles in your thumb and the ferocity of your square button mashing.
7. Put the controller down feeling no sense of satisfaction and decide that you probably have better things to do with your time like play that awful Justice League video game or file your taxes or do homework or just stare at the wall.

Maybe the game is better on the PC. Maybe the game would be better if I had forked over the 50 bucks to buy it and the 20 a month to play it.

Then again maybe the game would be better if they didn’t try to nickle and dime me with unnecessary armor purchases or if they didn’t make the game scale so Runescape tiny literally making every battle feel miniature and silly when compared to other MMOs and Superhero games. Maybe if they gave you more freedom in the character creator to actually emulate real heroes instead of looking like dorky skalker-ish fans of them or, at best like a league of Jaime Reyes era Blue Beetles.

Maybe it’s just not my cup of tea.

Verdict

DC Universe Online (ps3) is an shallow game that never lets your forget that you’re not one of the name brand heroes. But It’s free now so there’s no reason not to play it, there’s also no reason to start playing and it probably should have been free from the start.

★ ★ ★