DC Universe Online Review
DC Universe Online is a MMO (Massive Multiplayer Online Game) for the PC (and soon the PlayStation 3), in which you get to create your own Super hero, or villain and take on many of the different famous locales in DC comics. You will be divided into either the hero faction or the villain faction. You'll get to see one another on the battle field of PvP battles.
Graphically you can easily see that they wanted to go with a comic book style type of game. Your character creator has its ups and downs. You can customize many different pieces of your character, but I kind of wish there was a little it more to it. The enemies look beyond generic so when you enter an area and you're told to kill a specific type of enemy you might as well read the name above the head.
There seems to be a limited amount of voices in the arsenal for this game. You have a set number for one side and another set for the other. The sad thing is that there's a lot of same script reading with just slight changes. The odd thing is that your character is beyond mute, what I mean by this is that he lacks almost all sound.
The controls have you banking on the WASD combo for moving, the mouse for aiming (it feels just like Global Agenda in that fashion). You'll also get to use E a lot as that is your main interaction button. This selection takes a bit to get used to and still feels odd at times. Then there's the Ctrl button, apparently gone are the days of looting a body, you just have to hit the button and the leftovers will come to you. Then there's Shift to block, which to be honest I have yet to really want to use, simply because when I use it I don't feel like I'm doing any better than when I'm attacking. Speaking of attacking its an action based game so click the mouse buttons as fast as you can to try to deal out the punishment, this of course can lead to some awkward moments when you accidentally click one two many times and then draw in extras into a battle that could have you down to nothing.
I was so excited to finally try a comic book game. I know that City of Heroes is out there, but I never wanted to quite do that as I wanted to interact with characters I actually knew. Well at least that was the plan, maybe I'm not as big into DC comics as I thought I was because there are, in my opinion, a lot of B team comic book characters running around that you have to find to get quests. Speaking of quest, remember how MMOs were trying to get away from the go over there and gather 25 things and such, yeah well flush that desire not to do those type of quests down the drain, that's all you're going to be doing. To be brutally honest this game has way too much left to be desired. You spend all this time working on your character's look only to have it change basically within the first hour because of items that you need to equip to basically allow you to survive. Then there's the wall crawling, when the hell did everyone basically become Spider-man (I know wrong comic book makers, but still). Then there's the fact that the wall crawling looks BEYOND awkward.
On the bright side the gold farmers are already in place and harassing all the players to death. If you want a comic book experience that feels like it should be a single player game with a multiplayer option, and you have to pay a monthly fee, this is the game for you. As for the rest of the populace, this game is going to have to seriously iron out some serious game issues. The blandness of the game just hurts to think about, and then on top of that the subscription fee just destroys all hope. Save you money wait until they possibly, hopefully get this game right, until then I guess you'll just have to find something else to play. This game gets a 4.2 out of 10.
Charlie
I would like to retract one piece of the review, the part that revolves around ruining your character's look. There's an option to just get the stats of the new equipment, without having to sacrifice the appearance that you spent all that time creating.
Reader Comments (3)
Hm, I'm still tempted to try this game. Think I'll wait for the eventual free 7-15 day trial though. Or just the F2P GW2.
Well it isn't completely F2P you still do have to buy the game, but there are no subscription fees, at least that was the deal with the first Guild Wars. Man I wonder if I still have my info to log into GW, its been a loooooooong time since I stepped into those lands. Then again I've been pretty absent from all MMO areas, as usual.
Good point on GW and not being exactly F2P. I don't think you need any of your original log on credentials to play again. When I installed the game last year to give it another run, I'm pretty sure I didn't remember my original character and just started from scratch.