Review: Look, up in the sky! It's DC Universe Online, another superhero MMO that doesn’t quite deliver!
The superhero genre should really be one of the most natural contenders to slot into the MMO gaming space. You’ve got great costumes, derring-do, an already existing structure around which to model questing, and – if you’ve gotten hold of a license as broad and appealing as the DC Universe – a lot of material to mine for settings and NPCs.
So it’s bit of a disappointment, then, that the game we’ve finally ended up with – DC Universe Online – just doesn’t seem to be quite there yet.
Of course, the usual MMO caveats apply – it’s early days yet (note: this review was first published in issue 122), and most games of this type see significant changes in the launch period. SOE’s already promised a lot of upcoming changes, in fact. For now, though...
Holy mentors, Batman! The game’s premise is certainly a corker. Essentially... Lex Luthor wins, and all the superheroes die. The end.
BUT!
In the aftermath, a gloaty Brainiac invades, takes over the Earth, and leaves Lex feeling a little like a jerk. So Lex travels back in time, warns the supers, and unleashes a wave of hand-wavey techno-magic junk into the earth’s atmosphere that essentially causes a plague of super-powers. With a charming wink he tells Superman and co to start reading up on Mentoring 101 and, presumably, buggers off to his own timeline before his present-day self can show up, steal his timetravel gear, and go even further back to be there with the adoption papers when Supes crashes into the Earth.
Or something.
It’s suitably epic and comic-like, and the game’s initial trailer – which is effectively the intro to the game itself – does an incredible job of making both comic-geeks and more general gaming-geeks spooge their pants in glee. Seriously, if you haven’t seen it, take a moment from reading this review and give it a burl - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7Nf-m6WGl4.
We’ll wait.
...
See? Arguably some of the best superhero cinematics you’ll ever see – gritty, high-fidelity action that puts some of comic’s most iconic characters front and center. And that’s the first problem – what the trailer promises is not what the game delivers. It’s a mild niggle, but not the last.
Call me... First Strike! Your first interaction with the game itself in DC Universe Online is character creation, and it does a pretty good job of not only getting you suited up and ready to rumble, but also thinking about the side you choose to fight on.
From the get-go, you can be a Hero or a Villain, and your choice of Mentor has an immediate impact on which city you start in and the your first few quest lines. In terms of look and power choices, you can either customise everything down to the last pair of undies worn outside a leotard, or take your visual cues from an iconic character. For instance, if you want a look inspired by Superman, you’ll have a tight-fitting, caped costume that’s predominantly blue and red.
Going to the custom route is pretty cool, though it’s not a touch on City of Heroes/Villains excellent character creation scheme. You’re limited to just three standard body types, and while the list of initial costume parts is extensive, it still feels small by comparison.
Similarly, the choice of powers is rather small, not to mention constrictive and arbitrary in terms of powers and the roles they play in combat. You can play a plant-controlling psychopath, but that means your powers are automatically healing-based.
All that aside, we rolled up three very different characters in the course of our reviewing: First Strike, a gadgeteer mentored by Batman, Bloodsky, a flying melee-type in the service of Lex Luthor, and finally a magic-wielding bow-user called... oh, something, under the command of Wonder Woman. At the very least, creating three very unique and differently skilled toons was pretty easy – they may not have been exactly what we wanted, nor as carefully fine-tuned as similar characters in the City of games, but they got the job done.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012