"OH GOD, it's an MMORPG. He's reviewing a MUMORPAGUH! It must be the endtimes!"
I know, I know, but bear with me here, Dear Reader, for I have a hard on for superheros.
Those of you versed in the study of patterns (we'll call it Patternology) will surely have seen this coming; I got this game through Steam. Those of you familiar with my current fiscal status might have seen this coming as well; I only started playing it after it became Free To Play. After a good eight hours of downloading at a constant 814Mb/s Steam kindly informed me that it had finished downloading. I most definitely wasn't perched, owl-like, on my chair watching those last percent trickle in with eyes wide in anticipation. Well, I was, so there's not much point avoiding the issue.
***FANBOY ALERT***
Sadly, I was not done. Even after 8 hours of downloading there was a further two hours spent running "fixtimestamps.exe" AND THEN four more hours of patching and updating necessary to play FTP. Eventually when I was allowed to play the game I'd spent a grand total of nearly fifteen hours obtaining I was instantly in love. (see previous Fanboy alert for all the reasons why you SHOULD NOT argue with me at this stage in the review, and kindly continue reading. Thank you for your time.)
Why "love?" Well, let me tell you. As a child, younger, smaller and less hairy than the man-child I find myself becoming these days, I was always a fan of everything superhero-y (ironically, except comic books) and I literally jumped a little in my seat when I saw DCUO was Free To Play. The jump was actually more of a hop, soon to become know as the Skyrim Hop, come 11-11-11. I was so thrilled to be given the chance to create a superhero of my own, and to experience playing as them in the same world as huge characters including Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, The Joker, Lex Luthor, Bane, Two Face, The Riddler, The Penguin and countless others, not to mention all the other budding superheroes and villains across the globe. Needless to say, I was somewhat excited.
My wonderful friend Matt, doing what I always wanted to.
Shifting this post into review mode, and we come to character creation. This follows a fairly simple set of categories that determine your hero or villain's abilities and, to an extent, story line progression. Obviously, male or female are the only two choices under Gender. Body Style is a loose term for male characters; "would you like The Boy Wonder, Average Joe, or Brick Shit House?" For female characters, sadly, there is no "deflate chest" slider. You're stuck looking like you're smuggling hams up your shirt, despite the obvious aerodynamic drag issues during flight.
Power Girl. Subtly not included.
Next is an option to choose how your character stands when you're not playing. That's all I can honestly see Personality applying to. Fair enough. Alright, here's an interesting bit; choosing your Mentor. Heroes choose from Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, Villains from The Joker, Lex Luthor and Circe. This choice affects some part of the game I failed to reach (for reasons that become painfully clear later on but are apparently quite important. Next comes Power; choose from Fire, Ice, Gadgets, Mental, Nature and Sorcery Update: [and Light, like "In Brightest Day, In Crapest Movie" Light, if you have the DLC pack]. This determines what advanced powers you can unlock. For example, Ice power users can freeze targets solid, Mental can confuse enemies into attacking each other and Nature can steal health from enemies and heal allies, but these are just a few examples of some of the abilities each power unlocks.
Some men just want to watch the helpless patients in this hospital burn
Movement style seems to be fairly unimportant. Flight is the easiest to navigate the world with, and is the most common. Super Speed isn't the fastest, oddly, and acrobatics allows you to jump, flip and crab-walk around til your heart's content. I personally went with flight. Because it's flight. Seemed like a no brainer. Finally you choose your combat style. This had a much wider variety than I was expecting. The choices range from bows, duel swords, rifles, hammers, martial arts and hand blasts (which I chose). These determine your basic melee and ranged attack stats, DPS, AOE and all the usual acronyms. There are some combinations that made sense to me, for example Mental powers and hand blasts, but there is room for customisation and combination experimentation here til you black out from superherogsms. It is worth noting, for those of you with absolutely no creative talent, you can just select"Inspired By", and basically play as one of the well known heroes and villains. Yawn.
Costume comes next, colours, latex, capes and utility belts. The works. Too detailed to get into, suffice to say some really odd things can be created:
Suddenly, Fox People.
Some might say that's a large chunk of the review gone just on character creation, and they would be right. Anyway, onwards.
After a short introduction/tutorial level you are chucked out into the world as a whole, and instantly slapped across the face with the most generic and bland interpretation of "superhero mmo" Sony Online Entertainment could come up with. The world is deathly under developed, the missions are grind-y and mostly without story, and there are more dick bags than an under 15s game of CoD. I felt exactly as I do now, being a middle-class white male in his 20s, when wandering around a slightly dodgy neighbourhood, (i.e. fearing for my life an all my worldy possessions) except I was a fudging superhero, in a game, full of other superheroes. Trying to complete mission objectives in what always turns into a free for all brawl to get the collectibles was just dire. The only times I found myself enjoying the game was during the few end of mission sections where your character leaves the main world to continue alone in a building, usually culminating in a boss fight. My first was beating up Bane. I say beating up, I stayed at the back hurling barrels of acid whilst a poorer-looking-than-Arkham-Asylum Killer Croc chomped some Mexican rump. In a lighthouse of all places.
There are serious problems with visuals and gameplay, that much is clear. What about longevity? Well, since going Free To Play DCUO has become more overcrowded than Power Girl's bra, most of the time when I come to play I have to join a queue at least 6000 long. The wait is usually 20-30minutes. And even then the sheer weight of players causes the server to crash at least once an hour (credit where it's due, SOE are making things better) So no, there is no longevity to this game, at least until the world and his wife get bored of it. It makes me feel sorry for those who paid for it before the game became FTP.
.....And that's another thing!
MMOs. I know it's the 21st century and all that, and we're supposed to be understanding and accepting of others etc etc but I just don't get them. Why buy a game, and then agree to buy it again every month?! It baffles me. I think that might be one of the reasons I very quickly tired of DCUO, I'm not an MMO fan, and this seems to confirm my suspicions of most MMOs; that it all comes down to who's got the biggest, shiniest boots of +5 winning. A bit of a pet peeve, I spent a while making my character look the business, only to have him covered in useless tat just to upgrade his stats enough to not die:
Looks pretty swish, no?
Not too far off (Couldn't take new screenshot, server is down, surprise surprise)
[Update: Matt, a veteran, pointed out that you can hide the changes to your hero so none of the gear changes your appearence]
It comes down to this: from what I can tell, a very basic MMORPG game set in a world I adore. I can't even say if it's executed badly because I've nothing to compare it to! My recommendation would be as follows: If you're a fan of MMOs, avoid this because there are probably better ones out there. If you've never played an MMO before, go play anything else, it will be better than this big bag of disappointment, who's only job was to fill the time before Skyrim. And it even failed at that.
