Posts tagged DC Universe Online

I jumped on the opportunity to take part in the DC Universe online beta when Massively was giving away keys.  I will do a more thorough writeup on the game later once I’ve logged some more significant hours, but I wanted to throw out some of the things I’ve noticed about the game early on.

Starting costume vs clown suit. It took 6 levels to change my look.

First off, the character creation is quite detailed.  You can customize enough of your costume without it becoming overwhelming, while still creating a unique look for yourcharacter.  As a note, you don’t have to go overboard on your default gear customization because the gear your pick up throughout the game can adjust how you look in game fairly easily.  It’s also easy to reset your look back to the default you created in the beginning.

The first thing any PC player of DCUO will notice is that the controls are not designed for the PC.  In fact, if you have a decent gamepad, it might be worthwhile to try to hook it up and use it to run this game.  The typical WASD+mouselook style of controls that most people are used to simply will not work in this game.  If you get stuck in that mode of thinking while trying to control your character, you will become frustrated quickly, especially if you’re using directional abilities (e.g. Fireball) instead of targeted abilities (e.g. firing pistols).  It took me 10 minutes or so to start to get used to it, and I don’t think I’ve mastered it completely yet.  When you throw in the flight ability it becomes even trickier.  I have yet to find a way to customize the controls to feel more “at-home”.

The combat is more complicated than your typical MMO.  You likely won’t get away with standing still and blowing through a rotation – you will have to learn to use your movement abilities in combat and to be able to line up your directional attacks.  I think most people will pick up it well enough to be able to win at basic fights, but it will take a long time to truly master.

Superman telling me what a great job I did.

The starting area was a very fun experience.  As a tutorial it is really very basic, but the game doesn’t have you performing useless tasks in order to teach you how to push your buttons.  I rolled up a disciple of Superman with flight powers, and I imagine the beginning must be different based on whether you’re a hero or villain and who you’re a disciple of.  I think the travel power must make a difference too, because there’s a few sections where I don’t see super speed or acrobatics really working.  The starting area is fairly quick – it won’t take more than 10 or 15 minutes to play through before you get to your starting city.  I also got to fight alongside Superman, which means that I can cross that off my bucket list.

More to come later – this is certainly a game worth checking out.