DC Universe Online Reviews

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Written by Brother None on February 26th, 2011

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It's not until the action starts that the real differences are felt, the most obvious being the pace of the action. Your hero pounds, punches and fires in real time here, exactly in the way they would if you were playing an offline single player game. Button-bashing surprisingly effective in the early stages is as mindlessly entertaining as ever but it isn't long before enemies can overwhelm.

While the action may be more hardhitting than the MMO norm, the quests are worryingly familiar. Kill 20 of this or interact with 10 of that are the fundamentals of far too many quests. Some excellent voice acting helps keep the immersion up, but all too often the quests are fairly mindless. More strategy is required for the four player sections, but the in-depth tactics required by the likes of WoW will not be needed here. That isn't necessarily a bad thing in the short-term. As far as pick up and play goes, DC Universe Online is one of the best.

The interface does the best that it can to accommodate both PC and console players but it's lacking in very significant ways. The menus are laggy as molasses; calling up your inventory should be instantaneous instead of on a five to ten second delay. MMO standards like your quest log get muddied really quickly and it's hard to know where to find the one that you're looking for. DCUO also makes it a pain to complete quests by forcing you to go to your quest log after you complete the task, and then go to the guy who gave you the quest. Why is getting loot/XP a three-step process? Finding groups on the fly isn't much of a problem but it takes some doing. There's no "Group up" button and SOE might do well to include one to encourage more such play. For now, you have to get to the social menu and manually select a player character nearby and invite them to group. If he or she accepts, bang, you're done and can move into the dungeon. Targeting in combat can take a bit of getting used to as the game will inexplicably have you shoot that big fireball at a barrel, or even worse, at another group of enemies, making you agro the whole room. At least the death penalty isn't too bad, after being "knocked out" you respawn either back at the start of the dungeon, the nearest headquarters, or at spawn points distributed throughout the city.

Worst of all, though, is the obscene amount of crowd control powers at play in both missions and player-versus-player combat. Crowd control powers (essentially, any ability that removes, changes, or otherwise buggers with a player's ability to control their character) are trouble spots in most MMOs, requiring careful balancing and hefty limitations to avoid abuse or annoyance... and very few developers get it right. SOE's daring solution to the problem is to deluge the game with atrocious, annoying abilities that make certain sections downright infuriating.

Take the Green Lantern quest line in Metropolis, for example. Seemingly every single ability in the Sinestro Corps' arsenal messes with your controls. Knock-ups, knockbacks, knockdowns -- in one section of the mission, I spent several seconds in midair, being juggled by fans, giant yellow balls, and damage shields. My character's stun-breaking muscle-flex move couldn't be triggered quickly enough, and in the end, only death could offer me sweet release from the wretched stupidity. And this goes doubly for the spastic PvP combat, where players are easily stun-locked and juggled for an eternity.

Creating a group is where you find the single biggest flaw in DC Universe Online: communication. There are two ways to communicate inDCUO. One is via text chatting and the other is voice chat. Voice chat doesn't work. At the time of this writing, it is completely non-functional. Text chatting was obviously designed with the PC in mind and doesn't cater to the PS3 at all. If you want to text chat, you hit the select button and the PS3 on-screen keyboard pops up even if you have a USB keyboard plugged in. You cannot move your character at all while in a text chat, either. Communication is the key to upper-level content in any MMORPG and players shouldn't have to turn to Ventrillo or Skype to solve their communication needs in DC Universe Online.

Most of the quests tend to revolve around the concept of "go here, beat up these types of enemies, collect the items they drop, and bring them back to me." Honestly, though, these missions didn't feel as repetitive as they should have, mainly because fully-voiced messages from characters like Batman, Superman, Lex Luthor, and Catwoman will play after each goal has been attained. So in a weird way, the mission goals made sense and helped the story flow.

DCUO is a miserable experience on one hand, and an uplifting romp through joyville on the other. Due to the constraints of a console-friendly UI, finding friends and grouping with them can be a headache. In fact, the entire social UI is extremely frustrating to deal with and lacks many of the features that MMOG players have come to take for granted (like being able to resize your chat window). Adding people to your friends list or league (DCUO's guild equivalent) is a convoluted task that requires various submenus and commands and cannot reliably be accomplished without relying upon out-of-game resources like message boards. And while grouping can be as simple as typing "/invite MisterFist" very few players seem interested in teaming up.

Will you keep playing?

Absolutely. Gladly. Enthusiastically. Even though character advancement for me has slowed and arguably turned into what you might call a grind, DC Universe remains a sort of comfort food action game. Log in, do a few short instances, call it a night. This isn't the sort of MMO that asks you to park for hours on end several nights in a row. It's more of a co-operative or competitive multiplayer action game, perfect for short intense visits. And because your character doesn't sport rows of tiny icons for a thousand different skills, DC Universe is also perfect for less frequent visits.

But I can't help but wonder if the business model -- an MMO style subscription fee -- is going to hurt the game in the long run. DC Universe doesn't play like the sort of game that costs a monthly fee. Instead, it reminds me of what it's like when I'm invested in a shooter like Halo, Team Fortress 2, or Call of Duty. Would I pay $15/month for those games? Microsoft, Valve, and Activision certainly hope so, hence the map packs and hats and whatnot. With DC Universe, Sony is just more up-front and consistent about it.

The game plays out a little like a third-person action/adventure, which has you mashing on your attack buttons or doing specific combos (like tap, tap. hold) but then also using combinations of face buttons and triggers to utilize your awesome powers that you unlock as you level up. It has a fun feel to it, but can still wear really thin after killing number 15 of 20 specific enemies you are busy with.

Being a superhero isn't just about beating up some baddies though. As mentioned earlier, you are given the option of flight, superspeed or acrobatics and its with these powers that you might find yourself having a lot of fun as a your cruise around from mission to mission. Just as with your combat skills and powers, you are also able to make your way through upgrade trees that affect movement as well. Begin with a speedster and you will have the option of running fast (even up walls and across water) but hit level 9 and you can start upgrading your character to run at one hell of a pace or double-jump over great distances.

SOE has done a good job of creating a control scheme that works on the Playstation 3, however the menus are more than a chore for the most part. Bringing up the main menu is sluggish and even opening sections or switching tabs can be a cumbersome activity that really brings the experience down overall. Later levels also open up the options to create leagues as well as participate in Player vs Player events as well as raids but again, it's all a little clumsy.

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