Knights of the Cardboard Castle

DC Universe Online is the first MMO I’ve played in a very long while. In fact, it’s the first MMO I’ve played since getting a decently fast fixed-line net connection. Being a comics fan I’ve always meant to try this out and the offer of the DLC packs on Steam a while back seemed like the best chance to leap aboard. I wasn’t expecting too much from it. It moved from being a full priced game with the standard MMO subscription rates to being free to play in record time. But I ended up liking it quite a bit and stuck on for a while longer than I thought I would.

• One of its key features is that it’s an action-oriented MMO, even including a rudimentary physics system. There are no auto-attacks. You directly control each of your character’s attacks just like in any other action game. There are many unlockable combos to learn, and learning to block at the right moment or roll out of the way is essential to survive. We’re a long way from the ancient MMO convention of all mobs being able to just walk through one another!

• As an action game and as an MMO that can be played both on the PC and the PS3, the controls seem tuned for a gamepad. While that’s understandable for gameplay and it’s much easier to dodge and block on a gamepad, it does make interaction with menus, the inventory and the social functions of the game unnecessarily complicated.

• I finished the game (well, as far as any solo player can in an MMO anyway) as a superhero with the Hard Light (re: Green Lantern) power and experimented briefly with some of the other powers. But I still enjoyed Hard Light most of all, especially since the energy constructs you can make can be comboed together. It makes for a really enjoyable flow in combat. Unfortunately without buying any DLC, the power choices seem pathetically limited and critics have always complained about the lack of in-game brute strength powerset. Apparently Superman is officially an Ice Tank in this game.
• The justification for so many new heroes and villains running around with superpowers is covered in the totally awesome cinematic movie that everyone should watch. But this strangely has little effect on the storyline, at least while you’re still leveling. Your missions are directly drawn from familiar comic storylines. Stop the Joker from spreading poison gas in Gotham. Free Raven from the control of her father Trigon. Help the Green Lantern Corps beat down the Sinestro Corps. Even free the Spectre from Eclipso’s influence. And you know what? That’s just fine by me because I prefer to play in the scenarios drawn from the comics than the one the game designers came up with about Brainiac invading Earth.
• The single-player experience is very well done with single-player instances involving plenty of NPC interactions. Seeing all those Green Lanterns fighting all those Sinestro Corps members, flinging green and yellow constructs at each other, feels pretty awesome. So is joining up with Nightwing to fight against Bane. But what can be more epic than taking down the Spectre with Hal Jordan and the Green Arrow? Okay, I don’t know what the Green Arrow is doing in that mission.

• This being an MMO, character balance is totally off. On the villain side for example, you encounter Power Girl as an enemy very early so she feels weak. Similarly Bizarro is a mere level 10 bounty boss. You know who the toughest enemies I had to face in the solo missions are? Bruno Manheim and the Penguin’s stupid robot! You wouldn’t believe how many times that robot penguin killed me. But Deathstroke? Sinestro? The freaking Spectre? Pansies. Yeah, that’s game balance for you.
• Unfortunately, the world feels pretty small. Strictly speaking, it’s only Metropolis and Gotham. You only travel between the two cities by teleportation, so no flying cross-country across the US. The instances, especially the raids, take place in more places of course, but they’re not part of the world that you can explore. It’s enough for this game, but it just reinforces how much more limited in scale DCUO is compared to a monster like WOW.

I stuck with the game until I finished the mentor missions (that was Batman for me) plus the solo Penguin and Catwoman challenges. Playing on would be group raids and grinding slowly for marks to buy better equipment, which is something that I have no interest in. Reaching this point took me about two weeks. So yeah, I don’t see how the original designers envisioned this as a real contender for the MMO big leagues. Asking for a subscription plus full price for it was daylight robbery. It’s great at what it does but it doesn’t have the content to last very long. And for a casual player like me, that’s just the sweet spot.