The Story
Just like any RPG, be it MMO or Table Top, there is an ultimate evil trying to destroy/control the universe. In this case, it is Brainiac and he is doing it in the form of stealing all of the powers of the heroes and villains of the DC Universe. In the future the battles between all the superpowers hit an all-time high and lead to the death of Superman at Lex Luthor's hands. As the man of steel hits the ground the invasion begins.
Luthor, after realizing the ultimate mistake he just made, travels back in time to warn the present day heroes of the impending doom. Knowing that they won't trust him he lets loose all of the stolen powers Brainiac collected upon the Earth forcing an explosion in the metahuman population. This also forces the current heroes/villains to step up and train them for the ultimate fight in the future.
You are this new hero/villain. Can you save the universe?
The Good
One of the major things I noticed immediately is that DCUO engages all of the players right from the beginning. After the initial videos and character creation, you are not just dropped into a world and forced to read small blurbs on what to do. Almost everything is spoken to you as well as given through text. This is something that I find lacking in most MMO titles - at least lacking compared to the level DCUO achieves.
Stemming of that, this is a very action-oriented MMO. Way more than the basic "point here, click and wait for the character to do something." There is a distinct lack of auto-fighting or casting. It requires the player to keep moving and attacking just as you would in any action title on the market. I never found myself bored, just sitting and waiting for my character to finish hacking an enemy apart. I was required to be moving, jumping and attacking to survive. At times, I would forget that I was doing a basic hunt-and-gather mission because I was forced to keep acting. In my opinion, this breaks the mold of MMOs in a good way.
Being a high action game, you would expect the controls to be top notch and able to let the player keep up. For the most part, they are successful, but this is all dependent on the platform. On the PS3, surprisingly, the controls are a perfect fit. Once you get the hang of the controls, they really become as second nature as I have seen the WoW controls for PC gamers. As would be expected, they map similarly to any Action title with Light and Heavy attacks. For reference, think God of War. Your powers are all called by holding one of the triggers and selecting based on the controller button associated.
One final good point I'll list (for now) is the continued customization. This is how you may deviate from your original costume. I touched on this before, but I had no clue how many options you can get on your toon and this is just the beta. For the uninitiated, once you wear something, you always have the option of keeping the look of the current item even though a newly acquired piece has better stats. I've found so many items that have added to my toon's look; it is insane how well this works and lends to further individualizing each character.
The Bad
While I left off on the continued customization above, I feel I have to explain why the continued customization was such a great feature to me. Much of this was due to how limited when you actually create you starting character. I'm not saying they all look the same at creation or you can't build something cool (My first toon (Skinny) has worn the same thing the whole time), but you don't get all the options up front. That includes all the basic stuff that you unlock as collection quests or just by sitting around on the streets of Gotham and Metropolis. It seems there are full packages that you can get to wear by just wandering around doing nothing. If only those were allowed on any character you build from then on - that would make up for it.
Also continuing from an above topic, the PC controls for the game are…well…not as good as they should be for an MMO. MMOs are known to be primarily PC titles, yet DCUO handles worlds better with a PS3 controller - heads and shoulders above. I mean think about having to press and time mouse clicks for heavy and light attacks while mixing in the hot key management for powers and then balancing in the high action game play on top of it. It might be my lack of keyboard and mouse use in general, but it just didn't feel right at all, nor close to any other MMO I've played on the PC. I know you can plug a PS3 controller into your PC, but natively, the PC controls just are not up to par.
Finally, while I know it is still in beta, there were some defects in the PVP or "Alert" missions in their present forms. Part of which I can let go as a part of the aforementioned beta, but why would it really take almost an hour to get into a four player instance on a mission handed to you on a server with a wait time to log in due to numbers? It just boggles my mind a bit that it would always take that much time. It could just be me though.
The Verdict…So Far
If it is not known to you, I am not an MMO player in the least bit. I've dabbled in almost all of them, but not a single one has been able to capture my attention longer than a couple weeks. I think Age of Conan had me the longest and that was only because it made me get involved in the story of things more than just reading small text. I have grown past the days of reading scrolling text, damn it.
Keeping that in mind and that this is just a beta, I was hooked right in and didn't want to stop. Even when my main character (Skinny) hit the beta level cap, I still found things engaging even though I knew there were no character rewards outside of loot. At times I would forget that I was playing an MMO and just saw it as an action game that had some good co-op and multiplayer - even though there was always a wait. The underlying point of the matter is that I had and still am having a blast with just the beta.
I really can't wait to see what they have to add and finalize for the full launch next week. Stay tuned here to see the review of the full game once it lands on January 11th.
