I don’t give good reviews often. This isn’t because I don’t like a lot of games; far to the contrary, I love games. So much so, that being good is something I expect of games. So, when I see a bad game, it upsets me enough to write a bad review, but it is seldom that a game impresses me enough that I have to write about it.
DC universe is such a game.
If anything would be a WoW killer, it would be this. For once, an MMO that doesn’t copy-paste WoW’s interface onto the main screen. For once an MMO that doesn’t follow the typical formula. To give you a side by side comparison, let me break down the first half hour of play from WoW, and from DC Universe.
WoW: I started off in a secluded area where the other faction is likely to have difficulty reaching. Away from shops, and most main centers as I took my first quests and killed small animals. for most races this was wolves. Eventually I grew enough that I was allowed out of the small bubble world and was introduced to a slightly larger area, in which I was promptly killed my first time out because enemies now for the first time agro on you. A fact that was previously unmentioned.
Grumbling I stepped back out again, following the road tightly, and made my way to the nearby hovel. Here I was introduced to a similar set of quests. small humanoids were my main targets, kill five kabolds, kill ten bandits. By the end of my 30 minutes, I’m not quite sure off the top of my head if I even managed to reach the capital city.
DC Universe online: I started off in a solitary cell, a voice spoke to me through the com network informing me that I was just freed from a containment pod on Brainiac’s ship and that I needed to get out ASAP. I fought my way through a series of robotic guards, using my weapons, powers, throwing exploding barrels by hand and even dropping tons of garbage down on top of several high power guard bots.
On my way out, my new friend noticed through a window I was passing that Braniac was on the verge of dropping a small army on the city we were over, and I needed to detour in order to stop them. I fought a conditional boss battle. Seriously, in an MMO I fought a conditional battle; I had to destroy four couplings to cut off the shields around brainiac’s overseer and drop a massive gun on top of the robotic army. After taking care of the overseer, Superman himself shows up to give me backup against waves of Brainiac’s minions.
My mentor was actually Batman, and after being evacuated, he made contact with me, and I set off to clean up Gotham. Scarecrow was on the loose and causing trouble again. I had to fight my way through hallucinogens, recover lost doctors, and lay the smackdown on some thugs before finally uncovering Scarecrow’s hideout.
Batwoman managed to get there first and I arrived as reinforcements to help her out. Another conditional battle ensued. Scarecrow didn’t fight us directly, instead he filled the room with his patented hallucinogens and we had to fight our own fears; swarms of crows, clones of all the famous DC heroes, lightning falling from the skies. There were 8 rounds of battles before to his dismay, Scarecrow ran out of gas, and was forced to fight us himself. We won, and Scarecrow was locked up; after which I was treated to a cutscene including moving panel graphics.
You see how these two differ? First of all, WoW just sets you on the path for a very long road of grinding, while DC Universe actually makes you feel like you’ve accomplished something. The tutorial was worked into the ‘escape Brainiac’s ship’ plot, giving you alone time to master the controls while also making you feel like you are there for a real reason as opposed to ‘you’re too tiny to be anywhere else’
The exp system is also fantastic. While playing, I, and 5 others just randomly fought in the same area, we cooperated while not even in a team. You don’t get much exp for kills, what you do get exp for is meeting GOALS in a quest. You killed 5 gorillas, exp. Disarmed 10 power cells, exp, destroyed 5 mutators, exp, quest complete, gain reward, move the story onward. No grinding here, in WoW you do quests to give you a small reward and goal as you kill things anyway; in DC Universe you play through storylines and help people you find. FOR REAL. If you helped knock down an enemy or destroy an object, you get credit for it. No getting upset because somebody stole your target here; no sir. You are all heroes, and you are on the SAME SIDE. The only thing that is not shared between non-party members is credit for something like pulling a lever which only one person is capable of doing in the first place.
I played in the Beta, and it was a pain to hold all this in for the entire beta period, then I go and fail to post my review the day the game actually hit the stores (I actually noticed it was released a while ago yesterday) the only thing that really needs improvement is the skill activation system. You use different skills based on a series of left and right clicks or holds. This can get a bit confusing later on, but still I can’t think of much that can improve that, since the alternative is having a million keyboard hotkeys.