DC Universe Online (free edition)

As you should know by now DC Universe came out around this time last year as a MMO for the consoles and demonstrates the three reasons why MMORPG should never be made on consoles I will get to this soon but for now lets get some reasons why to get into this game. DC Universe is much like it's predecessor City of Heroes a MMORPG with super heroes and villains fighting each other with a greater evil looming in the background except it has been given a franchise so they do not have to set up a background and lore for why we should care about the story of your and the characters in the game. Which is a big reason why a lot of the other MMORPG's failed because we had to learn the storyline while getting used to the gameplay and the story going on at the moment but because the viewer has prior knowledge of the series they can more easily make their character fit to the setting and pick up the story of the world. Now quickly I will name some of the more popular MMORPG's of the past five years World of Warcraft (of course), Lord of the Ring online (also free to play expect you caped a lot for being non premium), Starwars Onine (very old cannot remember the actual name), Everquest 2, Tibia and Maple story out of all these you can quickly pick up that you know some of the background of the games except Tibia, Maple story and maybe Everquest this goes to show that people tend to play the game they know the story and lore over something they have never heard of like lets just say Rift.

After that long sidetrack I shall explain my first 10 levels of the game in less than 10 minute I hit my first road block MMORPG's without CDs take for ever to download a whopping 18 Gb so 8 hours latter I was ready to go and hit the second roadblock to an Australian gamer only servers available are Eu or US I mean come on guys we level directly between the two of you give us a server and they give you the stupid option of PvP or non-PvP what a waste of bandwidth to split a server just so pansies can not worried about getting killed by random's during their quest and still not give us a server. Now I am finally in character customisation which I felt was a huge amount of choice you pick your ability background like use of ice fire magic and gadgets then you pick what weapons you want you character to use from hand blasts to pole-arms to dual pistol's. Next you have your choice of metor for the side of heroes Superman, Wonder Woman or batman and for the villain's you have Lex Luthor, The Red Circle or the Joker (you got me I have no idea who this Red Circle is something to do with Wonder Woman) as well as your ability move about acrobatic's like Batman Flying like superman or Super speed of the Flash. After all these tough choices you come to everyone's favourite thing character creation that is right you get to pick what your superhero or villain looks like from cape to boots they have a lot of customisation to make you look like a superstar!.

ME stuck in the ground shows the UI though! and some costumes of my in the ground friends

Now for a quick story setting Lex has killed superman in the not to distant future in the hugest fight between villains and heroes as soon as the battle is over if superman dead Brainiac (The reason for superman's home planet's destruction) comes over and conquers the planet after many years of oppression future Lex invents time travel and warns the justice league of what is going to happen. Lex then release Brainiac's nanobots into the Earth's atmosphere which has all of the powers from meta humans that Brainiac has harvested over the past years and the future that then infect normal humans giving them superpowers and that means you!. Here is a link to the trailer which pretty much is what I have just said above expect cooler with good CGI graphicshttp://www.g4tv.com/videos/47678/dc-universe-online-cinematic-trailer/. You wake up in a large open room of what seems to be a spaceship a stranger's voice contacts you saying ohh you have woken up what I have must of worked they then tell you that you are on a Brainiac invasion ship and you have to escape by using your powers taking out your guard the stranger introduces him/herself. Make a long tutorial short you learn the basics adding skill points, how to use your movement trait and how to fight you break out and destroy the ship with the aid of a more experienced player namely Lex or Superman.

The Game has a large storyline dependant on who you chose as your mentor and which faction your on much like WoW with it's different races and horde or alliance Factions but I decided to use my two available character on a Superman mentor as a magic hand-blasting metahuman that can fly and a twisted nature controlling dual pistol weilding psychopath under the mentor Joker both were incredibly fun to play. When you beat a raid/campaign fight the person you beat give you their stake in the world on my hero route which was Gorilla Grodd and Hive Queen they explained what they want to have as their ideal future when you beat them. After beating these chumps I was invited onto the Justice League space station which is like the huge cities from WoW they then told me to go to other cities from the giant world to tackle stronger enemies and help other heroes.

In my entire experience I have found two annoying things one being not enough ability to set macro as you want in a MMORPG the other was a random bug where I Logged in and was stuck in the ground randomly which made me have to delete my character and start again the other just made me feel like I was Pigeon toed into playing a console game on the computer problem number one of console MMORPG number two is the graphic control in the game there are very limited things you can change for your computers performance it also does not save your setting after you change them after you quit (maybe this was just my computer being stupid). Number 3 general control of you character feels slightly off not saying that it is hard to play or is anyway stupid just did not especially feel 100% like having right click be ranged and left click be melee which just always makes me feel like left and right trigger from a controller at least it is not as bad as Assassin Creed on computer now that is the most annoying control system for a computer ever.

Sorry about the length maybe you like longer and more comprehensive reviews as compared to my whole part review strategy where I break up the review of a game into three parts depending on the theme of the post I am sure I will eventually go into the standard of the industry Gameplay, Story and Multi-player segregated reviews till next time and if you cannot wait for Skyrim that comes out in 24 hours! or just want a free fun well paced MMORPG with very little trouble learning how to play and have fun with it's simplistic UI and gameplay give it a shot.