DC Universe Online
Preview
Villainous fun?
by HG Staff
previewed on PC
Bringing on the Beta
Sony lavished Hooked Gamers with Beta keys for DC Universe Online just before the holidays, and the team has been up to all sorts of heroic and villainous acts for the past few weeks. With the game due for release in a couple of days, we thought now was the perfect time to share our findings with you.
It didn’t take long for us to figure that DCUO is a game that incites very different opinions. So much so that we figured we would best serve you, our readers, by giving all these opinions a chance to be heard. Mark, Liam, Ingvi, Chaos and Falconer pooled their collective thoughts into a single preview that you can read below. We will start off with the unanimous points that were made before moving on to the basic features of the game, and then we will close up with each person’s overall opinion.
Powerful
Right from the very first second you gain control of your freshly created character, you will be in awe of the power you yield. You get to soar through the skies and shoot laser beams from the palm of your hands - if those were the skills you selected – and will feel like a badass the moment you dive into your first bout of combat. When you do, you will find that most of your encounters will be challenging but not impossible. Regardless of how you decide to level up, you will end up with some third-rate superhero or nemesis shoved in your direction sooner or later.
Even in the earlier levels you will get to do some impressive things; saving The Flash or battling with Power Girl will make you feel pretty glorious. Some of the good (and bad) guys you will encounter haven’t been in the comic limelight for decades, which invites an opportunity to look them up on Wikipedia. Here you will often find extensive background info on these almost obscure characters.
Ingvi’s identity crisis
For comic book creators, it cannot be easy to create a unique looking hero or villain with a distinct personality that is able to either reach the hearts of readers or instill fear in them. That Sony had similar issues giving players the ability to even create a unique looking character is illustrated by Ingvi’s identity crisis as he writes:
“I've always had a soft spot for petite feisty women and my first character was a villainous school girl, short of stature and with lion-esque ears and the martial arts skills of Tony Jaa. While fiddling around with the character creator, I excitedly began building up the backstory for my character too, fantasizing about how she had become what she was today. As I entered the world, I thought to myself that this odd combination would be fairly unique. I was wrong. As soon as I stepped out of the tutorial level and into the real world, a leopard-looking schoolgirl with a backpack on greeted me with a smile. My backstory? Useless.
Later on, I chose to make a big, bulky robot with robotic wings on, the ability to fly, psychokinetic powers and a huge maul. I figured he had been an army experiment set free by Brainiac's forces in the initial attack on Earth. After completing the tutorial level, I believe I ran about 15 meters before running into myself. The only difference was that the dude had another colour scheme.”
And creating your own character does not really give you power over its appearance. Once you pick up some loot and equip it, the look of your character changes rather drastically. For instance, you can choose a set of robotic wings for your character but as soon as you find a cape that is more useful, you’ll practically be forced to lose them. With that change, any backstory that you created for your character is blown as well, not to mention that 95% of all the characters in the DC Universe will be wearing a cape too. It stands to reason that Sony will be extending the character creation options at some point in the future, but at this time it’s best not to expect too much of it.
Rectification: The above passage on character appearance has a twist. A setting in the menu will prevent your character from changing its looks.
