Earth's Mightiest Heros Assemble; Well Some Of Them

Gameplay - 7/10

Storyline - 8/10

Graphics - 6/10

Game Score : 21/30

Whew; man its been a pretty busy month with all these games coming out and begging to be played. Hell i'm running out of hard drive space on my PC so lets check another game off the list as we move on to the next one. This week we are checking out DC Universe Online (DCUO); a MMORPG that recently made the switch from the pay to play business model to free to play (F2P). DC Universe Online is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) set in the DC Universe. Which for those who may not know is a superhero franchise similar to Marvel where you have your Spiderman, Ironman, Thor, Captain America etc. You will probably know most of those from recent movies or such but for more information regarding the DC side of things click the link...(DC Universe)

SOE is working to make DC Universe Online more interactive than standard MMORPGs, while trying to keep their key elements which include a leveling system, raid instances, endgame progression and inventories. The player can choose to create their character for the PVE (player versus environment) server or the PVP (player versus player) server at the start of the game depending which they prefer more. The world is mainly shared, public space instead of heroes or villains owning territory. The public space features dynamically-generated content designed for both hero and villain player characters. Players will choose a mentor for their character (Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman for heroes and Lex Luthor, The Joker, or Circe for villains). Their starting location, principal quest rewards and mob loot will be influenced by that decision. The starting zones are either Metropolis or Gotham City, for both heroes and villains. Each character is given a communicator appropriate to their faction, via which they receive urgent communications from their mentor and his/her colleagues and subordinates; heroes will frequently receive status updates from Oracle, while villains will receive data from The Calculator. In addition to assignments from their mentor, player characters may also receive requests for help from other mentors of the same faction. Player characters may also accept missions from non-player characters (NPCs) in the street, usually minor characters from their faction. There are also opportunities for quick street encounters appropriate to the character's faction. All NPC interactions are fully animated and voice-acted. Player characters will earn threat ratings that will cause NPC heroes and villains to interact accordingly with the character.

So even though DCUO is another MMORPG in a sea of many others which are already F2P we can see from just a brief introduction that it has a lot to offer to the player. Typically a good sign that a game is worth your time is the size of the game itself as far as content and things to do are concerned. This certainly delivers in that regard as of posting this blog it has an installation of roughly 18 GB's so you will probably want to clear up some serious hard drive space for this game if you are gonna take it for a spin. The skill tree and usage is typical of most MMORPGS where you assign skills to varying buttons and have combinations of skills that can be chained in whatever order you desire. It however expands on this by having great emphasis placed on what power is chosen when you create your character, as a player's Powers determine the player's abilities, combat strategy and role in groups. Each power has two ability trees that the player can specialize in. One tree focuses on DPS (Damage Per Second) attack, and the other focuses on the character's alternate role (Controller, Tank, Healer). Players get 1 point to spend in powers every even level for a total of 15 at level 30, which is currently the level cap. 

As with all MMORPG's, there is a certain level of regret involved with playing as you wont know exactly what may be the best skill tree or which moves to power up over other but that is half the fun, I think just choosing what you like to suit your own personal play style. However for those of you that value that way of thinking and want to be the very best like no one ever was, feel free to check out http://dcuniverseonline.wikia.com for any info regarding the game. I would also recommend joining the community forums for the game at http://www.dcuniverseonline.com/ to check out some character guides from other players. On of the more interesting things about this game would probably be that it is playable on console which I think is something that is really common in the world of MMORPG's so that is something noteworthy. Due to this though its play on PC feels somewhat limited as the basic controls feel kind of tacked on to compensate for the console version of the game but that just could be me being paranoid. Another shortcoming of the game is the low level cap and lack of end-game content but this is to be expected as the game is relatively new and still in its growing/establishing stages as a MMORPG. When compared to the likes of longstanding games such as World of Warcraft and Everquest one can see there is much plausible room for growth given the breadth and history of the DC universe. All in all its a fun game to try out for anyone with an interest in superheros or comic book lore on a whole. Hell you can't exactly argue with the fact that its free to play now can you; in the first week of changing over to free to play they received over 1 million new sign ups. Need I say more...