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DCUO: A Review. It's Awesome.
parnt
Member Posts: 38
I've been playing MMO's for a number of years. Both Pay to Play, and Free to Play MMO's. I'm also a console gamer, I've played platforms ranging from the old NES all the way to the current generation of consoles. I'm gonna try to give an honest review of DCUO. Keep in mind that this isn't going to be a free-style write-up where I tell you guys that I'm going to be completely honest and then turn around and vent my frustrations to you in the form of a maligned game review. Instead I'm going to focus on just the game.
The graphics are really good. It's not a single player console game where you and the environment 30 feet around you are loaded upon approach. It's Gotham City and Metropolis. Two large interactive playfields that are always online, even if you're not on either of them.
So the graphics aren't "MELT MY VIDEO CARD IN A FIERY BLAZE AND TAKE MY CPU TOO, I'M AN AOL USER." In the field of massively multiplayer gaming, the graphics are top notch. The cities are well designed, the trees are all multi-layered, the roads and alley-ways are well thought out. Overall, the world is laid out in a complex and intricate manner, and it feels like an accurate virtual representation.
I haven''t seen any clipping anywhere yet. I haven't experienced any delays in loading up distant objects. The bloom is just right, it doesn't try to simulate a drunk's eye-view of his surroundings.
You can view areas of both cities more than hundreds of meters away without suffering frame-rate loss.
The special effects are really nice and shiny. If you've had the pleasure of using eye beams, then you will know what I mean. Character movement is pretty smooth. Combat movement is nice as well. The boss animations are very well done. Not stop motion like in all other MMO's. If you don't know what stop motion is, think 4 keyframes spread out across 4 seconds. I actually got a kick out of blocking and just observing how the bosses were animated.
The graphics in this game deserves a nice 9/10 seeing that it plays smoothly and is as vibrant as any of us would come to expect out of a big budget game.
The UI was designed with console gamers in mind; as such, it is uncluttered and minimalistic. It's perfect in the sense that it doesn't generate convoluted arguments about using ability H over ability A,B,C,L and Z (like in other pretentious games where the community is made up of rabid 13 year olds).
You choose the 6 best abilities in your "fun" arsenal and you go with it. Personally I take great satisfaction in melting the faces off my opponents with eye beams.
If you're breaking down in bitter anguish over the disparities, then I'll kindly remind you that all those abilities in the afforementioned alphabet all do similar things, they just have different icons.
All games come with certain flaws and in the case of DCUO, it's the communications system. It lacks the ability to let you choose chat channels, and as such, you are forced to learn chat commands in order to facilitate communication with fellow players. I think this is the biggest drawback to DCUO's UI. It's fine for PS3 players since they can use voice chat, but on the PC, its a whole lot more convenient to use the keyboard.
Since there won't ever be any cross platform interaction, I dont see any reason why this shouldn't be changed, even if just by a little bit.
Targetting needs to be tweeked a little bit to allow for more precise control.
UI:7/10
The content is extensive. I've been playing this game for less than a week, and it's the same for the majority of DCUO's players. This game only came out on the 11th, I got mine just a few days ago.
I'm finding that there's way more to do than I have the time for. It's literally loaded with content.
For a game that's barely two weeks old, the number of complaints against the content in this game is just laughable. I didn't think I'd be going up against big time DC characters such as the Titans and Batman on my 2nd day in, but the game literally shoves you through the door and smacks you in the face with them. I noticed that all the major encounters have all the defeated bosses fleeing, this leaves me to believe that DCUO will have them come back at later stages with greater degrees of difficulty and greater abilities.
Now as to what end game content the developers are planning to push out, it brings me back to the fact that we're talking about a comic book publishing company where story plots are planned months ahead of time. The stories are endless. This is the dedication that comes included with the franchise, and it certainly promises years of enjoyment.
The best that we've seen so far in other MMO's are expansions that take years to emerge, and content updates that only see the light of day when the community gets antsy. I'm not so worried that there won't be any end game content, I'm just worried if players will get spoiled by this 6 to 10 months down the road.
Content: For a game that's less than 2 weeks old, it gets a 9/10.
The powerlevel factor. If you're a neckbeard galley troll, you're going to want to go for the no-lifer achievement. You can literally spend 17 hour days blasting though alts and boss fights and you'll undoubtably get sick of it.
It will get so repetitive, and you heard it here first. I am now Nostradamus and Sigmund Freud rolled into one. So what's the point in trying to have fun when there's no visible distinction between work and play? You might as well feed yourself intravenously. As for the rest of the us, the average people, I think it's a nice change of pace from being completely insignificant at the lower levels.
Power level factor 9/10.
Gold spammers. This game has no trial option yet, so it's safe to assume that spammers pay $50 per legit account to spam gold. Once you ban them, they're going to have to repurchase new retail copies at $50 bucks a pop. This to me is a major mitigating factor to gold spammers. Now all that SoE has to do is disable chat functions for buddy key accounts. High level gold spammers can maintain the legitimacy of their gold mining accounts, but they won't be able to sign up infinite numbers of buddy key accounts to spam the vicinity. If trial accounts become an issue in the future, then those should come without the use of chat functions as well.
Gold spam 9/10
The sounds. The music in this game sounds very fresh. I like the music inside the nightclubs. It could vary a little bit with more tracks, but it still sounds nice. The quest music is engaging, the open world music is engaging. Overall, it's a welcome departure from flutes and village music.
Sounds: 8/10
Character customization. On the character creation screen, you're limited to only choosing which styles you will get for free. Everything else costs about $70 to $300 in-game. Being able to afford all the different costume styles in the game is easy, and the choices are wide and varying.
You can set the way your character looks and it won't be altered by any new gear that you might pick up. You get a list of different styles to choose from for each and every equipment slot, except for the neck piece and the trinket piece, and you get to add to that list with evey unique purchase or with every unique drop. You also get 3 colors to choose from, and you can change them anywhere and at anytime.
If it was all free, then it would take all the fun out of customizing.
You can respec at any time for a modest fee.
If you chose the wrong gender, then you can reroll at any time lol.
Character customization: 8/10
The monthly subscription. No Free to Play MMORPG is ever any good. None. Zero. Zip. Why else would you be posting up on a forum where people discuss F2P MMO's. It's because you want to constantly re-affirm to yourself that F2P MMO's are bad. Stop pretending, stop pretending now. You only want to leech off of the good name of Pay to Play MMORPG's just so that you can play games for free you cheapskate. If you want a Free to Play MMO, then suck it up by buying health potions and my little pony, starlight starbright mounts from the cash shop.
The reason why pay to play games are superior is because of the subscription fees. They pay for things like features and content updates. They also pay for the active interest that developers take in fixing things like bugs and imbalances.
This brings me to the fact that the current players of the game are the ones who are in an absolute prime position to make the game great. Out of those, the ones complaining are the ones who only want to get carried. Thinking is laborious for them.
So if you can, average players, have a bit of heart and hold their hands. Cut them some slack and be a nurturing, forgiving role model.
If you look at a game like EVE, it's the long time subscribers who are having the most fun, (with their capital ships and billions of ISK oozing out of their orifices).
It would be nice to have a rewards system however. I believe there's a recruit a friend system set in place by SoE, but they don't go into any lengthy details describing it. So, subscriptions get a 7/10 from me.
Anyways, these are just my initial thoughts on the game. I bought it and I'm having lots of fun playing. The graphics are kick ass, the game play is fantastic, and the sounds are wonderful.
Comments
Actually you do. Too bad you didn't read it.
Snippet from my post:
"Why else would you be posting up on a forum where people discuss F2P MMO's. It's because you want to constantly re-affirm to yourself that F2P MMO's are bad."
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
OP - Personally i would have been more harsh on the UI and even more harsh than you were on the chat. Otherwise, pretty accuarte review... well done.
This game is horrendous. Could kick myself that I wasted $50 on it. Played for one night... that was more than enough.
8/10 customisation? What do CoX and CO get then? 15/10?
UI 7/10? Seriously?
Content 9/10? OK I'm starting to think that you're either taking the p*** or the opening line about playing MMOs for 'a number of years' is a crock.
2 weeks old maybe, but unless they release an absolute shedload of monthly content it won't be long before those extra servers they had to open off the back of the marketing push will be ghostly quiet.
For its content it should get like a 4/10. There is not near enough to do in the game, the Episodes are all the exact same, there is little variety in this game at all.
The UI should get a 1/10! They did not design this game well at all for grouping, getting a League or Legion (guild) or just having friends in general. You cant even see a list of who is in your League or Legion and even if they make it where you can there is no point to being in one! In most games you need a team and you need friends to function and grow, but DCUO is like they just want you to solo.
The game is a single player Actionish (I say ish because it isnt a full on action game, its got the same button mashing attacks as an action game but the power layout is just like an MMO. Its a lazy action game) and it isnt near as revolutionary as it should be.
As it is now the game is a mediocre Action MMO, if they add A TON of variety in Episodes, ALOT more instances, redo the UI entirely, higher the level cap, give Guilds a reason to form and fix all of the bugs it would be a good game. As it stands now at best its a 6/10 and that is being generous. I rated it a 4/10 and people trashed me for it, but the truth is this game was still not ready for arrest, getting to max level is to fast and easy, questing to linear and there is nothing to do when you do get to max level. It is incomplete and if you tell yourself otherwise you are kidding yourself because everyone reading this knows all the things I listed are major problems with the game.
[mod edit]
Mystery Bounty
Whitelantern.
UI: I give it a 7/10. 6 abilities, one minimap, 1 health bar and power bar. Don't need any more than that.
Content is extensive: Zero downtime. More to do than there is time for. I bought the game expecting to fight villians and heroes. I'm finding that the game provides exactly that.
Costume styles: That was addressed in my post. But a different way would be to go about it like this. Buy what you want, use what you get from boss/quest/world drops. That was in my post or did I not write it?
Cash shop: speculation suggests that the cash shop won't sell overpowered weapons and abilities like in most B2P games and the post implies the advantages gained by a P2P model. For further explanation of what most B2P cash shops do, refer to B2P mmorpgs.
I'm actually kind of curious as to what will be on the cash shop in the future, but I doubt that it will change my views on the P2P model however.
jpnole: Yeah, the UI is something that I've been thinking about. My main problem with it is the chat interface. I'm not overly concerned with the public chat as I'm able to catch all the talk about world bosses and stuff. Group chat is also manageable. Personally, I think it's fixable. Thanks for your review
Nomis: Don't really care about CoX or CO. I saw videos of CO gameplay and CO gameplay is stopmotion. That in itself trumps the issue of customization since costume vendor terminals in DCUO can always be expanded upon.
Content: There's so much content that I hardly have the time to go through them all. I bought the game expecting to fight villains and heroes. I'm finding that the game provides exactly that.
Personally, I find the content in these criticisms more questionable as they appear to have less substance than a leaky silicone implant.
The game is supposed to be played at max level, and max level doesn't equal the end of progression, only for those that aren't good at achieving the feats, or don't know about that system. I think the game is a solid 7, as I enjoy the combat my score was an 8.5, but the truth would be closer to 7 depending on the reviewer and how they view other games. For example, I would put champions at a 7 and DCUO at 8.5. That would be me comparing apples to apples though, while others with less interest in that subgenre could give those games a much lower score. Its all relative though.
The point made about CoX and CO was referring to customization not the other aspects of gameplay. There's probably 3 or 4 times as many options in both games as opposed to DCUO. They even have more than 3 faces per gender! I know hard to believe if you're of limited experience in the genre but there you go.
As you've only ever seen gameplay videos (which really lends massive credibility to your arguments about gameplay et al)
Do leaky silicon implants have no substance? Surely they'd have some substance or they'd no longer be leaky?
I don't read comics monthly. I know DC through the years of comics they have published. It would be ridiculous to live in a modern world without ever hearing about DC comics even once. So my opinions differ from yours. Doesn't make yours any better than mine. The league UI isn't a big concern for me. I'm not dependent on other people to enjoy a video game. I'm actually glad this game is solo centric as I find that guilds always have 10 to 20 lazy people who don't contribute to progression. Plus, the guild channels in my old guilds were always filled with questions like "Hey guiz im typing drunk hohoho" So I can do without useless guilds. I can pug it or I can solo it and I'll just consider the general Villains or Heroes faction as my "guild"
It's an adrenaline packed MMO. If it was purely an action game then it would be built like Street Fighter. If it was an FPS, it would be built like CoD. I believe button mashing only happens when you panic and all 6 buttons become panic buttons. No, this game is about strategy. Block break the blocks. Dodge melee. Block standard attacks. Use powers to disorient opponents. Stun opponents to open up combos. If you're button mashing, you're doing it wrong sadly.
I do agree that they have to add a lot of episodes. I fully look forward to what they can come up with considering that what they have so far is impressive and fun to play.
The only thing that is not linear in games is PVP and player interaction. I believe that quests are the way they are because they set a guideline and they reward you with things upon completion. You can't wish that computer AI is not linear and then it magically happens. For that to happen, you would need a Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, writing quest scripts on the fly
I believe someone posted up that when they got to 30, it opened up several new avenues to waste time in. I mean that's what games are all about right? To waste time. If you want facebook, you should go to facebook and PVP facebook nerds there
Huh? Thought you said there was no problem with content?