Edited: September 2014. Gamespot did away (I believe) with "point-five" ratings on its scale. Thus, I have to review some games with an 8 score that I believe do what they do a bit better than DC Universe Online and am now downgrading it to a seven. I guess this is why I don't review games professionally. So, it went from an 8.5 to a seven. It's still a "b-minus". I try to go back to it for the flight and am disappointed that I don't end up playing more of it routinely, however.
Edited: June 2013. The gear grind at the end caused me to downgrade this 5 percentage points. Downgrade is not to be mean but to reflect time I've spent on this versus other games. It's a b-minus but this narrative below still holds.
DCUO is one of the most under-rated sci-fi games of all time. The overarching story and mini stories are fantastic and happen to be by the celebrated graphic story-teller Jim Lee. The MMO combat is just revolutionary. Unfortunately, for DCUO's user and media critique scores this great strength got twisted into a weakness. Here's how....
*Once you begin DCUO and perhaps reluctantly plug your controller into your PC (i'm a keyboard holdout myself) you inevitably form your first impressions. Earlier levels your foes need to be easy enough for a newb to beat. Once you start leveling up there are in-depth controls such as counters and attacks that unlock that are ideal for different fight situations.
Some of these innovations will be implementable in the tutorial. Characters can time a block to a melee attack and take NO damage. Incoming missle? Dodge it in REAL TIME. Your hero can feasibly square of at any level with a mob of the same level or higher and walk away with zero health loss if you're skilled. Imagine some of the 'MMOiness' of City of Heroes with the action mechanics of Ultimate Alliance only you're not squinting at tiny characters jammed into MUA's walled-in linear map.
The critics are going to do what I did, however. They are going to enter the first few zones not with an appreciation for the idiosyncratic and intricate controls, not with the 'stategery' of a Batman dissecting his enemies one by one. No! We are going to enter those early zones the way any of us experienced PC gamers would. WASD? Check! Mouse attack? Check! Bull in a china shoppe time!
The negative reviews stem from people diving right in, taking a bit of a beating but still walking away the winner. Critics and PC game lovers believe they took part in mindless button-mashing like that only a sugar-high Xbox-playing little nephew could enjoy. Really these critics only won because the devs had to make the tutorial and early mobs easy for people who don't know how to master the game mechanics.
Before others give it a bad review, they should try to walk away from the early fights with zero-health loss in my opinion. So, the innovative combat is dumbed down with earlier mobs, but stick with it and you will thoroughly enjoy blocking melee attacks and dodging long-range attacks. Later on you can counter a charged up attack with a specific block should you choose or opt for pure offensive or travel-type attacks. Wrapping your opponent in air as you fly donuts around them until you lift them off the ground and drop them on their butt feels ripped right out of the comic pages! If you are an MMO player who enjoyed say, City of Heroes, the combat innovations will be sweet indeed.
I was so looking forward to champions online because i previously believed in Cryptic studios but COs claimed combat innovations turned out to be button pressing with loosely tied animations on a screen. COs content was all instanced with the one dungeon being a 1-room garage. DCUOs combat is different in an MMO and actually responsive.
As for context the stories/content is delivered in mini stories that are out in the open world and culminate in two dungeon crawlers that are very smart. *(*Minor spoiler this immediate following sentence*) The joker/riddler/deathstroke story sticks out in my mind as adding even more dimension to these colorful characters. At the end of each series you are awarded with a movie centering on a DC hero or villain, is told from their point of view, and is re-watchable any time. Dude, who wouldn't want to know what Grodd or Wonder Woman are thinking?
(*Spoiler or two this paragraph*) I took part in an epic battle between Yellow and Green Lanterns inside a crumbling Metropolis City Hall! I rescued Superman singlehandedly while raining balls of fire on Lex Luthor below!
Perfect combat exceeding any previous MMO before it. A magnificent and believable science fiction adventure choreographed by Jim Lee with YOU as the central character. So, how'd SOE f*** that up? Here's how:
The most grievous part of the game is once you hit level 30 it is a pure loot grind. You need to earn certain kinds of currency to go to certain kinds of loot. There are a number of different currency and they are frickin confusin. While you are grinding repeated quests -- of which there are tier 1, tier 2, tier 3 levels, plus two different kinds of pvp matches, plus duos, plus vaults -- you earn these currencies to buyexpensive gears that do different things. You're going to be teaming wth people which i e snjoy because the content is hard without the right gear. However,if you dont havethe right gear people will get mad at you. If your teammates don't have the right gear you will be dying and failing. Considering different gear is good or bad depending on your role or pvp or pve, there's a lot that can go wrong aand a steep learning curve.
EvE Online, Age of Conan, The Old Republic, Champions Online and now even DCUO all have the same problem which is teaming at early levels is discouraged by the ease of missions and inorganic and unintuitive looking for group mechanics. As a marketing guy who sees MMOs getting clobbered by every other type of game on the market I have to wonder who are the MMO geniuses happily crapping all over the one thing they can do better.
But I inevitably find someone to team up with and you know when you found someone cool because rather than feeling mutually stupid for tag-teaming one-shotted squishies you hear your new friend and fellow CoH veteran (what's up Spartakos) say, "you know i am starting to think this is the perfect game for me" just as you were having the exact revelation.
Of course, Spartakos is never online any more probably because he got sick of getting yelled atonce he hit level cap and didn't want to get out his sheckles-to-ruples-to-yen currency system.
I had taken my lumps and figured out the currencies somewhat. I was contributing to teams, even leading some times. Yes, I was well on my way to finally gettting a nice simple Super-S on my chest that I've wanted since level one. Took a break from playing for a while, log back on and...Oh! My combat rating is now to low to run the appropriate level task forces to earn the appropriate level currency to earn the appropriate level gear to get an S on my chest. Someone in public chat said, "SOE has recently introduced the appropriate Mod that you slot into your appropriate Gear that has the appropriate Socket. Oops I almost forgot! The Mod needs to have the appropriate Color. THEN you will have the appropriate combat level to do the appropriate type of task forces, that will earn you the appropriate currency, to go to the appropriate vendor, buy the appropriate loot that SHOULD have an S on it. Have fun!"
Expletive directed at SOE here! And another expletive directed at SOE here!
That's my feedback from a long-time lover of ancient Greek and Egyptian mythologies and later, comic books and then City of Heroes MMO. My recommendation is get it. If you dont like the level cap gear grind you can still play 3 characters for free up to level 30. Who knows? You might even get a team going pre-level 30.