JOINT REVIEW #1: DC UNIVERSE ONLINE

Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen, and welcome to the first joint review by The Next Level and Pwning Pat’s Video Game Blog! My name is Stefan and I’m joined today by the queen of the video game Blogosphere, Patricia!

Hey all! Welcome back and thanks for continuing to read my blog. I hope this review is worth the read (spoiler: it is) and you will enjoy it. I was really looking forward to this game because I was hoping that I would get a decent break from World of Warcraft and plus – COMICS AND VIDEO GAMES. Really, it’s the best of both worlds. I was a little disappointed that you can’t actually join the Green Lantern Corps or be part of Joker’s Goonies but in a way, it makes sense.

Personally, I was super excited by this game, melding two of my greatest loves: COMICS and VIDEO GAMES! So enough with the preamble, let’s get into to the game. First, let’s talk about the install... It’s LONG! Make sure you have at LEAST 20 gigs free on your hard drive prior to the beginning of the process. The install itself is about 16 gigs, but leaving the 4 gig margin of error is probably a good idea. Be prepared for this installation to take a LONG time (mine took 3 hours to be exact). During the installation, I actually read the comics that I’ll be reviewing this weekend on The Next Level (shameless self-promotion ftw!)

For your information, I’m in Crisis server and my user name is “Alex Forrest” (from the movie Fatal Attraction? SHE WAS SCARY, OKAY). Oh, and I’m a villain. Obviously. I had a lot of fun during customization and I actually found myself puzzled at what I wanted my character to be like. From choosing your power set (being DPS, tank, healer, etc), to Movement Speeds (whether you can fly, be super fast, or extremely acrobatic), Weapon Styles, Morality, Personality (which will effect only your character’s posture and when you do a emotion such as dance), and lastly, your Origin and Mentor (for Hero there is, Batman (Tech) / Superman (Meta) /Wonder Woman (Magic) and for Villain there is, Joker (tech) / Lex Luther (Meta) / Circe (Magic). After that, you can create your Costume which took forever to make my girl look amazingly evil. Although it doesn’t exactly matter what you choose as you end up getting new armour to put on later.

After you’ve created your character, you wake up captured on Brainiac’s ship. This works like a tutorial level, complete with a simple boss fight. The idea of this is a method of learning your controls. And, let’s face it, these controls took a little bit of getting used to, isn’t that right, Patricia?

The controls, particularly on the PS3, were a little ... weird, to say the least? I don’t know how to explain it, but for the better part of the tutorial, I found myself fumbling a lot with the controller and kind of hoping for the best. The worst is probably when you press Start and go into your inventory, friends list, etc. It took a very long time for me to really get acquainted with it and I believe it is just simply because it is not as easily accessible as if I was playing on the PC.

After your escape from the ship, you’ll be brought to a safehouse, which depend on the alignment of your character. Once this is done, you can either begin to accept missions or explore the world.

At the beginning, your mentor decides to message you and HELLOO! THEY need YOUR help. What kind of mentor is that!? Anyways, you must go and do some meaningless task for them while they just sit back and watch you suffer. The game does become real fun after the initial run-through; from questing to instances to general exploring. I feel like the game is big enough to keep me enticed but not so huge that I feel like I’m lost and don’t know where to go back to.

So from Stefan, I’m suggesting a purchase of DC Universe Online assuming one of the following three conditions are met: 1) You’re a fan of MMOs, 2) You’re a fan of DC Comics and its shared universe, or 3) You have a group of people to play with. The game has some work to be done, but all-in-all, it’s a good experience with lots of potential and room for growth. What do you think Patricia?

I agree with Stefan. It is a simple MMO though, so it is still great for those casual online players such as me. I think that as of right now, buy the game only if you really know you will enjoy it and you will have people to play it with. I think the most crucial part of this game right now is having someone to enjoy it with. For those on the fence, I would wait before purchasing it – wait until they can patch certain things up and see if it continues to grow in popularity or fizzle out quickly.

Alright ladies and gentlemen, this was the first (of what will hopefully be many) joint reviews by The Next Level and Pwning Pat’s Video Game Blog. Coming up this weekend on The Next Level: Reviews of Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors #6, Daredevil: Reborn #1, and our Spotlight on Daredevil: Born Again. Patricia, what’s coming up next on Pwning Pat’s Video Game Blog?

Next up on my blog, a game to look forward to in 2011 that didn’t quuuite make the list but definitely caught my eye and attention. What shall it be? Who knows... you’ll find out soon! It’ll be worth reading, trust me.