DC Universe Beta Preview (PS3)

Having PlayStation Plus seems to be finally paying off. This month we were presented with lots of great stuff. One of the things presented was the DC Universe Beta (DCUB). The DCUB is 117MB and absolutely free to PlayStation Plus subscribers. This is my preview after playing a little while of it. When you first start the game you are presented with a screen showing Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, and a guy in a green suit of armor (Later identified as Lex Luthor) standing together looking at the Earth from space. A menu opens on the bottom and the game starts downloading the data you need to play. This is a very long process and takes roughly 5 hours to download all the data (15gigs). Fortunately you can stop the download and resume from the spot you left at later. Once the download finishes you get to watch the opening cut scene of the game.

Story
To say a few words the opening cut scene has Wonder Woman looking like a man and everyone sounding like they're smoking Hookah and trying to talk, with the exception of Joker who is voiced by Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker and Joker from the cartoons). The Heroes are fighting the Villains. The heroes start loosing and in an extremely epic moment Superman flies away from the sun and just starts wrecking havoc. Lex Luthor kills Superman and Brainiac's ships invade. Luthor goes back in time to rally all the heroes and villains together to prepare for Brainiac's assault. That's where you come in. The power of all the heroes who died in the future was trapped inside bug, parasite, things that Luthor took back in time with him. He can give this bug to a person and they become infused with the power of the hero or villain that died.

Customization
You get to designed your hero/villain. Everything, what power they have, who their mentor was, what their movement ability is, what clothes they wear, what weapon they use, and what race they are. The customization is extensive and detailed. While you don't get to create your own custom patterns the available designs can be mixed and matched at your personal choice, which leads to quite a few exceptional looking characters.

RPG Elements
In RPG fashion you receive quests, fight enemies, level up, get gear, buy and sell, and interact with other players. Most of this is done from Watchtower, the superheroes secret hideout (sorry I don't know what it is for the villains). Outside of Watchtower the world of DCU is extremely violent. Enemies are prevalent and have extremely short respawn times. You could easily wind up fighting in one building forever because of how fast the enemies respawn. Fortunately as you are super you can easily keep fighting or just flee.

Combat
Combat is relatively easy but not entirely satisfying. You use Square for regular attacks and Triangle for quick attacks. X jumps and Circle picks up objects. L2 or R2 with a combination of the face buttons does a special power. Overall the combat seems to lack any sense of power as your attacks seems like your barely striking your opponent.

Leveling
As you fight you receive EXP although you only receive 1 EXP from most enemies and it takes hundreds of EXP to level. The game does not want people to grind for levels it wants you to do quests. Once you finally amass enough EXP to level you receive along with standard upgrades a skill point in either physical attributes or super attributes. Basically at level 1 you get a point to place in your powers like fire, level 2 you get a point to place in physical attributes like weapon skills, or health, ect. than level 3 it goes back to powers, back and forth.

The rest is fairly standard. Quest, kill, loot, sell, level up, repeat.

Bugs/Problems
Being as how this is a Beta bugs and glitches are to be expected. Some problems I've encountered are the game deleting my cape. I have a standard superhero cape equipped which the game continues to unequipped from me, while not game breaking it is annoying. Another problem I keep having, and this is game breaking, is that the game continuously disconnects me from the servers without telling me. So I'll be flying around looking for stuff to do and there will be no one (While doing this is discovered that the map is exceptionally huge). No quests, no players, and no enemies. Overall the game is fun.

Overall
It's fun to be your own superhero or villain and fight other enemies. The combat needs to be ramped up a bit to make it seem like your actually hitting the enemies instead of lightly tapping them, and the bugs need to be hammered out, but what is a Beta for if not that exact purpose. Overall definitely a fun game, and one I'm going to be keeping a much closer eye on now. If you have PlayStation Plus or know of some way to get in the Beta be sure to give it a try.

[Drekken]

The great wall of text has taken over my monitor.

I wanted to know what you thought, but one big clump of text is not going to be read by anyone.

[MONOLITHICIDE]

Is it that hard to read 8 paragraphs, lazy ass kids.

[lex-1020]

I would like to thank you for your support of my blog. However when the previous commentator commented the blog was just a solid wall of text. I Just recently broke it into sections.

[ThatCanadianGuy]

*Bows down to the mighty wall of text*

[swinesucker]

Seriously, are gamers illiterate fools these days? Can you not read a fucking paragraph?

[lex-1020]

I would like to thank you for your support of my blog. However when the two previous commentators commented the blog was just a solid wall of text. I Just recently broke it into sections.

[Neko_Mega]

I been playing the heck out of it, three new games that have been push to the side to play this.

I had to reset my Hero alot because things I mess up on and couldn't fix, now he has the right hair color, eye color, the right set of colors for it outfit and the right set of skills/powers.

Shendow Lv16 (Name of my Hero).

[unknownhero1123]

I really enjoy the beta but there is definetly some things they need to fix, mainly the freezes(which actually are getting less frequent now) and inability to enter a place at random times.

Overall though, it's an enjoyable experience. I'm at level 13 right now with my iron man like hero. he has a lame name though(sky stalker)

[-X-]

you basically summed up the beta without being biased. I have the same problems as you mentioned in the Bugs/Problems Paragraph. I'm also going to right my experience, but when I wrote half of it I found out their was an update for the beta so I want to rewrite it.

I have 2 characters. One is a hero the other is a villain they are both level 14. Reason I made 2 characters is because I wanted to try both the PvE, and PVP server.

[Christopher]

***To say a few words the opening cut scene has Wonder Woman looking like a man and everyone sounding like they're smoking Hookah and trying to talk***

Just so you know, the main hero/villain voice actors are from the same people who have been doing these voices in cartoons for the last century, if not longer. The man behind the management of it is Jim Lee, who is one of the top names in comics.

So, while you may not like what you saw, it's pretty much what those who have watched the various DC comic videos know to be the voice of said characters.

***He can give this bug to a person and they become infused with the power of the hero or villain that died.***

It actually just gives people powers, makes them super. It doesn't give them powers another person had, but advances their genetics to a point where they develop their own powers.

***Outside of Watchtower the world of DCU is extremely violent. Enemies are prevalent and have extremely short respawn times.***

That is dependent on your starting area. Hero starting areas have a lot of villain activity, villain starting areas have a lot of hero activity.

***level 2 you get a point to place in physical attributes like weapon skills, or health, ect.***

You can only invest in powers, not attributes (health and so on). Every other level it switches, essentially. You advance your powers alongside your weapon and movement skills. You can learn more than one weapon skill so you can switch between weapons based on the raid you're going into and what you need more of (CC, juggling, dps, range, etc.).

***Combat is relatively easy but not entirely satisfying.***

Combat at the start is relatively easy, but definitely ramps up a bit. At the start you have your standard melee/range attack. With your first weapon skill point you are likely to learn a maneuver that involves holding down a button to perform a stronger, possibly leaping attack. As you continue with these skills, you learn various maneuvers that require pressing buttons and direction in specific manners to utilize them. It's not as complex as a fighter game, but you do end up with a ton of combat attack options. Rifles gain rolling maneuvers that help get you in to do some serious point-blank damage and get away with a sniping shot. Archery is one of my favorites where you can learn various ranged attacks and string them together for great CC and damage.

It's not just basic attacks, though, and you do need to learn how to string together the right attacks. Especially when going up against bosses and during raid events.

***The rest is fairly standard. Quest, kill, loot, sell, level up, repeat. ***

That's like saying FPSes are fairly standard. Kill, kill, kill, kill, repeat. This is the meat and potatoes of all MMOs and RPGs.

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You really can't judge an MMO from the first few levels. You need to get in and level up to see what it opens up into. I'm not saying DCUO is great and doesn't have flaws, but it deserves more than a few levels of write-up material, especially in the definitive way you approached some of the gameplay.