Editor's note: I'm still pretty darn worn out from the frenetic pace of New York Comic-Con this past weekend. My entire body hurts. Expect a good amount of post-con reporting over the next few days as I sift through my notes, photos, and edit together a few videos which will hopefully be fairly rad. For now, though, let's just start off with something easy, the first massively multiplayer online game to officially license characters and scenarios from one of the biggest pop-culture publishers in the world...oh lord, what am I doing?
One of the biggest crowd-pleaser games at New York Comic-Con was Sony
Online Entertainment's DC Universe Online. The massively multiplayer
online action title was set up for anyone to play using either keyboard
and mouse or or the Playstation DualShock3 and there was a panel
discussion about the game featuring several members of Sony's design
team along with human-style-guide Jim Lee and story and scenario
writers Geoff Johns and Marv Wolfman. Those names should sound very
familiar to you if you're read any superhero comics in the past twenty
years or so.
That they referred to it as an MMO action game rather
than an MMO RPG is very telling in what we saw from the presentation
and our play sessions. It plays just like all the other open-world
action brawlers, only you're playing with other people to either
cooperate or compete in objectives which are continuously sent to you
from the game's servers (cleverly disguised in Hero mode as Oracle from
Batman and Justice League). Run, jump, smash, repeat, no arcane spell
casting. Super powers and otherwise special skills are relegated to a
line of icons at the bottom of the HUD and activated (on the DualShock)
by holding down the left or right trigger and pressing the button that
corresponded with the power you wanted to use - circle, square,
triangle or X. It takes a little bit of getting used to, but no more so
than any other 3D action game.
A couple of interesting points raised during the Q&A session:
- Right
now, the developers are able to play PS3 co-op and versus with PC on
the same network but are unsure if this will be possible in the final
retail copy. They'd love it if everyone could play together. "It would
be better if everyone just had a PS3."
- The disc release will only be "the first part" of the game as
there will be seasonal downloadable updates with new stories and
objectives that should keep the game up to date with the comics.
Apparently this game is a new full-time job for Jim, Geoff and Marv.
- Regarding the customization options on building your own
heroes/villains, one audience member asked "Am I gonna see billions of
other ice guys who look just like me?" This question was met with a
resounding "No!"
- When asked how failure/death would be handled and if, like in
other MMOs, players would be need to worry about corpse runs, Jim Lee
joked "You'll have to wait a year so we can relaunch you." Seriously,
though, heroes and villains don't die in DCUO, they just get "knocked
out." After a few seconds you will be given the option to get back up,
just with slightly reduced health and energy.
- All of the environments will be unique and instantly discernible (no confusing Gotham City with STAR Labs).
- Pedestrians
are affected by your character's Threat level. Throwing a bus will
upset them, regardless of whether you're a villain or hero, but just
walking down the street, villains have a higher Threat level. In the
slums, though, villains fit in just fine and heroes stick out. No need
to worry about protecting civilians from collateral damage as the NPCs
of DCUO "will be amazingly agile."
There's still a good amount of development time to
go on this game, and Sony's not rushing it out to meet a deadline. That
said, the demo we played was definitely a good start. It played very
similar to another Con crowd pleaser, Activision's Prototype, only
without all the zombies and mass destruction. The real competition, of
course, if the likes of Champions Online, who are at the distinct
disadvantage of not having Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and company
in their game. No subscription plan has been decided on yet, or even
whether there will be one on the PS3 version, but this may just wind up
being the first MMO that I will play until it ruins my life. The
controls are very action-gamer-friendly and the prospect of teaming up
with friends as our own heroes or villains within the DC Universe is a
tantalizing one indeed.
Related articles:
DC Universe and the Console MMO Conundrum
At Least Batman: Arkham Asylum's Story Will Be Good
Batman Can't Even Land A Punch On Superman In A Video Game
MMO Predicts Life In 10 Years
