Sony Online Entertainment has been hard at work on their newest MMO for what seems like ages. DC Universe Online will let you take control of a superhero or supervillain and fight with thousands of other players. Note, this impression is for the PVP matches only. I did not get any hands on with the hub world or any of the other MMO aspects of the game.
The demo for DC universe was quite lengthy. The first character I played as was a woman dressed in an Egyptian headdress with dual samurai swords. When creating characters, you can either choose an existing character template like Superman, Flash, etc. or you can create your own from scratch. You can mix and match as much as you want. So can have a superhero that is half Aquaman and half Nightwing. If you get a piece of clothing that gives you some sort of ability boost, you still get the boost if your not wearing the item of clothing. So if something cramps your style, you aren’t penalized for not wearing it. The only thing you can’t do is mix and match heroes and villains. You have to be a hero or villain, so you can’t have a half Batman and half Joker. The second character for the demo was a giant golden hawk man. He was my favorite.
Now, on to the gameplay. You can kick and punch like regular, but you also have special attacks. There are 8 total that you can map to your character. Just hold down either the L2 or R2 button and push one of the face buttons to activate it. The special attacks in my play through were all based on ice powers. There was a whirlwind attack that tossed the enemies up into the air. There was an attack that shot ice spikes up out of the ground. There was even an ability that would restore part of my health. All these special attacks require magic to use and some have a cool down time, so you can’t constantly spam them. Oh, and you can fly. You can still punch and kick while in the air, and some of your special abilities can be used. For example, the ability to shoot lasers out of your eyes was available while flying, but not the ability to shoot spikes out of the ground was not.
The match for my demo was a capture the node type of match. There were three buildings that each had to be captured. You did this by standing in a designated area for a certain amount of time, just like any other game. The mini-map will let you know which buildings are under your control, which are under enemy control, and which are neutral.
What I played of DC Univers Online was very fun. This was only a small portion of what the full game has to offer. I can’t wait to get my hands on the full game when it comes out November of this year.
