Jan 27, 2011

A Comic Book Game Restores A Feeling Of Power

DC Universe™ Online

Finishing off Giganta in D.C. Universe Online this week, I was treated to this scene, and a reminder that no matter how much the medium matures, comic books' emotional attachments are made in your youngest and most vulnerable years.

For those not playing this video game, in D.C. Universe Online you create a super character, then send him or her off to fight against and alongside D.C. Comics' most recognizable characters. Many missions build to a crescendo where you take down a principal adversary. After that success, you get a cinematic as a kind of payoff.

Spoiler alert: If you're playing the game and want to see this for yourself, don't watch the clip below or read any further.

To this point, all the cutscenes I'd watched were told from the perspective of the defeated villain, in a biographical tone that justified their megalomania and reasons for world domination, over a montage of comic book panels.

This one plays quite the wild card. It's narrated by the teenage Wonder Girl, whom I freed from the clutches of Giganta, the nemesis of the Amazons. And Wonder Girl is telling us about it not in a comic book, but in the medium of her generation: a personal blog.

One of the most poignant things about reading comic books as a kid is the sense of identification, however vicarious, they give to you at an age when you really don't know who the hell you are, much less what you'll become. You're an incomplete, very emotional person with this vague hope, masquerading as a faith, that you'll become someone who matters. And the primary-color, transdimensional struggles comic books present are not so much allegories for the woes of the world at large; they speak to your more prosaic conflicts, ones you typically encounter in school.

Fakes and liars. Cheaters and bullies. Manipulators and oppressors. They are the enemies of the world, no matter how old you are. It's a cosmic indictment rendered in the profound vocabulary of a high school yearbook. And Wonder Girl's kicker, her goddam-right punchline, set to that music, gets me every time.

I'm a 37-year-old man, nowhere close to whom this presumably speaks to, and when I saw this I jumped out of my chair, stabbing a No. 1 finger in the air. This is why I created a superhero character and lived the past 10 days through him. I felt like I was 13 again, a dumb kid caught in a study-hall daydream. I'm running down the street and straight into the air, flying in to save the day, to defeat the oppressors, the manipulators, the bullies, cheaters, liars and fakes, all of them. Wherever or whoever they are.

Jan 26, 2011

DC Universe Online Review

DC Universe™ Online

Batman relies on lightning-fast reflexes to dodge a Joker bomb, not a lucky dice roll, and he certainly never auto-attacks Bane. So when I leapt onto the streets of Gotham, clad in the tights and gadget-belt of a newly minted villain named Cat’s Pajamas, to study at the feet of the Clown Prince of Crime, I wanted something other than the stodgy combat of a typical MMO. And DC Universe Online doesn’t disappoint—its fast-paced, kinetic combat and story-driven quests are a breath of fresh air in a genre short on innovation.

DCUO’s combat is an intense, involved experience that plays more like Street Fighter than World of Warcraft, and it makes the whole game feel more alive—especially during boss fights. I bested Mr. Freeze in a round of villain-on-villain violence by dodging a blast from his freeze ray with a last-second evasive roll to the side. The ray struck a cop behind me, encasing him in a block of ice—I picked up the copsicle and hurled him back at Freeze’s face.

Mr. Freeze retaliated by calling in technicians to repair his suit, but I jumped right into the middle of them, tapping right then left mouse buttons to blast waves of energy in a cone around me. I pressed 2 to send them all flying back with my spring-loaded boxing glove (courtesy of the Joker) and followed up with a double left-click and hold to knock the main technician into the air. His feet never touched the ground—I chained together a series of knock-up attacks that rendered him helpless until he was defeated. Knowing that being quick on my feet had made the difference between victory and defeat made it far sweeter.

C-c-c-combo breaker!
As Cat’s Pajamas, I have 15 different attacks in my arsenal, but only six are at the bottom of my screen as simple press-to-use abilities. The rest are attack combos, executed by combining my basic melee and ranged attacks (left and right mouse buttons, respectively) in sequence to interrupt enemy attacks or deal AoE damage and build up power (AKA mana) for special moves. WoW, by contrast, tends to devolve into spamming toolbar abilities until someone dies.

I love that success isn't a matter of calculating efficient spell rotations or equipping powerful gear. It's all about skill—a lesson I learned the hard way when I tried to gank a hero player half my level and got my butt kicked by her perfectly timed blocks and flawless combo attacks.

A few disappointing graphical hiccups, such as textures loading low-res versions before sharpening a few seconds later, and animations sometimes being reduced to flip book-quality at a distance, distract from the action, but the game's visual effects and physics engine work hard to give your attacks real oomph. Fire vortexes tear up and ignite the world around you, and when you punch someone, they awesomely fly back and crash into the stuff behind them. Environmental clutter—desks, lampposts, barrels (pretty much anything that's not part of a building)—can be scattered, smashed, or, even more fun, picked up and thrown at enemies.

Playing with the big boys
Quests flow smoothly and consistently, thanks them all being bundled into compelling story arcs that take you on comic book-length adventures that revolve around a DC character, such as the villain Bane or superheroine Power Girl. These one-hour stories culminate in memorable instanced encounters where you fight alongside or against them, and are easily the highlight of the leveling experience. A stellar cast of voice actors—including Mark Hamill as the Joker and Kevin Conroy as Batman—do a fantastic job of sucking you into the storylines, with few awkward exceptions (Supergirl, I’m looking at you).

The quests themselves aren’t exactly revolutionary—most objectives are the usual kill, use, collect and protect types. However, there are two added mechanics to help keep things fresh: carrying (grabbing a large object and bringing it to a specific location) and transformation (temporarily altering your appearance and powers). One particularly creative quest used these two mechanics to build a timed obstacle course that I had to run through as a toy carrying a power cell, and another built a pretty fun platformer game by transforming me into a non-flying demon that had to hop between floating chunks of land hundreds of feet above ground to collect soul shards. I’m also impressed by the way the quests are written—villains have a real sense that they’re doing evil in missions involving beating up and mutating college students for Lex Luthor or transforming into a demon to slurp up innocent souls like Jell-O shots for Brother Blood, which gives a much-needed distinction from playing as a do-gooder.

Built for speed
Everything in DCUO is streamlined, built to keep you powering ahead and having fun without resistance or downtime. Anyone that hits an enemy gets XP and quest credit for the kill (not just the first person), tapping Ctrl auto-loots everything around you, you automatically receive quests when you enter a new area, and there’s no real death penalty. It’s not a hardcore MMO experience, but it keeps the thrills coming.

I hit the level cap in just 30 hours, which might be discouraging except that, for a just-launched MMO, there's already an absurdly high amount of endgame progression and content available. Specifically, there are six rewarding hard-mode dungeons, two extremely difficult eight-player raids and about 10 hours of diverse, fairly enjoyable repeatable daily content. The daily missions are made up of quests (mostly reworked solo instances), bounties on iconic characters like Bizarro and Flash and rotating "featured maps" in each PvE and PvP mode. I was disappointed that the quests that you’re asked to complete each day don’t automatically rotate, but there’s enough of it that I could delay the feeling of repetition by alternating which ones I played each day.

Most importantly, there're plenty of ways to continue meaningfully advancing your character after the level cap. You can change your weapon type and respec your powers at any time (which drastically changes your playstyle) and even train in multiple weapons, which is made easier by the fact that collecting achievements awards you more points to spend on weapon skills.

Grouping up for big missions consistently offers entertaining challenges set in diverse locations and rewards you with sweet gear themed after iconic DC characters. It's the group dynamics that really steal the show and make you feel heroic, though. Anyone can revive knocked-out players, and every character has two roles that they can swap between—damage-dealing and a utility mode determined by their power set. Nature and Sorcery can heal; Fire and Ice can tank; Gadgets and Mental can control enemies and restore power to the group. It's a great common-sense solution that doesn't punish players' soloing capabilities just because they want to heal their friends.

One of my favorite things about the skill-based combat system is that PvP feels easier to manage, and as a result rarely feels as frustrating or unfair as it can in MMOs where gear is the key to success. The six PvP maps are great, too—they all feature capture-the-flag or control-point gameplay, but each adds at least one unique element, such as the ability to call in NPCs to attack an area, build turrets or close off pathways to change the structure of your base and a slime vat that turns you into a monster with new abilities. Bonus: balance perfectionists can PvP as the iconic DC characters in Legends mode, which removes gear differentiation and power selection as imbalancing variables.

MMO Kryptonite
The character creator is creatively stifling next to the superhero MMO competition, Champions Online and City of Heroes. DCUO offers fewer options at the start, and instead makes you earn the more distinctive costume pieces as you play. I felt thwarted at first, but it’s actually a well thought-out delayed gratification system that gives your character a rewarding sense of progression. Collectors could easily spend months scrounging for the hundreds of iconic and rare costume pieces scattered throughout the game, and explorers will absolutely love Gotham and Metropolis (the two massive cities house all the game’s open-world content), which are full of activity, collectibles and Easter eggs to find.

There's no reward big enough to make up for the game's warped interface, however. Illogically nested menus, a tiny, unresponsive chat interface and lack of tooltips are all symptomatic of an interface designed to be PlayStation 3-friendly. It isn’t enough to throw me into a Hulk-like rage (oops, wrong license) but the extra clicks for simple tasks and borderline broken chat interface are a constant exasperation.

Other than that, DCUO has had one of the smoothest, strongest MMO launches to date, and it’s action-oriented design is a bold step out of WoW’s shadow. From the consistently clever boss fights to the daily activities to the points-of-interest around the world, it makes it look effortless to create interesting activities to amuse players and immerse them in the game's world. Assuming SOE can deliver on its promise to consistently release monthly content updates, DCUO will be a promising leader in an exciting new generation of diverse MMOs.

Jan 26, 2011

D.C. Universe Online MMO Log Part Two: Won't Let Them Grind Me Down

DC Universe™ Online

DC Universe Online is meant to be grind-free; players will advance by completing missions, not menial tasks. So what's an MMO novice to do when he hits a tough mission, and can't simply level up to overwhelm it?

Kotaku's MMO reviews are a multi-part process. Rather than deliver day one reviews based on beta gameplay, we play the game for four weeks before issuing our final verdict. Once a week we deliver a log detailing when and how we played the game. We believe this gives readers a frame of reference for the final review. Since MMO titles support many different types of play, readers can compare our experiences to theirs to determine what the review means to them.

I am a complete novice at massively multiplayer online role-playing games. Fahey is normally our man on the subject. But as D.C. Universe Online is a rarity - the console-based MMO - many will experience the genre for the first time with it on the PlayStation 3. I will be one of them, and that journey will be a part of Kotaku's review of the game.

What I Played

When last we left our combustible biathlete, Ballisto had hit level 10. Still a little unsure of the correct way to proceed, if there is one, I focused the second week on leveling further, while mixing in more cooperative gameplay elements.

There's two ways to do this. You can invite people to group up and take down a guy who's giving you problems. If you work well with these folks, someone can suggest that the group extends that into a legion status, more or less a persistent team-up, or clan for those who play these more than I do.

There's also a game mode called Alerts, in which (for heroes) Martian Manhunter puts out a distress call for you to pitch in with others. It's a good introduction to structured cooperative play without forcing you to do all the organization yourself.

How It Went

I answered a call for Area 51 and was dispatched there to beat some Brainiac robot ass galore. Brought in as a damage-dealer instead of a Tank, I didn't have much difficulty with the assignments, which break down to kicking minions' asses or destroying their assets, followed by taking out a series of bosses. Cooperative play proceeded roughly like a random encounter in Metropolis when everyone's going after the same objectives. I didn't hear much coordination of powers and roles, just everyone jumping in for a good time. The group loot we got was unimpressive and not worth the greed-or-need call.

Back in the main world my journeys now took me to Gotham City, which is a color negative of bright, gleaming (if a bit beat up in spots) Metropolis. Gotham is perpetually in a state of gloom, occasionally with rain, playing to type of course. This part of the map was considerably tougher on me as I slogged from levels 12 to 15, taking out Bane at the lighthouse in a spirited battle.

In my first MMO log, the only character who'd given me much trouble was Queen Bee, and that's because I fought about a level under her. Two levels above Harley Quinn and the Funhouse mission, I was getting pounded by the Joker's knife-throwing goons. Harley herself was a real bi- well, bear. She goes into a hammer-thrower's whirl that's tough to break.

I backed out of the Funhouse and reconsidered my situation. A few invites to tackle Harley went nowhere, as by now most of the serious players are level 20 or above and she's small fry to them. So I learned another fundamental truth of MMOs: Know your powers, how they interact with each other, spec them purposefully and have a strategy.

I went to the Justice Society tower and respec'd Ballisto, branching differently in my immolation and ignition power trees to mix their effects. Many of the powers have an advanced effect on a burning enemy, so I arrayed them in my tray more strategically. In other words, I was going to go in and set someone on fire, then either use the detonate power, or the heat drain to maximize the damage effect.

Skills - in weapons and movement - become considerably more important as there's no power cost associated with them. I discarded some earlier bad choices and loaded up on melee and range combos, avoiding the power talents (there's a whirlwind you can create that pulls your enemy closer to you. As a guy with a bow and arrow, selecting that one was kind of dumb.)

Back in the Funhouse, with a greater sense of myself I sat on block and defensive moves and toughed it out against Harley Quinn, finally taking her down with a detonation combo (basically, I caught her on fire, and moved in with a close range explosive attack that multiplied its effect thanks to her conflagrant state.) I gave a deep sigh, happy to know that this game hadn't plateaued because of a single difficult enemy, I was just a novice who needed to learn how to fight.

It was time to get out of Gotham and clean up some unfinished business. But first, I was invited to a group excursion against some of Poison Ivy's minions. You'll see it in the video below. Lo and behold, Solomon Grundy wandered by, and I'd answered a wanted poster to take his ass down. The party turned its focus toward him. But not to me.

I was knocked out twice going after the big guy, and as the lowest level player in the party, is there any, I don't know, etiquette regarding helping a brother out? Twice they failed to resuscitate me - the last time, my compatriot apparently forgot which button revives a comrade (hint: it's circle.) The KO timer expired right as Grundy was taken down, giving me the feat and the XP. You can see it in that video below.

The Story So Far

I am now at Level 18. My frustrations with the game - the map (which displays two objective arrows at inconvenient times), the manual labor required to activate and redeem certain missions, the near radio-silence you're in as a console player - are likely aggravated by being a complete newcomer to the game. The loot I have gathered is across-the-board unimpressive; I'm proceeding incrementally both in experience and in gear. The money I acquire buys health, more or less.

The game seems built toward hitting level 30, something I hope to do in the next week. At 30, you unlock Duo missions and Raids in the game's multiplayer settings, and can avail yourself of badass armor sets on display up in the tower.

There is still a ton of game left to go in this, and when I came back from Gotham to my Metropolis turf to clean out some missions, I found that I'd gotten a better sense of how to handle this action MMO, to mix in defense, and to approach missions with more than a button mashing instinct - although this game still conditions you to do plenty of it.

My goals for the next week will be to create a villain character and explore an early chunk of that continuity; invite or join more group activities and get a spot in a legion, and ultimately hit level 30. Tall order for someone trying to get to bed before midnight, but Batman willing and the creek don't rise, I'll get there.

Jan 24, 2011

DC Universe Online patched, Sony promise more fixes soon

DC Universe™ Online

The latest DC Universe Online patch has arrived aimed at improving the voice chat features of the game. There are also changes to the difficulty of some of the missions, as well as a collection of bug fixes. Sony have been talking about their plans for the next few patches for the game, including their intention to give players the option to turn off the overenthusiastic profanity filter. You'll find the full patch notes below.

Speaking to Eurogamer, community relations manager for Sony Online Entertainment, Tony Jones, revealed their priorities for the next few patches. "Right now, we're working on server stability, things that keep the game running and going fresh. Things like the UI, they're going to be constantly making tweaks to that - the best part of an MMO, it changes constantly and we're very sensitive to the needs of the players."

One of the most unpopular parts of DC Universe Online so far has been the all-seeing profanity filter that has a problematic tendency to sensor swear words that appear inside other words. Jones says "the chat filter is a pet peeve of mine that actually became a very large issue as we got towards launch. Obviously, something of this size, we were at a point where we can work on the chat filter, or we can work on the PS3 freezing - obviously the chat filter's going to wait. There's going to be an option to turn it off and we're working on that."

Thank #^$@ for that. For more on the game check out the official DC Universe Online site, and our first impressions of the game. If you're playing the game, don't forget that or EU DC Universe Online League is still recruiting. Here are the updates made by the latest patch in full.

General

Improved Client performance and stability.
Addressed an issue where other characters may appear to "warp" onscreen.
The time it takes to get to Character Selection on launch has been reduced.

Audio

Audio should no longer drop after cutscenes if you have your Music volume set to 0.

Chat:

The player’s Voice Chat Channel should now be selected according to the following priority, from highest to lowest:

Alert
Group
Custom
League

Player Appearance:

Equipping a new weapon should no longer cause your weapon appearance to disappear.
Swapping weapons with your weapon style locked should no longer cause the weapon appearance to change.

Movement

Player character animations should no longer have the chance of getting stuck when weaponizing objects.

Missions

Adjusted difficulty of content in the Venom Lab to level 7 to better match the surrounding content.
No Joke quest is now available at level 18 instead of 19.
A Crook’s Best Friend mission is now available at level 18 instead of 19.
Something’s Fishy… quest is now available at level 22 instead of 23.
Road to Hell quest is now available at level 22 instead of 23.
Fateful Omen quest is now available at level 26 instead of 27.
Hardcorps quest is now available at level 26 instead of 27.

UI

Pressing the "Accept" button on the Server Selection screen multiple times should no longer result in odd ssues with Character Creation movies and UI.

Jan 19, 2011

D.C. Universe Online MMO Log Part One: Making A Name For Myself — And Another

DC Universe™ Online

As a boy my paper route money went to comic books, stories of people coming to terms with their strange powers and their place in the world. With D.C. Universe Online, I now take that journey for myself.

Having never done an MMO log before, I'm going to begin with a summary of my first experiences in D.C. Universe Online, figuring that a lot of what I consider profound early on might be made moot by later experience. In subsequent weeks I'll go through my experiences in a more journaled format.

What I Played

D.C. Universe Online may intrigue some because of how, as a complex MMO, it will be handled using the tools of a traditional console. For me, anything is going to be new, but everything here was undertaken with a standard PS3 DualShock controller - no USB keyboard or other peripherals.

Powers and talents are therefore mapped to the face and R1/L1 buttons with the L2/R2 buttons as modifiers. L2 activates one of four powers out of the left side of your "tray" in the heads up display; R2 equips items such as health out of the right four slots of the tray. The D-pad is used for chat, gestures and canned interaction (lacking a chatpad this week, I kept quiet, or bowed and waved to folks).

I focused my first two days of gameplay (Monday and Tuesday) on indvidual experiences, developing additional powers and understanding what I could do, what I couldn't do, and what was inadvisible in this world. More complex, cooperative engagements such as group raids would come later, I decided, after I'd built a methodology for the combat system and a set of attributes and powers supporting it.

As of the time of writing, I've finished more than 30 missions, solo completing two quests (if the tutorial counts, three) plus several side missions that were built to introduce players to Metropolis. I'm a level 10 metahuman, with a smirk and a compound bow. I run like lightning and burn like fire. Name's Ballisto.

How It Went

My original name was Lawn Dart. About six levels in, I learned one of the hard truths about MMO character creation - pick a name you can live with. I slapped "Lawn Dart" on my Flash/Green Arrow hybrid ("not Lawn Dart Lad?" asked McWhertor) expecting to take an ironic tour of duty for truth, justice, and cookouts. Instead I took a real pride in what my hero was doing, and elected to just start all over, redoing the first quest in the process. You can't rename a character, but there seemed to be no restriction on creating more than one.

The quick rundown: as Ballisto, I'm a hero (players may choose to be villains). My means of travel is lightning speed (flight and acrobatics are the others.) Fire is my power type (the others are ice, gadgets, mental, sorcery and nature) and I'm a metahuman, which means someone whose power comes from a mutation or alteration. Other types are tech (getting their powers from gadgets) or magic (mystical beings).

The tutorial stage, which many of you have played thanks to the game's pre-release beta, introduces you to the combat system of an action MMO. I don't think it can be failed, but I didn't try to, either. Superman and I cleaned out a space station crawling with Brainiac's mechanized trashcans, and then it was on to Earth.

It wasn't apparent to me in what order I should be doing things, so I just jumped right into action after being introduced to the police station, a base of operations where everyone trades in loot, picks up missions and shows off for the other players. For herose, the first quest - Gorilla Grodd's assault on the Metropolis boardwalk and downtown financial sector - comprises a meaty 10-plus missions, taking me to level 6 by its conclusion.

D.C. Universe Online points out that its progression is built on the completion of missions, not leveling, meant to reduce grind. I still found that the missions in the Grodd quest and the Queen Bee quest following it had their own types of grind - go here, kill this many bad guys, smash this many assets.

At peak hours in the early missions, you would be competing with many other players trying to bag the same 10 Gorilla Lieutenants or Royal Bees or whatever. There's usually a race to the unique character type you need to kill and then a fury of button-mashing, hoping to bring him down. I wasn't sure how someone got credit for a kill, whether it was landing the last punch or what.Monday evening I hit some pretty nasty lag and decided to come back later. Tuesday at the same time the issues were gone.

At the end of the Grodd quest I met the Flash, a treasured boyhood hero. All of the D.C. Universe characters I've encountered are well voiced, but Flash especially so. I left that mission looking forward to more. In the Queen Bee quest's final interior stage I learned that I could tackle the objectives with a measure of stealth (or speed) rather than overcoming every guard and then activating the objective behind him.

Not so for the Queen herself, who was unusually tough on me, but I was fighting at least one level underweight. So there were a lot of "knock outs" (as opposed to deaths) which, in a boss's case, starts the battle over rather than saving your progress on your enemies as in other missions.

By the end of the second quest I hadn't pursued the easy sightseeing quests offered in the police station, which give load you up with XP toward one or two skill and power points, plus gear. I mopped those missions after beating Zazzala. It could be my lack of exposure to the genre but I didn't feel a strong sense of "You should do this now," in the game. Experienced players probably pick up the cues more, so the hands-off approach is likely a virtue.

One thing I didn't appreciate is the game's radar, which would occasionally fail to materialize waypoints in the explorations. This led to some pretty frustrating wanderings around the Watchtower, especially. The Grodd campaign likewise didn't do a good job of pointing me over to the pier, which is where I was supposed to smash some gorilla teleporters. I took care of that long after I finished the overal quest, just for laughs.

Other pastimes included two speedster races outside the police station (I assume flight/acrobatic races are available for those types), a trip to the Vault (sort of booby-prize warehouse you can visit once a day for free random gear) and a visit to the PvP Legends arena to fight as Robin against Harley Quinn. I got my ass kicked badly there.

Ballisto/Owen Meets She-Ra, Gives Her (Him?) The Creeps

The Story So Far

I'm very happy with my character, as the fast restart to give him a name he deserves should indicate. (Ballisto is identical to Lawn Dart in power makeup). The idea of creating a superhero whose powers would manifest themselves later was a little anxious for someone who spent a lot of his youth inventing super characters on rainy days.

I think in fantasy MMOs people understand the concept of acquiring power and talent, starting with very little. Superhero tales involve a character fully formed from the origin issue, with a set of integrated powers and abilities that largely fit a theme. I wasn't sure how I'd feel about starting with very little and then picking from powers that, while advantageous in the game, maybe didn't fit whatever narrative I'd crafted for myself.

Not so with Ballisto. Though I regret not being able to float around Metropolis - it really looks awesome seeing a caped being soar silently overhead - super-speed suits me more. The fire powers I've taken support my longbow attack. They're becoming second nature to me: usually fireball, followed by immolation to give a hotfoot to anyone kicking my ass. I have a health drain attack and a trick shot that calls down a volley of arrows, among other surprises. Probably the one skill I use least is block or evade. There's a lot of button pressing in action MMOs, but that's one I forget to spam or even use purposefully.

I'm very much looking forward to going back into Metropolis once I finish work tonight, and staying up late with this game. In the next week I'll seek out cooperative engagements and more PvP action, in addition to continuing the quests laid out in this expansive game. For now, I think D.C. Universe Online has satisfied something that many comic books failed to do in my youth: You have to create characters with more than cool names or powers. They must be likeable. And I like my guy a lot.