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For the last four to six weeks, I have been all over the map when it comes to my opinion on DC Universe Online.  At points, I am completely enthralled with the size of the world and the amount of detail that the designers have put into the game.  It is easily one of the largest worlds that I have encountered in a game of any kind.  At other times however, I become absolutely bored with the tedium that missions become with each sitting.  After six fetch quests in a row, you just want to say enough is enough, but then an instance comes along that swings you right back into the enjoyment column.  Even with these gaming mood swings, DC Universe Online comes together as a solid package, as long as you can overlook some looming question marks.

I am always intrigued with the ways that companies explain away the idea that thousands upon thousands of people suddenly become infused with superpowers in an MMORPG title.  DC Universe Online does it with some style, as a very intricate intro movie explains the downfall of all the modern superheroes in the DC Universe by way of a final war between Lex Luthor and Superman.  Lex Luthor becomes the lone survivor of the battle on both sides and begins to savor his win, only to see Brainiac return to take over a defenseless Earth.  You receive your power, by way of Lex Luthor coming back in time, and releasing the powers of the future heroes and villains onto an unsuspecting populace, including of course, your own creation.  It is a novel approach and it does fit into a grandiose scheme that you would expect from a comic book on shelves today.

Creating your own hero or villain is a simple process, and can be done either by working off of a hero template, or by delving into the tools to create a unique image.  The templates are based off of several main heroes and villains in the DC Universe, like Wonder Woman, Superman, Joker or even Lex Luthor.  For review purposes, I created one hero using the template of Wonder Woman and a villain via complete customization.  Either way works as advertised and there are a fair amount of options to make something unique that you will probably not run into via the game world that is similar to your own creation.  Most of the character creation process is fairly simple, although I ran into some issues with applying the colors to the uniforms.  Beyond the look of your character, you also pick from one of six power sets and a specialty type of combat.  This allows for a multitude of combinations, like a person with fire as their base power set, and martial arts for their combat styles.  It would have been nice to have a few more power sets from the base six powers, but it there is enough there to keep most players busy for quite some time.

Once you have your character made and you move through the intro tutorial missions, you get to the main world, which has you starting in one of two locations: Metropolis or Gotham City.  Each of the two locations has their own style and presentation.  Metropolis is a bastion of technology with gleaming skyscrapers and a sense of medical sterility, while Gotham City feels very low tech and gritty.  The styles of the cities fit the base heroes and villains for each region.  Half of my enjoyment with DC Universe Online came from just moving around the world, and seeing all the sites.  You can move around the world and find all kinds of little nuggets for fans of the DC Universe.  You can find the statue of Superman, the Daily Planet in Metropolis, or the Bat-signal if you run around Gotham City.  It is a huge world to explore and you can spend hours just maneuvering through the world to explore it.  Many times, I just flew around the city, checking out the sites and vistas to get an overview of the world.  The engine normally does keep up with the world, as well, although texture pop in happens rather frequently when you get near buildings, or more often, when you go from mid-flight to plummeting towards the ground.  These issues are far and few between, and for the most part on a good machine, you will never see any technical issues with the world.

Combat however tends to be a different story.  DC Universe Online tends to dole out missions in a standard fare.  You normally go on three to five fetch quests where you are tasked with collecting a number of items or destroying a number of items and returning to the quest giver for the next quest in the chain.  These missions will take up a bulk of your time in DC Universe Online, and it has and will become a sense of tedium for anyone playing the game that is not accustomed to the way MMORPGs work.  Each of these fetch quests will wrap up with an instanced battle against a big heavy in the DC Universe.  In the first quest chain for my hero, I found myself taking on the minions of Felix Faust; leading up to a confrontation with Faust himself, and Zatanna was at my side to fight him.  On the villain side, I was battling the Huntress alongside Catwoman.  These instances were the highlight of each battle sequence, and it became a sore spot, because you had to wade through so much repetition to get to these sequences.  I understand that you can’t just throw me in with the main heavies right away, but it killed me to find the end of the mission chain through the mundane fetch quests.  It just seems like Sony Online Entertainment could not find a better way to break the mold of the standard operating procedure of MMORPG gameplay.

One thing that does break up the monotony of the standard missions is the voice work that DC Universe Online employs.  Every character in the game has voice work, and the main characters of the world are voice rather well, with people like Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill and many more.  Sure there are a few duds in the voice work, normally coming from anyone associated with Joss Whedan.  Sorry Gina Torres, you may have done well with Firefly, but your voice work for Wonder Woman was subpar at best.  But the voice work does add emphasis to the missions, and really did give me a lot of pleasure to know that I was not going to have to read mountains of text in the world.  It also justifies the 20+GB install for DC Universe Online.

At this point, I was accepting of what DC Universe Online was, but the control scheme really took me out of the experience.  It seems that Sony was trying to strive for a balance between controllers and keyboard/mouse controls and made it unacceptable for either.  I tried using both an Xbox 360 controller and a keyboard/mouse on the PC, and neither ever felt comfortable for the game.  I understand that Sony wanted to consolidate interface design to encompass both platforms that DC Universe Online shipped on, but it has become an albatross for me, and according to many of the web, for them as well.  Navigating the interface requires far too many clicks and menus to get to anything, and the chat interface was lacking in every way possible.

It also does not help DC Universe Online taps out at level 30, and most players will hit that cap within their first free month, and find themselves questioning what they do now.  Sure, you can make another character or two, but nothing really changes in the main story, with the exception of the side of the coin that you are on, be it villain or hero.  Some things in the story also don’t make much sense, like why villains would stop other villains from performing evil tasks.  Bane is trying to infect the city with the VENOM, but Joker wants to stop him.  I don’t know about anyone else, but Bane had a nefarious plan, so why stop him?  I guess maybe politics in the villain world tend to mimic real world politics.  I would hope that Sony is looking to increase the level cap soon, because without that, there will be little incentive to keep people coming back after they hit that cap.  Sure there are high level raids, like infiltrating the Batcave, but nothing that makes you want to visit the world of DC Universe again and again for months on end.   I mean, you are going to pay a premium for this world at $14.99 a month, so there has to be a lot more, and soon to justify that monthly expense.

Looking at the sum of this review, DC Universe Online is a tough nut to score.  On the one hand, I loved the environments and the main characters that the developers have decided to use in the game.  I mean, they have dug in deep to bring so many characters for people to interact with.  I mean, Ambush Bug is in the game at points, which is a pretty damn obscure person for people to associate with, but fans will love.  But the lack of upper level content and a level cap that people can hit so quickly will kill any lasting enthusiasm for the game over time.  Mix in the standard tropes that you get with an MMORPG, i.e., unending fetch quests, and you start get into the standard mold of MMORPGs instead of creating something new for players to experience.  Overall I think I lean on the former than the latter at least for now, but something will have to change soon to keep people interested for long term success in DC Universe Online.  DC Universe Online gets 3.5 out of 5 Aeropausonauts.

Check out DC Universe Online and other PC  reviews at Test Freaks

Picture Gallery only features early level content so as not to spoil any of the higher level missions.