LawnCast

DC Universe Online I'm not much of a loyal MMO player, I might pick up a prepaid WoW card and play it for 2 months when the console release schedule is a bit slim, but I'm not the kind of player who will play an MMO all day and let the rest of the world fade away. I did play a lot of Phantasy Star Online back in the Dreamcast era but the first version of that game was free to play. DC Universe is similar in the fact that its on a home console and it plays well with just a controller, but after your initial 30 days are up, you have to pay $15 a month after that. Console players are not used to subscription fees, even though Phantasy Star Universe and Final Fantasy XI did charge them, the server population is low, it they are still up , in the case of PSU. So the question is, "Is the game worth the $15 fee?" I hope to give you enough information to decide that for yourself. The game starts you off with an excellent character creation menu, where you can have the same powers of some of DC greatest heroes or villains, or you can pick them from a custom menu. after that, you get to pick a mentor: Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman for heroes or Lex Luthor, The Joke, or Circe for Villains I picked plant powers, flight for my movement, and dual swords as my weapon type. I call him "The Mulcher." After creating a character, you get sent to Brainiac's ship where you battle through easy enemies with the game explaining how to fight and use your powers. At the end you are assisted by either Superman or Lex depending if you picked hero or villain. the early missions and starting point are determined by your mentor. Then you start getting quests and it follows the route of a typical MMO, but combat is in real time. You perform combos on your controller to use special attacks once you unlock them from your skill tree as you level up, but the game just seems to end up being a button masher, also speaking of levels, the level cap is 30. You also also have to be level 30 to go on raids, which makes no sense to me. the only reason I play missions is to grind, not to be able to play more missions. After hitting 30, I decided to make another character, this time a villain with Fire powers and super speed, named "Hot Sam." the game is a little different when you are a villain, but you often end up in the same locales playing similar missions. The game also seems a big buggy for a game that I had to download several software updates for. How big of patches, well a 135MB title update, then a 16GB install off the Blu-Ray, then a 2GB download from within the game. It took hours just to play it. I still get some major bugs. I've gotten stuck in debris, quests were not being registered as complete even though I completed them and watched the cutscene afterward and worst of all, crash bugs. If Sony Online Entertainment can get these bugs fixed, raise the level cap, and expand the game for no additional cost, then it will be worth the $15 dollars a month. Score: 6 out of 10 Notes: The version reviewed is for the PlayStation 3. Wally bought the game with his own hard earned money.