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February 9, 2009: Playing the Demo of "DC Universe Online"

PLAYERS THRILLED TO BE DOOMED

This weekend at the New York City Comic Con, which doesn't again occur until October of 2010, Sony Online Entertainment showed strong presence with DC Universe Online. On Saturday a panel talked about the game and showed footage and later that night Sony held an exclusive fan party. All weekend long at the SOE booth, interested fans could get not only a glimpse of early footage of the game, but aspiring heroes and villains could actually play the first completed mission within.

I've learned that within the game, the developers have decided to term missions "capers" if you're a villain, and "cases" if you're of the heroic persuasion. Established heroes within the DCU will give good guy players their cases, while bad guy gamers will be hired by, or recruited by canon villains. For this particular mission, which developers debuted this weekend, players actually shared the screen with Superman and Doomsday and it was a blast!

THE NEXT GREAT CAPER OR ON THE CASE

When I approached the SOE booth on Friday afternoon, I was lucky enough to speak with several development team members about many of the new module's features. The first person to greet me, and I feel terrible that I'm unsure of her name, though it might be Carol, or Margaret, was a perfect Marketing/PR representative who set the stage and made prospective future customers feel like welcome friends she'd invited to her home and was eager to see arrive. If she's reading this I must thank her for her accommodating and very welcoming presence at the booth and at the fan party Saturday night. She may not have fans clamoring for her autograph, as Jim Lee or Geoff Johns did during the fan event, but she certainly deserves to be celebrated for all she brought to the table at the Con.

Carol/Margaret told me that I could be a villain or a hero and that at the booth there were three gaming consoles set up for each. She was on one of the hero modules and during the time I spent with her, she was instructing Con attendees how to play the game as a good guy. There were three heroes and three villains the developers had set up in advance that players could try out. Villain choices (and they each had names) were a maniacal, super strong, mentalist clown and two others and Hero selections were an electrical acrobat flying female, a large, blue crystalline-like brute with ice powers and an Atlantean goddess.

On the case (meaning as a hero), players were called on the job due to a massive downtown battle Superman had with Doomsday. While details are sketchy, the devs say Doomsday's back somehow and that Superman needs players' help in securing the creature. Once the big D is finally stopped, the plan is to contain him at S.T.A.R. Labs using a newly developed force field type energy prison. I asked Jared Carr, the Art Director of DCU Online, how it is that unknown brand new heroes will be able to stand with Superman, toe to toe against Doomsday, and actually be of any help and Jared explained that this particular version of Doomsday had already been weakened a great deal by new technologies and by Superman before players were called into the fight and so with a great combined effort the heroes hope to be able to bring him down.

Meanwhile, accepting a caper (as a villain), players are hired by Lex Luthor, who has heard about the battle ("it's probably been on the news," say the development team), has decided it would behoove him to have DNA from either, preferably both, combatants. As a villain, it will be the player's job, to keep the heroes from getting into S.T.A.R. and recapturing Doomsday, so that they can gather the DNA for Luthor and collect their payday. Since villain players are hired and since hired means getting paid when a job is accomplished that seems to indicate a possible monetary system, although it's unclear to me what a hero players reward would be since it's generally known that a great hero, especially one in the DCU, doesn't get, or expect, cash and prizes for doing his duty.

"I'LL TAKE THE CASE!"

I personally decided to play as a hero, both due to the fact that's always my first choice (lame as my friends say I am) and because Carol, with her sparkling personality, had enticed me to stay on her console. Since I had limited time between various panels I'd attended, I only managed to scrape up the chance to play the one time and the hero that was already on screen when I stepped up was the electrical flying acrobat. Flying is about what you'd expect if you've played other games with flying characters. It's slightly disorienting, but fairly easy to get the hang of. I played the PS3 version (they had both set up on each console at the booth), so using the dual analogue controller, where one joystick forward, back, left and right and the other takes you up or down, I flew around the city of Metropolis.

Almost immediately during my acclimating to the controls, I started to see glowing red numbers subtracting from my character. In the left hand corner of the screen, you have a green bar for your health and another bar for your power meter. As some unknown assailant smashed the red numbers out of me, I could see my green meter starting to grow smaller. It seems these custom made demo characters had pretty decent health though, because I saw a number like -483 several times and yet still had most of my green bar full. Once I decided I had a fair control over moving about, I did an about faced and engaged my attacker.

I'm still not sure exactly who'd been hitting me from behind, but I did come across some LexCorp goons, as well as some of the villain players from the other side of the booth. That's right, the way they had it set up, players acting as heroes would directly engage with players acting as villains during the Con. In the module itself, the villains were doing the Lex DNA mission and the heroes trying to stop Doomsday, yes, but in order to do that, players on opposite sides would often clash with each other. It's unclear whether all or many modules in game will be like this, where PVP (player versus player) is involuntary, but Chris Kao (Studio Creative Director) says players won't be forced into PVP at every turn. I think this is a definite plus because while some players enjoy engaging other players in battle, I've personally experienced times in other MMOs where people who just seem to enjoy carnage will surprise and kill me before I even know I've been engaged.

As a hero, before you can enter S.T.A.R. Labs, where the Superman/Doomsday battle is continuing (since that's where the containment unit is) heroes must take out several LexCorp soldiers and then several Infiltrator NPCs (non-player characters). Mission-wise, there's no requirement for engaging other player characters, but you'll certainly have your hands full trying to fend off player villains, who seemingly attack you just for the sake of it, while you're trying to find and stop your required soldiers and Infiltrators. Once you've done that though, S.T.A.R. becomes open to you and that's what happened for me and I headed inside.

Once inside the lab, I found myself in a smashed up room with both Superman and Doomsday and that's where the game got really exciting. See, I've played superhero games before, but I've never actually been my own personal superhero and actually fought alongside Superman to stop his deadliest foe while inside S.T.A.R. Labs. I'm still a little dubious as to my ability to hold up against Doomsday, especially since I was literally able to see the effect my attacks was having on Doomsday's health, but again, it wasn't exactly clear how much of that damage Superman was doing simultaneously with me. One thing that made me smile though, and I'm not sure it was a good thing, was when Doomsday backhanded me across the room and I was able to get right back up and still had 90 % of my health. I mean this is the guy that killed Superman, right? I just took a backhand from Doomsday and I was like: "Ha! It tickles!" But I'll have to keep in mind we don't really know the whole story and after all, Jared did say this was a weakened version of the D-Man. It would have to be, right?

At the end of it all, Superman, some S.T.A.R. guys and I were able to K.O. Doomsday. The first time I did it though, I didn't know I was supposed to do anything else and after a predetermined amount of time, the monster got back up and started trashing the place again. The next time, someone from behind me who'd apparently played the demo before, informed me that I had a clocked time limit while Doomsday was down where I had to press the action button to subdue the creature. Once that was done, the module was over and I was successful. The only thing missing was a display of me meeting Superman or being thanked or anything, but I'm sure that part of the game, along with the points, experience, and rewards system hasn't yet been decided. The creators are still calling this the "Alpha Stage" of the project.

FUN IN WIDE OPEN SPACES

In addition to the playability of the demo, it was easy to see the devs spent a great deal of time on details and designing the city. Even though they say this module was sort of a rough cut, there were billboards with ads for Bibbo's, busses with logos on them, traffic signals, signs and pedestrians. I didn't personally check out the Daily Planet building, but it's there, along with LexCorp and S.T.A.R. The openness of the world is heartening and I'm told there will be no magic force fields or blocked off areas players can't get into. While Metropolis will be broken up into several sections, such as the downtown area, Hobb's Bay and Suicide Slums and each area will have it's own distinct look and feel, every individual area will be an open world, where movement around the streets will be uninhibited.

Players can run, jump or fly basically anywhere they want within each section of every city in the game, which will eventually include Metropolis, Gotham, Central, Coast and more; literally, hundreds of blocks. The developers say the idea is to get you right into the action of fighting evil (or good if you're a villain) and that, even though you could come into the game just to stand in Centennial Park so you could say you were there, that's not really the point behind the detail of the city. The idea is that sometimes, you will have missions in each and every area and that even if you haven't before visited Centennial, you'll end up there during the course of your story in the game.

After playing this demo and meeting both Carol (who was fantastic, have I mentioned that yet) and Jared Carr (whom I was amazed to find on the floor of the Con explaining the modules to people, being that he's a senior member of the design team) I've got to say I'm impressed by SOE and their dedication to this project. I'm still hoping there are some great story elements and non-action parts to the game. The creators keep stressing that this MMO, unlike many others, is an action game and that action is their focus, but they've also hired both Geoff Johns and Marv Wolfman to work on stories so I'm thinking we might be okay in that department too. But for the action displayed and demoed here, I'd say that DCUO is going to be one hell of a Super-Doom-tastic experience!

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