DC Universe Online (2011)
Heroes and villains…
The MMORPG based on the storied worlds of Superman, Batman and the Justice League comes to brilliantly-realized life, and places you in the center of it.
Developed by Dimensional Ink Games
Published by Sony Online Entertainment, WB Games
Released on PC (Played), PlayStation 3 (At Launch)
Editor’s note: This review was written during the game’s launch window in early 2011. As of 2024, the game has undergone numerous changes and additions including a trove of additional story content, a transition to a different publisher, a change to its business model, release on numerous additional platforms and more.
The history of the DC Comics Universe is something that would take me a very, very long time to recap. There is such an extensive canon of characters, cities, planets, and events in several different types of genres, that span from the beginning of existence all the way into the vast reaches of the future. The characters that inhabit the DCU are larger than life, drawing from mythic sources such as the gods of ancient Greece, the Bible, the legendary works of Homer to say nothing of the vivid imaginations of generations of creators inspired by these and a whole lot more, creating entire worlds out of whole cloth. These characters can accomplish both extraordinary feats of heroism and selflessness, and heinous acts of destruction, murder, and violence.
I can run down the history of characters, from the legendary and heroic Last Son of Krypton, launched to our planet by his parents to be saved from the fate of his doomed world, to the fearsome and resourceful Dark Knight, who night after night relives a dream shattered as a broken little boy kneeling in a pool of his parents’ blood quietly vowing, “never again.” There’s the majestic Amazonian warrior for peace, wielding her lasso of truth and her unmatched skill on the battlefield, and the test pilot chosen for an extraordinary duty in the stars because of his fearlessness and willpower.
The DC Universe encompasses stories of characters such as these consistently every week, and when an effort was announced to turn that vast world of the DCU into one that you can inhabit in the form of a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG, or “MMO” for short), I was decidedly skeptical. Surely, the standards of a DC Comics aficionado such as myself would never be met by a mere video game that promised to illustrate my beloved universe of heroes! Thankfully, I was quite wrong.
The magnificent opening cinematic sets up the starting point for the story, where a future Lex Luthor explains how Brainiac’s takeover of the planet necessitates an army of new superpowered people to stop him.
Design and Story
Before you even get to the gameplay, DC Universe Online, developed by Sony Online Entertainment and distributed by WB Games, has done a lot of things just plain right from the perspective of this fan. The most obvious clue to this that the game has is in its design. Superstar comic book artist Jim Lee, famous for his gorgeous renderings in comics stories like Batman: Hush, Superman: For Tomorrow, X-Men, and All-Star Batman and Robin has done a great deal of the game’s most visible design work. Everything from characters, to city layouts, to the design of DC’s famous structures, Lee’s pencil has touched practically every part of this game, and that in and of itself definitely makes this fan interested.
Secondly, the voices of the main characters were handled by major talents. Adam Baldwin (Jayne from Firefly), who voiced the Man of Steel in the animated film Superman: Doomsday in 2007, returns to the character here and gives him the vocal strength he deserves. Gina Torres, who’s voiced several DC characters in the past, gives her trademark flair to Wonder Woman in an energetic performance.
The best part? THE Batman, Kevin Conroy from the incredible Batman: The Animated Series and the Arkham Asylum video game, returns to the Dark Knight’s voice here. He also brings with him the best Joker for the job, Mark Hamill. Everything from the design work all the way down to the vocal performances give this game a feel of authenticity that I was initially worried would not be present.
I also found myself surprised by the cleverness of the story. How would a game explain how all of these random people off the street were now fighting at the sides of the Justice League? Well, I shouldn’t have been worried, because the principal writer for the game is none other than DC’s top guy, Geoff Johns, the mastermind behind the current Green Lantern and Flash series, as well as the godfather of the 2009 Blackest Night event (and a damn good Superman writer, by the way). Johns’ story utilizes the notorious Superman villains Brainiac and Lex Luthor, who have conspired together to seize control of the planet.
After Luthor is successful in murdering Superman, Brainiac turns on him, wanting to take the world for himself. Luthor travels back in time, realizing his horrible mistake, arriving at a point before the partnership took place, and unleashes nanobots known as “Exobytes” into the Earth’s atmosphere.
Hitting many random people across the world, the Coluan technology transforms regular people into metahumans, giving them those famous powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men (and women). After doing this, Luthor enlists the aid of the “Trinity” — Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman — to mentor these new heroes in the fight against Brainiac. The other side of the coin, those that choose to become villains, will be mentored by Circe, the Joker, and the Lex Luthor of the present.
In your first instance aboard Brainiac’s skull ship, your hero encounters the Man of Steel for the first time who kicks off your heroic journey in grand fashion.
Gameplay
From here, you create your character. There are several different templates based on famous characters you can use, but the real fun is in creating a new hero or villain from the ground up. You can create anything from a techno-gadget wielding urban vigilante to a caster that uses the magicks in your fight. I chose to go the tech route, making Batman my mentor. Your first fight in the game is breaking out of one of Brainiac’s ships and fighting your way through hordes of deadly robots. At the end of the stage that familiarizes you with the controls, you fight side-by-side with Superman himself to finish off the bots and make your way back to Earth.
DC Universe Online, at this point, consists of two major territories with a third serving as a base of operations. The first city, Metropolis, is the hometown of Superman and reflects the Man of Steel’s optimism by shining in the perpetual light of day. Metropolis’ dangers tend to be more fantastic, as magic-wielders, giant robots, and powerful meta-humans and aliens can ransack the city at any given time. While in Metropolis, watch yourself for famous baddies like Bizarro to ruin your day. You may want to enlist an ally for him, because chances are in your first few levels, you won’t be able to take a direct clone of Superman alone.
Contrasting the bright and optimistic tone of Metropolis is the second territory: the Dark Knight’s domain of Gotham City. Where Metropolis is always in daylight, Gotham is stuck in the darkness and uncertainty of perpetual night. Gotham lives up to its reputation as very, very dangerous. It’s wise in your first few levels to stay off the streets until you bolster yourself a bit, as they’re so rampant with crime that a misguided attempt to walk them may bring you a string of deaths.
The game drips with authenticity to the DC Comics Universe, including in its location design. Gotham City feels appropriately menacing and foreboding as you hop across its rooftops or fly in its clouded night skies.
You won’t have to go far to encounter many of the famous members of Batman’s rogues gallery as the Scarecrow is your first major opponent, and you may be surprised at how fast you encounter the irredeemable and cackling Clown Prince of Crime. It turns out that he’s always watching.
Having played some previous MMOs — most notably the now-defunct The Matrix Online — the thing that always turned me off of them was how devoid of story the leveling was. I’m not a gamer just to game, I love seeing a narrative progression when I play a game, and I was very pleasantly surprised to see that DCUO’s leveling system was very much story-driven. If your mission doesn’t tie into the overarching narrative of the game, then you at least have an opportunity to forward your own story. When I wasn’t fighting the big metahuman bad guys of Metropolis, I felt like in Gotham I was successfully carving my niche as an “Agent of the Bat.”
Having orders barked at me from a Kevin Conroy-voiced Dark Knight only amped my enjoyment further, and I had a very “YES SIR!” attitude when I would get a mission directly from Batman. Some trepidation came when he told me to stop the Joker, but when Batman showed up to fight alongside me, I had an awesome fanboy moment where I could actually say that Batman and I were fighting the Joker together, even if it was just in a game. For a DC Comics fan, that’s priceless.
The game doesn’t have a specific way to play, as you can approach it from multiple angles. There are no implicit or explicit encouragements to play with a group, but half of the fun of the MMO concept is the interactions you can have, allowing you to enlist the help of other players to accomplish specific mission goals. Playing alone, you can still accomplish quite a bit, and you can feel like there’s a lot of story to share in when playing by yourself. Both methods are extraordinarily fun, and both should be tried to get the full experience.
It likely won’t be long before you encounter other DC Comics luminaries, including Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps.
Overall
From the perspective of a DC fanboy, it was extraordinary. I fought with Batman against the Joker, with Nightwing against Bane, freed Robin from a Poison Ivy spell, clashed with Trigon alongside all of the Teen Titans, pissed off Lex Luthor, stood with the Green Lantern Corps against Sinestro, and the stories go on and on. If you’re looking for a way to experience the DC Universe, this game definitely gives it on multiple levels.
Some of the quests could use a little refinement. The game had an extensive beta which is why it functions so well, but there are moments when my goal hadn’t spawned in the world, or I’d accomplish something that didn’t register with the game server. Usually all I’d have to do is start again and things would work fine, but when you’ve already put a lot of time in a mission, the last thing you want to do is start from scratch.
However you want to look at it, DC Universe Online is a very immersive gameplay experience that allows you to stand with (or against) some of the best characters in comics. Fighting alongside Batman is one of the coolest things I’ve ever been able to do in any video game, and I’m anxious to jump back in now to see who I can team up with next. The game runs a standard $14.99 a month price point, with thirty free days included with the purchase of the game. Currently, SOE is running a limited-time price point of $29.99 for 3 months of game time, which is quite a bargain for a new MMO, I thought.
What will you do? Join the Dark Knight to contain the chaos of Gotham? Aid the Man of Steel in the neverending battle for Truth, Justice, and the American Way? Stand with Aquaman to ward off the menacing Black Manta? Or, from what I’ve heard rumblings for in an upcoming update, will you overcome great fear and join the Green Lantern Corps? The possibilities for an online iteration of the DC Universe are endless. Literally.
I can’t wait to see what they come up with next.
Score: 9/10
This review was originally published on the website of Reset Games, a video game retailer in Bellingham, Wash. The store provided a copy to me for reviewing purposes.