DC Universe Online review

Gaining experience isn’t all about slaughtering hundreds of gang members. Instead, you’re sent on missions by your heroic or villainous mentor to earn hefty XP rewards as well as new weapons and armour to improve your stats. As you progress, you can take missions from other luminaries of the DC Universe. Most missions are multi-stage affairs with a predictable pattern: several different quests that involve a combination of combat with low-level enemies, collecting items and destroying enemy combat installations, followed by a mission to infiltrate an enemy stronghold. Finally, you’ll be thrust into a pitched battle against a well-known hero or villain.

Although you get to explore plenty of different locations in both sunlit Metropolis and night-shrouded Gotham, the whole process can become repetitive if you’re on a Player vs. Environment (PvE) server. We preferred Player vs. Player (PvP) servers, where adventuring heroes and villains can fight freely in the streets. Although this meant that our villain was attacked by irritatingly righteous heroes when she tried to turn innocent bystanders into demons, it also gives reality to the conflict between good and evil, particularly in areas where the two sides are trying to foil each other’s plans.

We were pleased to find that most of the PvP players behaved fairly and role-played properly. You can also join up with other players to form superhero leagues and duos, go on raids or just face a particularly tough opponent. Most of the game can be played alone, though – teaming up is only absolutely necessary for a handful of special quests.

DCUO owes a lot to NCSoft’s City of Heroes/Villains, but at the moment it can’t compete with the scope of its more established rival. Its quests are often repetitive and the main plot currently concludes when you reach level 30, leaving high level players with little to do apart from group raids.

Despite this, it’s undeniably fun, with heroes you’ve actually heard of, frenetic combat, detailed graphics and great voice acting from the main cast, although the music is lacklustre. We also loved not being restricted to specific zones for PvP. We’ll certainly keep our subscription going for a couple of months and will be keeping a keen eye on future developments.