Yesterday Scott talked me into downloading DC Universe Online and joining up as a “Free to Play” player. I cleaned up my old Dell gaming PC as DCUO is a PC-only game and loaded it onto my computer at home. The client and all the content clocks in at over 20GB so it took a while to download across the network.
Once I got the game installed I had to fix DirectX, and then after that it ran. I had seen it during Sony’s beta test of the game and wasn’t terribly impressed or thrilled with the gameplay mostly because the human interface was so different from what I was used to with City of Heroes from NCSoft. I knew Scott was very keen on having me play so I relented and agreed to play the game. While going through the lead-in trial course that every new player has to go through I revisited the same issues I had before when playing the game. The mouse and keyboard controls are maddening. I was cussing and swearing while trying to button-mash. It felt like the inanity of a Playstation game, where you dispense with the pleasantries of the cut-scenes and the lame lead in until you move a figure to a part of the screen and then click like you’ve got Parkinson’s.
Near the end of playing yesterday, around lunchtime I went exploring the settings of the game and discovered to my chagrin a setting called “Invert Camera” and that singular adjustment made the game MAKE SENSE TO ME. All of a sudden the game played much more like City of Heroes and once I was beyond that obnoxious hurdle I actually really got into playing the game.
What do I think of DCUO? It’s certainly a competent game and is engaging. The mission system is acceptable and the play itself is entertaining and worth my time. The only real issue that remains with DCUO is how much lag the mouse pointer has when it’s not controlling the camera in-game. You have to have patience with the pointer as it doesn’t fly as your mouse moves, it instead feels like the game is asking the computer to manually redraw the mouse each time the mouse updates. This is irritating but not so much to make me stop playing the game.
As I play more of DCUO I’ll have more experience and will most likely refine my critique of the game and if I have the presence of mind enough I may blog about it again in the future. Or I won’t. We’ll see.