Comics and mmorpg – things at first glance incompatible. The pleasure of comics – in consumption, the pleasure of mmorpg – in the actions performed. In addition, comics are based on the uniqueness of the protagonist, and in MMOG, in fact, all players are heroes. Providing players with both to disrupt the jackpot: people of about the same mind warehouse are fond of comics and online games, the audience is just a giant.
Only now it is almost impossible to please everyone in the same extent. The last superhero MMOG that tried to do this from a fuss – Champions Online , And she did not achieve much success (her mechanics, for example, was horrified by her meaningless confusion). The next has become City of Heroes , But in this case, the developers chose one direction – superhero aesthetics. Not too smart from the point of view of gameplay, City of Heroes fully allowed to feel like a divine force fighter for justice, and therefore received her share of social recognition.
DC Universe Online , If you consider it in this vein, is another attempt to please everyone and at once. Moreover, she seems to have everything you need for this: an extremely popular brand and developers with appropriate experience. A slightly contradictory resume Sony Online Entertainment , Of course, it inspired some doubts from the very beginning, but now you can say with all responsibility: so far we have the best of attempts to please everyone and at once.
Plandon man
Comics fans without any reservations will find something to admire in DC Universe Online. The chic entrance video on the move shows the negligent future of the famous universe: most of the superheroes and archizlodeevs familiar from childhood were settled in the last internal war, and the Braining Fleet is approaching the land, as luck would have it,. In the hope of saving the planet from enslavement Lex, Lutor goes into the past, conducts a preventive conversation with superheroes and releases nanorobots stolen from the naval ship. They quickly settle in the bodies of people, endowing them with all kinds of superpowers, and so former office slaves and housewives are the last bastion of protection in the face of absolute evil.
The player has to sculpt his hero from the most ordinary person, so create some two-headed old man of Shapoklyak with a mechanized hand-granatomet and six spider paws, the appearance editor will not allow. There are no insanving variety of costumes here either, everything is quite standard: we choose gender, physique, character, then the skin, color of panties, wingspan and other DC comics, distinctive signs.
Among other things, they will offer to choose your favorite weapon (from sledgehammer and poles to bows and pistols) and superhen branch (fire, ice, psychokinesis, nature, gadgets and magic). You can generate a random character, and here the most important point will be the choice of a mentor. Here faces are all friends-Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman for Heroes, Joker, Lex Lutor and Kirk for villains. Abilities, costume, and even character yourself will choose your idol, and you can immediately rush into battle – only do not forget to pull up the leggings.
In which city you will perform justice depends on the mentor. The game has many different locations, but most of the time you will spend in any case on the streets of Metropolis and Gotham. Except for San Paro from the fallen into a coma All Points Bulletin , These are definitely the two largest cities in the MMORPG genre. Fortunately, you will not have to plow them on foot – every superhero has its own superption.
You can learn to fly like a superman, or run, sparkling with heels, like a flash, or portray a variety of parkour, like a ninja turtle. Flights, of course, is the most popular option. You can not worry about obstacles and easily avoid unwanted meetings, plus freedom of movement here is complete – this DC Universe Online captivates. True, in the sky above Gotham flying originals in raincoats more than flies over a rural toilet, so the most romantic way of movement is the most boring. In addition, the runners and acrobats are available for much more interesting mini-games and side quests for high-speed routes. In our modest opinion, only for their sake it is worth spitting on levitation.
Good with lasers from the eyes
The main quests DC Universe Online do not stand out anything special: villains steal, kill and turn defenseless inhabitants into mutants, heroes help, save, suppress. There is only one joy: on PVP servers, the quest paths of heroes and villains often converge, leading to hot skirmishes from the first levels.
And the heroes and villains conflict are very beautiful. For some reason, the developers of MMORPG were rarely turned off from the time Everquest The paths of “each key on the key”, and no one dared to borrow the mechanics of fights from console action. DC Universe Online became the first swallow. The battles here are fast, with fans of special effects, colorful combo, blocks, rolls and even throwing all garbage into enemies (especially in battles with bosses). Attacks are divided into two types: those that are applied by the chosen weapon, and super -sizes. If you played at least one slasher, you will immediately understand how this system works: we stuff Combo with conventional blows, replenish energy, then we spend it on super receives.
It is strange that with a rather simple combat system, the authors failed to fully observe the balance. The attack, consisting of five quick presses of the left button, turned out to be the most effective investment. Know yourself click on one key, and the enemies fall with stacks, no blocks will help them. Another is too simple and too effective weapons – controlling skills. In each branch of the superhel, there are techniques that freeze, immobilize, paralyze, stun and knock down the target from the feet. There will be so many of them to the maximum level that poor enemies can be mutated until the end of the battle, without receiving change. But what makes the fights with NPC to be funny and painless, turns PVP into a response competition: who is the first to start a series of “controls” is Superman.
The pumping mechanics are greatly simplified even compared to the same Champions Online and City of Heroes. There is simply no point in long experiments with builds. Each new level throws up glasses, you put them in the right skills, and voila – the hero begins to beat with lightning, burn from his eyes with lasers, tear into pieces with a whistle. Everything, the end of the story. Over time, dozens of different superhenes open, but only six can be taken to the hotbar-this restriction is designed to stabilize the far from the perfect balance of the game, but it is precisely because of the modest hotbar that you will sometimes feel some kind of too helpless superhero.
Nobody knew, and I am a legend
After receiving the tenth level, life becomes more interesting. Heroes cease to be “like everyone else” and can choose a role: tank, attack, support, control. The change of priorities changes the effects of most superhen. Suppose you have the ability to "burn to the ground". If you use it in an ordinary attacking rack, it will inflict additional damage, and if you switch to the chilera, the damage will decrease by an order of magnitude, but each castes will heal the hero. In the same way, the attacking abilities of tanks cause 20% less harm, but increase the health and effectiveness of the treatment.
All this is very useful in Alerts mode-group missions for four people, which also open at the 10th level. To get there, you do not need to look for NPC and fly for distant lands – just choose a script, make an edition in line, and after a few minutes you will be transferred directly to the scene. There is enough solo quests in the game to quickly get to the maximum level, but it is in Alerts that the most interesting plot rulers, the most impressive bosses and the best awards. On the island of Gorilla Island, for example, the four superheroes next to the volcano clears up the crash of an alien ship. Extraterrestrial gadgets acted on the brains of local monkeys, and the wiser to indecent gorillas now bear plans to capture the world. Not forgotten, of course, and places of military glory: zone-51, Smolville, Arkham madhouse.
You can play for the most famous inhabitants of these shrines in Legends mode. It is a arena where each participant climbs into the skin of the idol (Superman, Batman, Joker and the rest of the DC idols), receives his arsenal of skills and fights with the same "star" enemy team. There are also ordinary areas where its hero has to play, but Legends mode looks like an attempt by developers to organize battle fields with an ideal balance – all skills are ready, and all the characters, in theory, should be able to adequately confront each other. If so, then an attempt, admitted, is a failure – even among star avatars there are unconditional winners and outsiders.
Only the heroes are quickly becoming
Perhaps the most contradictory difference between DC Universe Online and all the other Mmorpg is that the maximum, thirtieth level here can be achieved not in weeks or months, but in three to four days. Experience with missions flows a river, and along the way it even becomes insulting for https://sister-site.org/richy-leo/ rapidly obsolete quest rulers. Repeated passage by a new character, of course, will allow you to see much more, especially if you re -qualify from a hero to a villain or vice versa. But with such a marathon pace of pumping, the question of what the hero to do in his “thirty” is especially acute.
And here the developers checked. The lion's share of the dungeons available at the maximum level is converted instans in which you will already have time to visit by then. The scenery will be replaced somewhere, new skills will appear in bosses or tasks, but in general we are offered to play on the same fields.
However, there will also appear completely new entertainment. For pumped heroes there are high-level missions, several dungeons for two and four people, two full-fledged raids, PVP-arns, daily tasks and one of the most popular classes of local elders-hunting for exploits. It consists in races for all kinds of achievements, which at the same time continue to develop a hero. Earn a few “Achovka”, and you will be given another skill point – this bait works without fail. And the achievements in the “Research” section will also significantly expand your knowledge about the DC universe: if you visit the guide-boats installed next to all the notable places of Gotham and Metropolis, you can hear their history and a couple of entertaining facts.
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At its nature, DC Universe Online turned out to be not quite traditional MMORPG. It has a lot of truly bold solutions (the combat system will probably be fixed as an example to follow), but some of them can be called even too bold-they do not quite fit with the realities of the genre. It is clear that this is all production costs – the developers will not be possible to cross comics and online role -playing games as soon as possible, the training in this direction has only begun. But pleases the fact that progress has outlined serious. Swift battles, famous heroes and villains, ease and relative friendliness of DC Universe Online make it a copy unique for the genre. In addition, the developers have not yet allowed irreparable errors.
Reigracy – Yes
Cool plot – No
Originality – Yes
Easy to master – Yes
Gameplay: 7
Graphics: 8
Sound and music: 7
Interface and management: 6
Waited? Maybe Champions Online and free, maybe City of Heroes has acquired impressive content in six years, but we have not seen a more adequate plexus of comics and Mmorpg yet.
Mania rating: 7.0
"Fine"