2009 is Superhero MMO year, it seems. Which, after the unending plague of fantasy MMOs over the last couple of years, is something to look forward to. We’ll hopefully be talking more about Champions Online, the sequel of sorts to City of Heroes (and, if rumour is to be believed, is new life spawned from Marvel Universe Online’s corpse) pretty soon, but also rearing its cowled head is DC Universe Online.
I have only the foggiest knowledge of who’s who’s in the DCU outside of the Justice League folks, and my attempts to decipher the Wikipedia page about the current big crossover storyline, Final Crisis, almost hospitalised me, but presumably DCUO is a terribly exciting idea.
It’s coming through SOE, and it sounds as though there’ll be a big reveal at this year’s Comicon. There’s to be a DCUO party and Jim “tiny feet, big boobies” Lee will be there talking about his involvement with the game’s art. Fortunately, our own Mister Gillen will be at the show letting Phonogram groupies stroke his beard, so hopefully he’ll be able to bring us a front-line report on the announcements. Meantime, there’s some imagery to run your ocular organs over at its official Myspace page. Which, if you’re in Europe, redirects to the myspace.com frontpage. A sensible decision, really. Imagine if Europeans found out a game was being released – OH NO!
Fortunately, someone’s stuck the a video slideshow of all the released art onto Youtube:
So far so City of Heroes, it seems. Sounds as though there’ll be no playing as the Man of Bats or The Man Who Is Super or The Wonderful Woman, unfortunately. A shame, but creating custom heroes does seem to be the only practical approach to this dilemma. Expect a plague of Batt-Mann_343872s nevertheless.
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@HouseInRlyeh:
That would demand far more restrictions and absurd censorsh-MESSAGE REDACTED.
I came late to this argument, but there’s something I’d like to point out:
Heroes never die. They just respawn. Know where else that happens? MMOS.
This is a perfect fit.
People have already said this, yes. But Internet Opinions are mandatory.
Super heroes have never really been my cup of tea. As a reader of mainly British comics the whole Marvel, DC super hero comics thing passed me by in my youth. Now if some one were to make a Judge Dredd MMO or a Dan Dare MMO (based on the 50’s Frank Hampson Dan Dare of course), then I’d get excited.
Hopefully as its the DCU Vertigo will be included as crossovers are common. also will a villian option be included?
dream of the endless FTW
ohhh im being fickle now
Woah Judge Dredd MMO! Maybe that’s next if All Points Bulletin is successful?
Also, Thor is stronger because Hulk obviously loses to Godzilla in terms of nuclear badassness. The new Thor doesn’t even have a secret identity, and that makes him the baddest ass you’ll evar come across.
As long as I can join the Green Lantern (or Sinestro) Corps then i’ll be happy.
Power ring would be a difficult ‘power’ to simulate though.
I’d rather Supreme Power online.
Not really, but hey it’s still my favourite Justice League story ever.
Poor superheroes. They deserve better than SOE.
Yeah, I’m still bitter about Planetside.
The problem with superhero themed games isn’t so much with how they are handled in their source material, but how well the source material is translated. These adaptations often fit a character or cast of characters into a certain genre’s play mechanics, rather than mold the gameplay around the character. Because of this it’s not uncommon to watch as Superman’s invulnerability is gone, why Batman’s trademark detective abilities are squandered in favor of traditional beat’em up stylings, and so on. You can almost be certain Green Lantern’s power ring will manifest itself in obvious ways – barriers, supersized arms for physical blows, the works.
At least that Aquaman game did it right – it captures the suckyness of the character just fine.
The clear difference between controlling James Bond in a game and controlling Superman, is that Superman just kind of uses the gifts he was born with and doesn’t have any special talent for his species, whereas Bond utilises extraordinary cunning and skill to do what he does. One translates well into a videogame, one doesn’t.
whats with the anti Europeans? i like games an so do all my m8s an we are British.