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[DC Universe Online] Now Free-to-Play! Lightning Strikes DLC now available, zappy zappy.
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Most of his complaints boiled down to "I didn't read the manual", or "I didn't take ten seconds to look at the screen and learn how this feature worked before complaining about it". The whole fire/gadget thing made me wince, since it says right on the character creation screen what it does, in addition to being a possible DPS role.
I mean, that's sort of his thing. But his reviews are a hell of a lot funnier when he has a legitimate point, and criticizes actual flaws in the gameplay, rather then made up ones.
Part of the appeal of his reviews is that he does a better job of summing up a game then most written reviewers do, while maintaining a sense of humor (See, the Medal of Honor review.) about the whole thing. This just looked like a typical written "I didn't really play it past five minutes, didn't really want too" sort of review.
Not that this won't stop a million idiots from going "HURR DCUO SUX M I RIGHT?". I've already spotted a few threads acting like the word of Yahtzee is god. Reading the thread Yahtzee himself set up on the escapist forums to announce the DCUO video was up is painful. The amount of folks who don't bother to actually do any research into the review and simply write a game off based on it is depressing.
He had a point about the origins, though. They really should explain that further before you get finished making a character.
And anyone who takes him seriously is a bloody tool. I think he's funny, I don't think he holds the rights on telling the whole truth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiOJDwNKzGY
And to your point he may very well not have read the manual because he didn't have one. I didn't; I downloaded it.
I will say that DCUO does some things right - the look of the game is great. Gotham looks pretty much exactly like it should. Most of the voiceover work is great though some of it is questionable (though even those are amusing - BRING THE EXOBYTES TO BUHRAINEYACK!).
* Ok, yes, there are some others (moon base, etc), but those are specific to certain missions. You can't hop on over to the Moon and poke around w/o running that mission.
that's the thing i hate about him, his fans are more cult like then nintendo and final fantasy fanboys, yatzhee can say that big motha truck is a better game then super metriod, and people will honestly warship him for that. IMO he is the opposite of a big name game reviewer. people who make reviews with negative all aroundin their reviews is IMO about as untrustworthy as a guy who gives 10's to any game with a high marketing budget. he is funny and do make good points sometime but he is kind of a snob.
also he stated meny times he hate mmo's let alone multiplayer, so i barely take his openion on games where multiplayer is the main selling point with a grain of slut.
The game certainly has flaws, but I strongly disagree combat is one of them. It's a far cry from CoX's sluggish, unresponsive abilities that root you for excruciatingly long animations (perhaps the least mobile I've felt in a superhero MMO) or Champion's bouncy controls and physics that made it feel like like I was in some kind of jumphouse.
The customization is also something I don't understand the complaints about. In CoX, or even Champions to a lesser extent, you can spend hours in the character creator, creating the perfect look for your character, and then... Do what exactly? Getting new looks and armor is something that propels me forward in DCUO just as it did in EQ2 or WoW. While I wouldn't mind seeing a few more baseline parts added to the creator, the unlocking of costume parts is a great incentive to actually, you know, play the game, which I never felt the other superhero MMOs encouraged me to do.
The usual progression in MMORPGs is that you create a wimp, and work your way up into the ultimate badass. In CoX and Champions, you create a badass, and then I guess you kill stuff to make your numbers go up? Being able to see my character evolve as I grow in power is something that, to me, was strongly missing from the superhero genre until DCUO came along.
Of course, this is all personal preference, but to me, DCUO is a breath of fresh air, and criticisms like spammy or clicky combat really make me wonder if I'm playing the same game as other people.
Steam | XBL: Elazual | Last.fm
There's plenty of character customization there. Hell, if the wiki for the game is any indication, there's a metric shit-ton of costume sets that noone has even discovered yet.
Part of the idea behind the early character customization isn't that you're "Captain McAwesome", fresh out from tea-bagging Brainiac's corpse. You're some random jackass who got super-powers, and decided to throw on a costume from whatever he had laying around the house, or whatever he could pick up at the local Hot Topic. I can go with that, since it makes sense, thematically.
The combat is only clicktastic in the same way that brawlers require you to push a bunch of buttons. The only difference is that the PC version narrowed it down to two buttons, rather then three or four.
Alot of his complaints boil down to semantics and overlooking obvious genre tropes. Yes, a brawler in the same vein as, say, Dynasty Warriors, will have alot of clicking. Any brawler will. It's an inescapable part of the territory.
I get the feeling that Yahtzee just booted up the game, made a generic character, then quit about the time he got out of the ship, though.
His review reads like the same type of review that most people do when they review MMO's or games they really don't want to play. They observe the first one or two levels, and make a prediction based on the content of that part of the game. As someone who's had to review a game or two, I can tell you, this never works. Modern MMO's tend to ease you into advanced content concepts, unlike traditional games, which will gladly throw you to the wolves.
That's not questionably bad journalism. It is bad journalism. Which I was under the impression that Yahtzee was, given the early ZP reviews, on some level, trying to avoid.
It disappoints me that people slaver over some guy's word, like he's obligated to tell the truth. Hell, just booting up a video of the character generation process will show most folks that he was blatantly talking out of his ass on this one. Which is surprising, since ZP tends to have a habit of actually highlighting issues with games.
Just a grain? I'd prefer a whole one please!
Anyway yeah Yahtzee has much disdain for MMO's and hasn't kept it a secret. But the fact that he didn't rail on the obvious problems like the PvP exploits, queue'ing problems and the chat system shows he didn't even try.
It was still funny though.
Two for me, please.
And I suppose it should be a good thing to keep in mind that Yahtzee supposedly hates fighting/brawler type games, as well.
Actually, knowing that, I have no fucking clue why he'd bother to review DCUO. It's like a perfect storm of games he'd hate to play and review. It does explain why the review was so shoddy, however, I guess.
However, earlier today I saw a news report on google that said that SOE had to send out a second run of boxes to some locations. Apparently alot of retailers ran out of stock. Which bodes well for the commercial success of the game.
And yeah, this game has plenty of different customizable options. A couple days ago I hit the 250 styles mark without buying any of the "original" options from a vendor. Now, I know there are people who have probably already gotten the 500 feat, but there are still a whole lot more to be collected/found/earned through the various means to do so. I've been flying circles around Otisburg for the last few days trying to find one last collection item to complete the dresden back piece. Our regular 4-man group couldn't look any more different, and some are even wearing the same pieces (different body types, colors, etc.). I'd go so far as saying, after some collecting not just right out of the gate, this game will hands down whip CoX's ass in terms of how many options you can have to customize your character.
Every time I hear people bitching about the customization, they try to justify it by saying that "Well, the character creation system only has ___ many costume options!". Trying to explain that there's a deluge of options actually in-game just causes them to shut down and refuse to listen.
And it's not that mish-mash crap that CO and CoX has, where they make two costume pieces in different locations with the same name, then stop. They are [i[full[/i] sets across every costume piece location that are interlinking and match each other. What's more, they often match across sets, too.
It's a crime that people judge the game based off of the character creation options, when it's been stated many, many times, that the character creation costume options are meant to be "street level" tier costume options. I've got maybe a little over a 100 styles so far, having bought a good deal of the character creation items, and farmed some of the droppable styles, and i've barely tapped into the unlockables.
But then, I guess thinking is hard. Actually doing some research and thinking for yourself instead of listening to the deluge of biased reviewers (And let's be honest, in this day and age, a decent reviewer that maintains their integrity over a long period of time is a rare thing.) that show up in media publications.
On a related note, I've actually had someone use the "But ____ reviewer said so so you're wrong!" excuse on me in regards to this problem in the past. Mind you, I was the one actually playing the game, not the reviewer, who, when I later checked his review, admitted he'd barely touched the thing.
Though that problem doesn't just seem to be limited to game reviews nowadays. Now that anyone can put their opinion out to the public, it seems like alot of folks who aren't qualified to make educated statements are doing so anyways (See, FOX News, practically every pundit ever. Shock jocks, etc, etc.).
* Would be more but I simply cannot stand leveling through the exact same quests _yet again_. The thought of having to do the Booster Gold chains again, as well as picking up umpty bajillion briefings/investigations, makes me sad although I could probably stand that if there were some alternate leveling areas. This aspect may improve over time if they add other cities.
Does a grain of slut qualify as a spinner?
Character customization? You mean powers and such? While Yahtzee's first actual critique against the game regarded the limited options for the character's appearance, he didn't really mention anything about the limited selection of power sets. Closest things to that was him talking about the weirdness of being able to pick a magic-based gadget character and whatnot, and how both 'classes' he picked involved pressing the attack button a lot.
Or do you mean characters' body build? I mean, yeah, though both game's have the same three base builds (small medium and large), DCUO does lack CoH's proportion sliders, so I can see that.
Really though, as a review, it was just bad in general. Some of his videos are like that, focusing more attempting to make fun of a game than actually saying anything of value about it. Which is kinda lazy in this case, as this game does certainly have its flaws, but instead of talking about them, he instead focuses on its clashes with his own view on aesthetics and immersion, as well as things that could have been cleared up by looking through the game's minuscule manual or browsing through the game's targeting and keybind settings.
Apparently this is due to his mic and voice settings being too high! (I hope) i will get his dumb ass to fix it.
i didn't like my martial arts/gadgets guy so much, mainly cause he's a little hard to get used to in PvP fights. I just get owned.
my 2nd hero is a 2h/telekinesis dude, he is soooo much easier and just rapes things. I basically shatter anyone PvP, as long as they aren't super pro at the game or have crazy macros.
i also am only lvl 13 and super newb. name is The SkullKnight, find me and shit.
Steam | XBL: Elazual | Last.fm
there are other heals like aoe, shielding, and such, too. but the heal you need to use on the lowest hp person autotargets the lowest hp person, and also heals yourself too.
Yeah, I didn't really think about it until you mentioned it, but holy shit this takes away a big part of the whole 'staring at bars' thing that used to make me bored with healing in games like WoW. You're not frantically clicking all over the place. All it takes is a little glance to the side of the screen, and if someone is low you hit a button or two. Bam, taken care of, get back to filling your enemies full of lead/energy/slicey bits/your fists. It feels really smooth and a part of combat, as opposed to 'here is the person that sits in the back, and casts these spells in relation to these bars, who is basically completely separate from the fight that's happening'.
Steam | XBL: Elazual | Last.fm
Riale and Pika are both speaking the truth. LOS is important, and you mostly are glancing to look for who's low and healing based off of that.
one thing to be aware of, and it took a day of adjustment, is that you will not really be direct target healing, except for "the lowest health member". your main heals are "lowest health dude" but healers also do a lot of indirect healing. either ground target HOTs, group HOTs, tag a monster with a power and he heals who he hits for a few seconds, or tag a monster with a power and hitting him heals the hitter.
it's pretty varied, and it's pretty engaging, especially when you add the fact that to do any of that healing, you have to be attacking things with combos to regen your blue bar.
my main is pistols/sorc, my wife has a pistols/plant, and i have a buddy that played pistols and hand blast/sorc (he had enough skill points to have both weapons viably spec'ed). ranged attacks while healing is probably the best in groups. my buddy said handblast was faster power regen for when he was playing healer in a group, and he felt pistols did a bit more damage.
haven't really tried melee and healing, but it might get dicey because you won't be totally able to control the health of at least one member in the group (your own. ranged = much easier to not draw agro on yourself).
i've you've played a game that lets you totally customize your UI, and are used to healing that way, it might take some adjustment. my pistol-blast/sorc friend was often pretty annoyed by the fact that your 3 other group members health bars are a long way from your own. (he plays on a 30 inch screen, so i can see that it might be a much bigger glance to look between them...but i will give him crap about having an amazingly powerful gaming rig that made his gaming a bit harder...).
if i had to compare healing in this game to something else, it's similar to a warrior priest in WAR who was spec'ed to do the hybrid dps/healing role, minus about 50% of the risk of being in melee trying that if you pick a ranged weapon skill.
i did as well, til i got to 30. i find the solo challenge missions a lot easier in dps mode. should try one back in healer mode though, it's been a while. new gear might really help.
-or-
1x heal with 135-160% dmg
Or be a nature healer with pterosaur form (I think canine form works similiarly, haven't tried it yet), and have good damage regardless of which form you're in, as well as having constant superhuman power regen. And if you need healing, just shift out of the form to patch yourself up, and then shift back (assuming you've left yourself enough power).
The downside is that you can't use weapon attacks or use break out when in the form, and pterosaur's combat mobility is so bad that I often call it turret form. Still pretty handy, though. Makes some of the challenge mode fights a lot easier, that's for sure.
i'm kinda curious if melee healing is viable, and at this point, i'm not sure sorcery can do it...it would maybe be possible, but i think it would require a very different playing style than what i currently do. along with a very different power loadout.
when you hit 30 and do raids, you'll want to spend your extra points in either bow, dual pistols, or rifle. hand blasters might be ok too. special case martial arts.
anyways, at 30 when raiding/hard alert/whatever, healer/controller need a ranged weapon.
if you have a sorc, everyone everywhere around you should be martial arts :whistle:
Not any more than Sorcery does, I would think.
From what I can tell, the only powers that give an incentive to be in melee range are the pbAoE damage abilities (Savage Growth and Thorn Shield) and certain shapeshift forms (which don't use the character's equipped weapon to attack). Roar requires you to be kinda close for the stun to hit (since it's something of a medium range cone effect), but if you're in healing mode and are just using it for the group heal effect, then you can cast it from just about anywhere.
Lots of good stuff in there. Although I'm surprised that there are no updates for the Gadget power set. I wonder if they just left them out by mistake.