Some reviewers piss me off

One would think that when you are writing an article about a game, or something game-related, you'd do a bit of research about the topic to make sure that you are presenting facts to support your opinions.

A few weeks ago, a local paper wrote an article about the lack of non-sexualized heroines in gaming today. While it was an interesting piece, and something I do agree with, there was one nitpicky item that I did not agree with. The author talked about the (at that time) soon-to-be-released Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 and the looks of the female characters in the game. He said:

All the female characters are impossibly top-heavy and wearing outfits that would be a hella lot more functional and effective at a fetish Halloween party at the Inferno than an actual fisticuffs throwdown. Practically speaking, most of the costumes, especially Morrigan and her winged vampire getup, would shred and/or fall off with the first punch or sweep kick.

While he is right and that most of the costumes are skimpy at best, I do take offense at the author's inability to do research on the character he is referencing. Yes, Morrigan is scantily clad and her outfit doesn't leave much to the imagination, but that's because she is a succubus. Not some floozy in a "winged vampire getup", but a demon that will devour your soul while riding your johnson. It also makes me wonder if he realized that she was from the Darkstalkers series of games and even bothered to look into that. If he had, then I'm pretty sure there would have been a comment about Felicia and how the catgirl is even less clothed than Morrigan.

Now, because of this lack of knowledge and misinformation, I look at the author's reviews a lot more critically. I really don't take what he has to say with much credibility, and I wonder if he even puts much effort into some of these games he's reviewing and/or discussing.

From my recliner

So, the last few weeks, I've been dryhumping DC Universe Online like it's going out of style. I've leveled 3 30's from two of the mentors (would have done all 3 mentors, but there was a minor communication error between a friend of mine and I).

Anyway, I've been playing the crap out of this game, and I'm ready to slap some informational opinions down on the table. This game has all of the early release bugs that most of us have come to expect from a MMO at launch. Bugs galore, glitches that are problematic, crashes, server downtime, and many other things. However, I've accepted that as a launch MMO there would be problems, as I personally have never played nor heard of a MMO at launch that worked flawlessly.

Things I like:

1. Leveling is not a grind, it's frikken easy as hell, and especially easy if you have a partner or two. The quests all chain off of one another so it's one quest to another, in a fairly linear way, but not so much that you feel as though there's only one path to take. The mob grind is not there as the only reason to grind mobs is either for styles (collectible looks for your char) or maybe money? I have no idea why you'd grind mobs to be honest.

2. Built in voice chat. There have been a few problems with it thus far, but for the most part it works fine. It's nice to be able to group up with people and just chat while not doing anything or while leveling. Voice is also obviously nice for coordination in the higher level content.

3. Addictive. It's addictive, but maybe that's just my personality and I like being addicted to games damn it. Don't judge me.

4. I play tipped back in a recliner. For real, if you can't agree that playing a MMO from a relaxed state in a recliner, then you're retarded and I can no longer interact with you.

5. more to add possibly, but I'm sick of being positive.

Things I don't like:

1. Gear. My biggest problem with this game by far. I have no idea why recent MMO's have went to this tiered gear system, but this one does it as well. The gear you have while you level is almost meh, but when you hit 30, all of the sudden gear matters for what you are trying to get done. To get the better gear (tier1) you have a few options, you can do quests called "dailys" which net you 2 marks of allegiance which ten of those are worth one mark of triumph, the currency that is used to buy the tier 1 gear. You can do duo's which net about 4 marks of triumph per duo (currently 4) which are easy IF YOU HAVE TWO SPECIFIC CLASSES otherwise don't try, just do dailys. The final option you have is to do hard alerts, which net 5-7 triumph, but require 4 people and they have to be THE RIGHT CLASSES. If you go into a hard alert with the wrong class setup (1 tank 1 dps 1 contoller 1 healer) then you are wasting your time and in game money on repairs. They have also chosen to limit how many of each mark you can earn per day, this in and of itself isn't really a problem as you'd have to invest more time than I play (read an unhealthy amount as I'm borderline at the moment) to get more than what they limit you to, but what the hell is the point of limiting someone's ability to earn? The marks aren't tradeable soooooo ????? I'm left scratching my noggin.

2. The UI. I'm playing the ps3 version so this may not be the case for the PC, but the UI is laggy as hell and it drives me crazy. I just memorized the cities (probably would have happened anyway if I continue playing) just so I would never have to check my map or access my journal so I could get the little arrow as to where to go. It is clunky, laggy, and locks up at times. The devs need to work on this.

3. The main story plays very little into the overall happenings of the world. The idea is Brainiac tricked both the heroes and villans into fighting and then after they killed one another off took over. Ok, fine beginning, but it plays very little into the overall world happenings. There is a series of quests at the beginning, and then another at the end that deals with that, but other than that the Brainiac forces are in the world, but they play no role in the game as far as I see. I guess this isn't a HUGE problem, but I guess I was expecting it to play a more major role in what was going on.

4. PVP. Yep it has it, but I don't understand the purpose of it. Maybe it's just my ignorance of the game, but it's really just a quick button mash fest to earn marks of victory. These are used to purchase PVP gear, yes the PVP gear is different than the PVE gear and you need different marks for both read above bitch about gear, the only saving grace here is that they don't limit the PVP marks like they do PVE marks. In my opinion the pvp is just tacked on and if you have a semi-competent group of players with semi-decent class make up for a team you win if you just simply stick together.

5. More to come I'm sure.

That's my initial quick and dirty of DC:O I'll probably retouch on this subject after awhile and revisit this discussion, until now you get a little bit of info on it anyway!

-BroodFather