My DCUO beta experience (PS3)

When DCUO was announced I was interested. An MMO where you can create your own hero/villain, fly around and do quest given by DC legends such as Superman or The Joker. Sounds nice. The things that kept me from liking the game even more was that I wasn't really into superheroes, and out of all the DC characters I only know a hand full. Now what got me remotely interested was the fact that it is going to be released on the PS3. An MMO on the PS3 sounds great! I basically had mixed feelings about the game so my expectations weren't that high, and I wouldn't be surprised if the game failed. So I download the beta (it took a few hours to download), and start playing it. The beta left a great impression.

The first thing you do in you do in the beta is select what world (server) you want to create your character in. After that you get you're very own super hero/villain. Since my favorite super hero is Marvels Spider-man I created my hero based off him. I couldn't achieve exactly what I wanted to wear, but I was still happy on the way he looked. He looked like a combination of Spider-man, and Mr. Freeze. I made my mentor Batman, I choose acrobatics for the way I travel, my fighting style was martial arts, and I would use gadgets. Then POOF the game begins.

The beta starts you out on Brainiac ship as one of his escaped experiments so your goal is basically to get out. Through the tutorial I was surprised at how natural the beta felt. It felt like a true PS3 game, not some PC ported MMO. Press square to do a regular attack, triangle to perform a long ranged attack, R1 to block, move the left analog while blocking to roll. It really felt like an action-adventure game. Anyways I go through the tutorial,and fight the boss. Superman gets teleported on the ship to destroy the ship fights along side with you. I didn't really care that I was by his side fighting someone, but I imagine that a DC fan would be satisfied. Once I beat the Boss I get teleported to a police station.

I talk to a police men, and I get my next mission. Its to beat up some of Scarecrows' goons. So I walk outside to the dreary, terrorized Gotham City. I traveled around a bit. The acrobatic way of traveling around is basic. Nothing real special. the few things acrobatic has on flying and super-speed is that you can double jump, climb on walls, and glide (glide can basically be like flying if you get to level 9).

I beat them goons good. The gadgets I used were basic. I had a skill "Taser Whip" which basically brings the enemy near you, adn stuns them for about 3 seconds. So I do the quest get some EXP, and level up. I guess I will skip to when I pass level 10.

I noticed the beta got much more laggy. I started to Easily notice the frame rate dipping. Eventually it froze on me. I said "whatever" turned it of, and back on. Wasn't the first time a beta froze on me. Im playing, and eventually it hits 8:00 pm est. Thats when the beta broke loose on my PS3

I could not play the beta for 20 minutes without it freezing. It REALLY pissed me off. The server I was in was highly populated. I also found it very funny how when I tried to sign back in, and use my character, there was basically a line to log in. I've never seen this in a game so I laughed (Maybe some PC games have it I don't know). It would say I was like number 286. Luckily a person gets signed in every few seconds so about 3-4 minutes later I was back in. Sadly the beta froze in the middle of a fight before so when I spawn, there are like 4 enemies thrashing me. Instead of thinking "Please don't die" I'm thinking "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD IF IT FREEZES AGAIN I'M PUNCHING A BABY!!" I died. I didn't know what happened when I died..whatever. Soooo I try to finish the quest I was on. I go beat some baddies then go back to the police station. Talk to whoever gave me the quest, and get my reward. Then I go back out to Gotham to find my next quest, but I'm a bit hungry, and need to go to the bathroom. So I leave my PS3 on, and get me some munchies. I come back and guess what....it froze. I stared at the beta thinking "STOP PLAYING DEAD." I've had it turn off my PS3 for the day. I then go to bed (Before I go to bed I go to my neighbors house, and punch his toilet. He did't have a baby so I hit the next best thing).

I will now fast forward to when I hit level 20. The beta has been patched a few times. The beta definitely froze on me a lot less (froze maybe once every 2 hours, and about once every hour during 8:00 pm est). So I hit level 20 which is the level cap in the beta, and I did basically all the main quests in the beta. Since I was in a good mood I went around asking people if they wanted help. Typing can be a pain if you don't have a keypad or if you aren't used to the PS3 on-screen keyboard I noticed that interactions between people in the beta was pretty low. So I keep asking. While asking I'm running around using a skill that turns me into a present. So if you were in the PS3 beta, world/server 1, and saw a guy in a police station turning into a present every minute then chances are that was me ^(^-^)^.

A few people asked me to help, and I did. Doing missions can be fun with a group, but I bet the people I were helping were low levels so I was demolishing the bosses so it was to easy. Some had microphones so we talked. The mics in the beta worked nicely. I also added 2 people on the DC beta friends list, but the next day they were not on my friends list (maybe they deleted me D:).

So I check out other things you can do in the beta besides just do quests. I queued for a legend match thing. The one I choose was a capture and hold match. It took an incredibly long time to join (maybe an hour and 30 minutes) so I was helping people do quest while I wait. Eventually it asks me if I want to join, and I start playing. It was a 3v3 I think, and both teams have the same skill because we are all the same character. Batman. So I join capture a place, hold it, kill some bats, die a couple of times, and match ends. Personally I didn't really mind the match it was alright. I wanted to play other legend matches with using different super hero/villains, and modes, but I never did because the beta just wouldn't put me in one. So next I tried out the arena missions.

Arena missions are basically longer regular quests, and it groups you with 3 other people. The interaction here was nice. Anytime I was going to die or I was in need of help, one of my group members came to help me out. The bosses are tough, and there is no way 1 person can take them on by themselves. I liked the arena missions. Now for my favorite moment in the beta.

The beta also have bounty missions were all you do is go out find the enemy, beat the person down and collect your bounty. The bounty isn't easy to get though. From the beta the bounties were the hardest thing to do. They were basically bosses that you can go directly go to. So I go, and do a bounty mission. It was to beat Arkillo. He was in the beautifully destroyed city of Metropolis. So I go. When I find him only 1 person is fighting him. I'm guessing he just started fight Arkillo because he basically had full health, and so did Arkillo. So I go, and join the fight. Me, and him die a few times, and spawn not far away from Arkillo. SO we keep going at it. At like our 3rd deaths some other guy joins in, and then in the chat log some guy is asking to join a group to go fight Arkillo. He comes with 2 other people,and now its 6 people vs Arkillo. Arkillo was no joke. Even with 6 people his health went down at a moderate rare. Eventually some weird bug (maybe not a bug) kicked in.

Arkillo would fly slowly away, disappear, and then reappear where he was before he flew away with full health. We thought it was a 1 time thing so we just kept fighting him. Then he did it again. By the 3rd time a few people are shouting "help fight Arkillo" and things similar to that. Eventually it was like 13 people vs Arkillo. It was great. People are flying shooting beams at him. Some are running around him. There were 2 wolfs, and me and some 4 other people were just right up on Arkillo. Arkillo died fast. It was really awesome to say that many people teaming up on 1 person. I don't play MMOs that much so this was basically the first time me and over ten people who all don't know each other fighting 1 enemy. It was really cool. Everyone is doing victory gestures, and cheering.

I created another character (a villain) in a PvE world because I wanted to try it out. It was alright. The first quest I did tho was being ravaged by 1 or 2 level 20 heroes just trying to piss people off (since it was the first quest I did with the newly created character so everyone around me was about level 5). Eventually like 6 or 7 villains (including me) ganged up on 1 of the heroes. It felt good that I was a level 5 villain, and I bat I level 20 hero (with help of course). The PvE world was kind of what I expected to be. Same thing as the PvP world except from time to time you might get beat by an player.

Also I decided to play the game 1 last time on the last day on the beta. So I log into 1 of my other my characters (it was the villain). I go in and find out there servers will be shutdown in 3 minutes. I'm guessing this time it will be for good (for the beta). So I travel around Metropolis 1 last time, and I decide to go to a club (villains version of a police station). Right when I go to the club I see that there is 40 seconds left, but right when I land to go into the safe house, some crazy AI comes out of nowhere, and is killing all the villains. I join in the fight.The villain hit me twice, and I died. Then while I'm dead I still see the other villains trying to fight back. They all dropped in about 20 seconds. The AI was ridiculously strong.

Gaming and the direction it's going..

Hey guys, this is my first blog post, so don't be mad if I make a few mistakes =D

I've noticed that gaming appears to be going in the direction a lot of things have been going in lately, the way of Copying..

In the beginning gaming was about ideas and innovation, well.. Not anymore, gaming is becoming more about quantity and less about quality, Money is all that appeals to people these days (Sure, we need money to do everything, but where has the creativity gone!?), game after game after game of the same thing, over and over again, especially in the FPS Genre.

Gaming is a lot of fun, but it tends to get sour when everyone is making something exactly the same to others, sure there are some games that have massive amounts of innovation, but a lot of those games tend to go unnoticed due to the people that just enjoy the same thing, cause they don't want to try something new.

But in the end, some games do prevail such as LittleBigPlanet or Battlefield, but eventually they get forgotten unless they are extremely well made and enjoyable.

All I'm saying is, gaming needs to be more about entertainment, innovation and ideas, otherwise, the games we are going to get from now on, are going to be one's we've already played but slightly re-made with new maps, engine upgrades and new items/weapons.

vaistrat To Anon & Sony

My name is Dan, pleased to meet you.

We are not Anonymous.We are The Gamers.

Our core goals aren't political nor aesthetic.

We did not ask to be pushed into GNU vs Proprietary wars.

We just want to own the hardware and buy the software at lower, reasonable prices, preferably paid directly and/or mostly to the developers.

We don't feel the need to hide.
We won't put up anymore with greedy companies(Activision, CAPCOM, Squeenix) nor invisible unpredictable lamers who further compromise our already tight freedoms.

You won't have to expect us, we were here long before Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft or Anonymous, yet we grew together and fed each other.

We core gamers -as any specific group of human beings- have ONE weapon, amongst many (Loyalty, easeness to work as a group, critical thinking, passion, reflexes and imagination), that identify and bind us all.

We Never Give Up.

Cease and desist on this charade soon, or start losing money and time on both fronts.

Game A Vs. Game B, or Game X Compared To Game Y.

Well, if you've ever been on the front page, then you've seen some of these type articles. They can range from comparing the Grand theft auto series to Saints Row, or Battlefield 3 to Modern Warfare 3, and of course the Xbox 360 Exclusive to the PS3 Exclusive type of articles.

I am not comparing any game to another game, no that's not what I wanted to address in this blog, rather I wanted to address the comparisons themselves.

Well, the Grand Theft Auto series is Twelve years this year, and the first Saints Row came out in 2006. Saints Row's third entry is coming out this year, and the last entry in the main Grand Theft Auto series came out in 2008, and was GTAIV. Saints Row started out on the 360, and then the second one came out on the PS3, PC, and 360. GTA Started out on the PC, and then made its way on the PSone.

Saints Row was developed by Volition, and published by THQ. Rockstar subsidiaries have developed all the GTA games, and Rockstar Games has published them all.(Sidenote Rockstar North was DMA design before changing their name.) Ok, so that's the history of both the games, and their respective publishers/developers.

Now, for Gameplay. Both Saints Row, and GTA are both third-person games, and sandbox games. However the Grand Theft Auto series has evolved it's Gameplay, because you can no longer parachute(Save for The Ballad of Gay Tony). Rockstar wanted GTA IV to have a more realistic approach to the gameplay. GTAIV is fun, but it's not as much fun as say San Andreas.

Saints Row is fun, but it's fun in a completely different way, I mean sure it'd be fun as hell to go streaking in GTA, but I've put a fair amount of time in both, and I like them for different reasons.

Also it's not fair to compare GTA's humor to Saints Row's, because again they both take a different approach to it. Grand Theft Auto is a satire of the American life, and Saints Row is a parody, and the difference is in the Color scheme, GTA is more brown, and muddy, while Saints Row is Colorful.

It's harder to say things like this about the Battlefield 3, and the Modern Warfare comparisons, because they're both FPS set in Modern times. The only thing I can tell you is that if you enjoy Battlefield more than Modern Warfare, or vice versa then, the solution is simple buy the game that YOU like more, and this goes for all game comparisons. This actually goes for all media.