All Hail Trigon!!

A game I have been looking forward to playing DC Universe for a very long time (since first seeing it in action!) and when it went free to play I got my chance.

The first thing I should start off by saying is that in the first week of free-play, DCUO had a lot of lag and disconnect issues but they very quickly implemented fixes and upgraded the servers. I don't think anyone was expecting the influx they received.

Secondly I was not impressed with their character creator, Not in comparison with many other MMOs I've played. You can't change the facial structure or specific details of the characters, as well as the selection of costume pieces being very limited. However when you get in-game you can collect items that will unlock more costume styles as you play, So you might end up getting the exact look you want after you create the character.

The fact that the game is set in the DC Universe means there are a lot of iconic characters running around the place. This helps immerse you in the game a lot more than if you had a bunch of made-up-on-the-spot characters telling you what to do. Everyone knows Batman, Superman and Joker and knows at least some of their story giving you some angle to enter the story at.
Another story aspect that completely blew me away was the introduction cinematic. It is the single greatest explanation of a character's appearance in an MMO that I've seen and a fantastic trailer regardless. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AnQ-p4cU8w this is the best version I could find. Watch in 1080p and full screen for best results.)

The actual game play is very good. It is a huge change to something like WOW where it is completely gear and skill tree based. In DCUO you can have a very strange combination of skills and still do just as well as someone with "optimal" skills, in PVE. The quests are all story based and very entertaining but you can sometimes find that they drag on a little bit too much. You could be collecting 25 of something when 10 would have suited just as well.

The PVP in DCUO is rather imbalanced, stuns are king and nothing is going to change that. If you have a hotbar of six stuns you can pretty much beat anyone. This is sometimes good as a low level player can actually beat a max level player is they are skilled and fast enough, but if you get caught out in any way you are going to die and there really is not much you can do about it.
There is an arena called legends where you pick an Iconic Hero/Villain and you play as them an in the beginning arenas you are all on the same baseline and it is fairly balanced, but as soon as you meet people who have been able to unlock other characters it becomes unbalanced again.

DC Universe Online is a fantastic game and with a few PVP and PVE tweaks will be one of the greatest MMOs out there but as it is at the moment it has a few too many issues to hold that title. This however didn't stop me paying for the Premium account as I know I will play it for a long time to come.
If you like DC Comics/Universe then definitely give the free version of the game a try as it certainly tickles that spot for a comic book nerd like me.

Not so twirly after all...

Steam recently released a bunch of Free To Play games as well as making Team Fortress 2 Free To Play.

One of the games I tried out was Spiral Knights a very simple and fun hack and slash game.

The premise of the game is that you are a group of Knights called Spiral Knights and your spaceship has crash landed on an alien planet. It is up to you to venture into the depths of the planet and find minerals and materials in order to power your ship and be able to build supplies.

The game is very very simplistic, not to say that is not actually challenging. There are (as far as I have seen) no skills or talents to learn. Instead you have a large range of "levelled" equipment that you can buy or craft, all of which perform the same function but with slightly different special abilities (such as resistance to fire or higher damage). The equipment has a star rating between zero and five, zero being your starter gear and five being the recipes you gain at the lowest levels.

You have the choice of three weapons; a Sword, a Gun and a Bomb. There are also three pieces of armour you can use; Chest, Helmet and Shield. Using any combination of these three weapons you can have a variety of styles with which to fight your way through the levels.

The deeper you travel in the world the tougher the levels and enemies get. You will receive less beneficial drops and it will cost you more energy to travel downwards but the rewards, both monetary and recipe-wise, get better.

The simplicity of the game as well as it being completely Free To Play, immediately makes it worthwhile. I can see myself playing this game for a long time to come.

Magical in a runeish sorta way...

My recent forays into indie/cheap games has lead me to a lovely replacement for a terrible(y-addictive) game by the name of WoW.

Runes of Magic is a free to play, micro transaction, MMO. It is very similar to wow (as any MMO tends to be) But it is created completely from scratch and does not try to be like wow.

You start off as either a human or an elf (new races will get added with each new expansion they decide to release) and can choose a selection of classes.

These classes can be a very crucial choice as later on in the game you can choose a second class that you want to spec into. You will get specific skills depending on the class combination as well as the general skills of each class. This i think is a very very cool way of making classes unique. You could be a warrior/priest and be able to tank and heal yourself or a mage/warrior and be able to deal immense damage AS WELL as getting the unique class combination skills.

I decided to play as a Rogue/Scout as it allows me to do close combat stealthy style and very good long range attacks and the two classes both rely on one stat as the primary.

As you continue on into the game you find you need to learn professions such as mining, woodcutting and herbology.
You can learn every profession in the game but you can only max out a limited amount of them. Each profession will give you specific benefits at higher levels but you have to choose carefully which benefits you really want before you level them up.

I haven't played enough yet to get to the higher levels but i think i might possibly go with leather working (as i can wear leather) and some sort of magic oriented profession such as alchemy to offset being a purely physical class.

There are some really neat features in the game such as the dual-class system, pvp dungeons, pure solo play, temporary mount rewards very early (as soon as you complete the easy tutorial), a teleport system from pretty much any location but for me the most important feature is the fact that there are no queues. There are over 4 million players registered on the game (and rising) and they decided to provide enough free places for everyone to join without having to queue. This in itself is a fantastic reason to play as most server based games will not give you the instant join ability.

Aside from all this the game does have a few issues, quests can be a bit tedious and ask for a few too many items to be collected etc, some of the later game stuff is apparently not working correctly (yet), and there isn't any way (as far as ive found) to find a specific trainer/location/etc (such as in wow asking the town guards). These are all minor issues and so far can be worked around by the smallest amount of work. (I have suggested implementations on the forums that might help but who knows if they'll be taken into account)

However overall i have had no issues with this game (so far) and have found it very enjoyable, even playing by myself, there are alot of things to do and places to see (and more coming all the time), Having a few friends to play along with would make the experience even better as far as i can see.

I give this game 4 and a half dead Darryl's out of 5! (and sure its free so ya aint gonna lose out anything by trying it!)