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NYCC 2009 - DC Universe Online

Editor's note: I'm still pretty darn worn out from the frenetic pace of New York Comic-Con this past weekend. My entire body hurts. Expect a good amount of post-con reporting over the next few days as I sift through my notes, photos, and edit together a few videos which will hopefully be fairly rad. For now, though, let's just start off with something easy, the first massively multiplayer online game to officially license characters and scenarios from one of the biggest pop-culture publishers in the world...oh lord, what am I doing?

One of the biggest crowd-pleaser games at New York Comic-Con was Sony Online Entertainment's DC Universe Online. The massively multiplayer online action title was set up for anyone to play using either keyboard and mouse or or the Playstation DualShock3 and there was a panel discussion about the game featuring several members of Sony's design team along with human-style-guide Jim Lee and story and scenario writers Geoff Johns and Marv Wolfman. Those names should sound very familiar to you if you're read any superhero comics in the past twenty years or so.

That they referred to it as an MMO action game rather than an MMO RPG is very telling in what we saw from the presentation and our play sessions. It plays just like all the other open-world action brawlers, only you're playing with other people to either cooperate or compete in objectives which are continuously sent to you from the game's servers (cleverly disguised in Hero mode as Oracle from Batman and Justice League). Run, jump, smash, repeat, no arcane spell casting.

Up All Night: Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe

Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe is the touching story of a portal to Outworld that fell in love with an inter-dimensional Boom tube. And though their love was star-crossed, they nevertheless had a child: a totally ripped jack-o-lantern that they named Dark Kahn because they were exceptionally lazy. Dark Kahn has a secret fantasy: he wants to make two universes into a single worthless universe full of planet shards. To do this, he uses his magical power: the ability to make people who fight a lot already fight even more. Yes, Dark Kahn does lack a basic understanding of the relationship between cause and effect.

This is my interpretation of the endless wave of nonsense that Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe spews at the player in the mode it has the gall to call “story.” And it gets worse, attempting to explain hours upon hours of violent misunderstandings as a result of ill-defined “Kombat Rage”. That’s probably not an excuse to try at your next court hearing, but hey, Superman will believe anything.

So yeah, this is a game that was seemingly crafted for enjoying after a 3AM all-eggnog bender. It’s brightly colored, made for playing with others, and relentlessly stupid from beginning to end. It’s a stupid that goes much deeper than insane plot, too—for example, I would dare you to explain how Scorpion and Sub-Zero are able to get along, or anything about the character design of Booby McCantUseZippers…I mean, Catwoman.

Screen Test: Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe

Okay, okay. Look. I am, in spite of myself, pretty interested in MK vs. DCU. The positive impressions coming out of E3, the neat fight-ninjas-whilst-plummeting-from-a-cliff play, hell, even the Joker’s fatality have all made the game sound like it might be fun. I can imagine Mortal Kombat being fun again. Not great, but fun, certainly.

Here’s the thing, though. You do not put a screenshot of your game on the internet that has Wonder Woman looking like she’s the one who both smelt and dealt it. You do not have the word “RAGE!” appear above her in that screenshot.

about the blogger

John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Hooksexup, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.

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