I play a lot of DC Universe Online. I mostly play on the PC, but I’ve been known to play it on the PlayStation 4 now and then, and both those platforms support game pad and keyboard, and both have their own support for the voice communication that is so vital when playing an action-oriented MMO.
I’m picky about the MMOs I play, as I want to be sure I can really devote myself to one for a significant amount of time before I start one. I’ve been playing DCUO now for eight years — the same number of years I played the original EverQuest. It’s weird that I have played so long and still play so poorly… but that’s a whole ‘nother post that I will probably never write.
Anyway… I have a Nintendo Switch, I play DCUO, it’s free, why not try it? What could possibly go wrong?
This is actually the perfect time to pick up DCUO. Daybreak is celebrating DCUO’s tenth anniversary this month, and one of the benefits is a free boost to the max level of 30 and enough gear for a combat rating of 290, as well as a free 75 skill points to spend however you like, and a leveled-up artifact of your choice. PlayStation and PC players get the same benefits, as well.
This won’t bring a new character up to the latest content (requiring a combat rating of 310 or better), but it’s not far from it, and a serious player could make up the difference fairly quickly.
The game itself is a straight port. The graphics are significantly lower resolution, which is really obvious when the Switch is connected to a monitor, but doesn’t look too bad on the Switch’s built-in screen.
Because I didn’t feel like spending money on the Switch version, and since it doesn’t share accounts or servers with the PC/PS versions, I wasn’t able to create a character with the powersets I have some familiarity with, Munitions and Electricity. I went with Fire instead. Daybreak says Fire is the most common power set.
Prototype for the Fire powerset? The Flash. The guy who got hit by lightning, has a lightning bolt on his costume as his emblem, and shoots lightning from his hands and follows him around when he runs. They give him the Fire power set.
DC literally has a character named Fire, whose power is Fire, and who is actually in the game so they would already have her model.
Actually, the cognitive dissonance is so bad that I forgot I passed over The Flash’s weird Fire and went with Batman’s Gadget build instead. You can see how much time I put into playing Gidget Girl. Well, at least I got to write my Fire rant.
That it plays exactly like the PC/PS versions is a mixed blessing.
A PlayStation player, or a PC player who plays with a gamepad (as I do), will feel right at home… as long as they have a keyboard connected to their Switch, for chatting, and a monitor connected to their Switch, so they can see what’s going on, and a Pro controller so they can not have to use the joycons…
And then that player will have a low resolution version of the game, with significantly lower population servers than other players enjoy — PC and PS players share the same servers, but Switch players do not.
But if a Switch is all you have, and you really want to play DCUO — well, it will do the job. DCUO itself is oftentimes fun, and the grind isn’t really that bad if you just want to play casually.
For me, I won’t be playing it on the Switch. I can’t access my actual characters, and I have both a PC and a PlayStation, both of which have a better playing experience. But for others… I’d heard that DCUO servers for the Switch were dead, but when I popped in for a few minutes around lunch time, there were a decent number of players around. I’m not sure if they, like me, were also players boosted to near max combat rating, but even if they were, it’s a nice thing for Daybreak to do in order to get all the players on more-or-less current content, rather than spread out among ten years of empty raids and war fronts.
I would much rather they’d made a UI more suited for the Switch… DCUO is a huge money maker for Daybreak, and the game has gone ten years without any UI enhancements. Do one for the Switch, and then bring it back to the PC/PS versions. Now that would be something cool 馃檪
I have been reading and watching the Flash in one form or another since the mid 1960s and I had no idea he could shoot lightning bolts from his hands. In fact, I was so sure he couldn’t I was going to pop in and say so. Only I know how fast these things change in comics so I did my due diligence and checked his powers on Superherocentral. Apparently, yes he can! He can also do a whole bunch of other things I had no idea he was capable of, including healing people. There’s even a theory he may be the most powerful hitter of all DCs heroes, even more powerful than Superman, thanks to his ability to perform something called the “infinite mass punch”.
Of course, in DCUO I bet he mostly just stands around and gives advice before sending people infinitisemally less powerful than he is out to do his job…
He did it all the time in the TV series, anyway 馃槢
And THAT’S THE OTHER THING! The Justice League is SO USELESS! If we exobyte heroes/villains hadn’t shown up, the world would have been overrun DOZENS OF TIMES by now! I, personally, have outfought SUPERMAN. Let that sink in. I have killed the SPECTRE, who is supposed to be an inviolate force of NATURE. Just yesterday, while exploring after writing the article, I soloed BIZARRO SUPERMAN.
Cool look at the game. I was wondering about the Switch version and had thought about grabbing it on my Switch Lite, if only because it is free and all that and I wouldn’t mind something I can go play on the couch because I sit at my desk all day long for work, which has a tendency to make carrying on to game afterwards a bit wearing at times. I found the UI annoying back at launch because it was so clearly controller oriented, but on a console that would be fine.
I prefer the gamepad, even on the PC version, but the rest of Team Spode are adamant that mouse and keyboard is the only way they can play. Nah, I use gamepad with every game that supports it. It’s easier to play games with a gamepad when you have a cat on your lap.