DC Universe Online E3 Previews

A couple more websites are offering up previews of DC Universe Online, based on what was seen of SOE’s superhero MMORPG during E3.

An excerpt from Eurogamer:

The design helps, of course. This is legendary comic book artist Jim Lee’s take on DC’s roster, which means massive, hulking characters, exaggerated poses and primary-colour landscapes. With Lee serving as executive creative director, he’s been in a position to influence almost all visual aspects of the game, his own team sketching plans for everything from the lampposts to the death rays, wet-washing Metropolis – one of the game’s large hub areas – into existence in a shimmering wave of golds and silvers, and digging out the Batcave in angular stabs of blacks, greys, and dark, mossy, greens.

The result is an overarching style that can almost rival the coherence brought by Blizzard’s art teams. MMOs – like comic book universes, come to think of it – are the work of hundreds of different people, often evolving over an unusually lengthy period of time; the highest compliment you can pay DCUO is that it’s starting to look like the result of one person’s vision.

And a snip from Gaming Union:

The combat is looking very impressive even at this early stage. It’s action-oriented, so the player’s attention is more focused on what’s happening on screen than what timers they need to keep an eye on. The UI complements this with its deceptively simple look. It gives you 4 abilities, with three different stances to organize them. This lets any character perform the three main roles in an MMO: tanking, DPSing, and healing/buffing. Compared to most every MMO available to date, this UI seems more simplistic; however this is also a game to be released on the PS3 and the majority of those players won’t have the multitude of keys a PC player will. Part of this decision is probably due to the fact that PS3 and PC players will be playing together, on the same servers. Players can also combine their powers, for example one player laid down an AOE fire move, and then a second player chucked a boulder through the fire for a much more powerful attack. If SOE maintains the focus they have on the action, rather than the cooldown, then their formula should work.