DCU Online First Impressions: Character Creation
I’ve created a few toons already, but to test the limitations of the creation process: I set out to create Nerf Man based off of Dave’s Halloween costume.
Whenever you create a new toon you see the opening cinematics. The cinematic is absolutely AMAZING (And they either got Mark Hamil and Kevin Conroy for Joker and Batman or VERY good impersonators). But, it is also long and kind of annoying to have to skip through both parts if, like me, you just want to create all your toons before all the cool names are taken.
Here are only the first 6 minutes of the cinematic (it goes for about 9 - 10 total):
When creating a new character, the first thing you’re asked is to choose the gender and build. There are only 3 basic body shapes for men and 3 for women. If you were looking to make an Uncle Milton type of hero or a female hero that looks more like the current
Supergirl instead of Power Girl (you know, with boobs smaller than her head) you’re out of luck. This isn’t going to bother 99% of the people playing this game, but such a simple limitation bugs me for some reason.
The next option you are given is to use an existing hero/villain as your template or you can build one from scratch. If you do choose the template version, it will assign your morality alignment, power set, transportation mode, weapon choice, personality, and color schemes based off of that power (bald females based off of Lex Luthor for the lulz).
Personally, I recommend using the “Custom” mode.
Assuming you chose “Custom”, the next thing you’ll be asked is what sort of personality you want. This is purely cosmetic and determines how you move, interact with NPCs, etc. The choices were “Powerful”, “Serious”, “Flirty”, or “Comical”. For Nerf Man, I went with “Comical”.
The next option lets you choose what powers you want. The options are “Fire” (tanking by causing high threat with your flames or DPS doing the same), “Ice” (Tanking using slows and freezes or somehow dps), “Gadget” (CC/dps using traps, tazers, etc), Nature
(Healing or DPS… also includes the shapeshifter abilities), “Mystical” (buff/debuff bot or DPS with Warlock Pets), and “Psychic” (DPS with Telekinesis or CC). Obviously, Nerf Man is a Gadget user.
Up next is a biggie (yes, bigger than your actual powers): Travel Mode.
The options for Travel are Flight (pick any number of comic book characters), Acrobatic (supposed to be for Bat-Man types, but looks more Spider-Man in game), and Super Speed (definitely the “Speedforce” type of super-speed). Nerf Man is an acrobat. Sorry, Dave: They just didn’t have “Pickup Truck” as a transportation option.
Now that you’ve got those relatively big decisions out of the way we can move on to… oh, wait… that’s right: Weapons! A good / bad thing about this game is the weapon selection process. Good because there are about a dozen different options. Bad, because you’re locked into your choice for the duration of your character’s existence (IE: You can't make a Deadpool type toon that uses both guns and swords). For Nerf Man, I went with dual pistols (he starts with semi-automatics… but you buy Nerf looking pistols from the very first vendor).
Now that the way your character functions inside the game has been decided; it’s time to get him / her dressed and ready for action.
There are A LOT of choices in every category. Off the top of my head, you can customize your skin, hair, facial hair, hat/helmet, mask/eye effects, chest armor, what logo you want on said chest armor, back/cape (including giving yourself at least 3 different types of wings), pants, belt, and boots. The best part? Once you're done you can lock those appearance slots so any new gear gives you the stat bonuses without ruining the look you spent probably an hour creating!
After all that is done, you move on to your color pallet where you can adjust your 3 primary colors that will carry over from any piece of armor or weapons you get (which, as anyone who has played WoW can tell you is a HUGE deal and also made Nerf Man's blaster pistols have a blue and yellow motif) and then adjust each piece of gear individually (as a mix and match of the 3 primary colors... a slight limitation as seen in Birdman's mask), the color of your eyes, hair, and skin.
I’ll have to ask Amanda for her opinion, but I’m pretty certain that the dress options in “DCU: Online” outnumbers “The Sims” franchise by a long-shot.
Hit the next key and you’ll be asked to choose your name. Another nice thing that this game has going for it is it accepts a blank space, “-“ and numbers as valid characters (hence being able to make “Nerf Man” instead of “Nerfman”). They aren’t very strict with naming policies (other than copyright infringement) so I’ve already seen a “F1restorm” and the dreaded “XxNamexX” in the limited time I’ve played.
Here are some pictures of Nerf Man and Harvey Birdman. DCU:O has "Print Screen" disabled, so I had to actually go ghetto and take a picture of my monitor.
Next post: Review of game play mechanics (I haven’t done enough yet to give a fair review beyond this piece of advice: USE A MOUSE. Trackpad + DCU = frustration).
Whenever you create a new toon you see the opening cinematics. The cinematic is absolutely AMAZING (And they either got Mark Hamil and Kevin Conroy for Joker and Batman or VERY good impersonators). But, it is also long and kind of annoying to have to skip through both parts if, like me, you just want to create all your toons before all the cool names are taken.
Here are only the first 6 minutes of the cinematic (it goes for about 9 - 10 total):
Click to viewWhen creating a new character, the first thing you’re asked is to choose the gender and build. There are only 3 basic body shapes for men and 3 for women. If you were looking to make an Uncle Milton type of hero or a female hero that looks more like the current
Supergirl instead of Power Girl (you know, with boobs smaller than her head) you’re out of luck. This isn’t going to bother 99% of the people playing this game, but such a simple limitation bugs me for some reason.
The next option you are given is to use an existing hero/villain as your template or you can build one from scratch. If you do choose the template version, it will assign your morality alignment, power set, transportation mode, weapon choice, personality, and color schemes based off of that power (bald females based off of Lex Luthor for the lulz).
Personally, I recommend using the “Custom” mode.
Assuming you chose “Custom”, the next thing you’ll be asked is what sort of personality you want. This is purely cosmetic and determines how you move, interact with NPCs, etc. The choices were “Powerful”, “Serious”, “Flirty”, or “Comical”. For Nerf Man, I went with “Comical”.
The next option lets you choose what powers you want. The options are “Fire” (tanking by causing high threat with your flames or DPS doing the same), “Ice” (Tanking using slows and freezes or somehow dps), “Gadget” (CC/dps using traps, tazers, etc), Nature
(Healing or DPS… also includes the shapeshifter abilities), “Mystical” (buff/debuff bot or DPS with Warlock Pets), and “Psychic” (DPS with Telekinesis or CC). Obviously, Nerf Man is a Gadget user.
Up next is a biggie (yes, bigger than your actual powers): Travel Mode.
The options for Travel are Flight (pick any number of comic book characters), Acrobatic (supposed to be for Bat-Man types, but looks more Spider-Man in game), and Super Speed (definitely the “Speedforce” type of super-speed). Nerf Man is an acrobat. Sorry, Dave: They just didn’t have “Pickup Truck” as a transportation option.
Now that you’ve got those relatively big decisions out of the way we can move on to… oh, wait… that’s right: Weapons! A good / bad thing about this game is the weapon selection process. Good because there are about a dozen different options. Bad, because you’re locked into your choice for the duration of your character’s existence (IE: You can't make a Deadpool type toon that uses both guns and swords). For Nerf Man, I went with dual pistols (he starts with semi-automatics… but you buy Nerf looking pistols from the very first vendor).
Now that the way your character functions inside the game has been decided; it’s time to get him / her dressed and ready for action.
There are A LOT of choices in every category. Off the top of my head, you can customize your skin, hair, facial hair, hat/helmet, mask/eye effects, chest armor, what logo you want on said chest armor, back/cape (including giving yourself at least 3 different types of wings), pants, belt, and boots. The best part? Once you're done you can lock those appearance slots so any new gear gives you the stat bonuses without ruining the look you spent probably an hour creating!
After all that is done, you move on to your color pallet where you can adjust your 3 primary colors that will carry over from any piece of armor or weapons you get (which, as anyone who has played WoW can tell you is a HUGE deal and also made Nerf Man's blaster pistols have a blue and yellow motif) and then adjust each piece of gear individually (as a mix and match of the 3 primary colors... a slight limitation as seen in Birdman's mask), the color of your eyes, hair, and skin.
I’ll have to ask Amanda for her opinion, but I’m pretty certain that the dress options in “DCU: Online” outnumbers “The Sims” franchise by a long-shot.
Hit the next key and you’ll be asked to choose your name. Another nice thing that this game has going for it is it accepts a blank space, “-“ and numbers as valid characters (hence being able to make “Nerf Man” instead of “Nerfman”). They aren’t very strict with naming policies (other than copyright infringement) so I’ve already seen a “F1restorm” and the dreaded “XxNamexX” in the limited time I’ve played.
Here are some pictures of Nerf Man and Harvey Birdman. DCU:O has "Print Screen" disabled, so I had to actually go ghetto and take a picture of my monitor.
Next post: Review of game play mechanics (I haven’t done enough yet to give a fair review beyond this piece of advice: USE A MOUSE. Trackpad + DCU = frustration).