DCUO Review: Part 1

DC Universe Online so far has had a relatively (in MMO terms) smooth launch. Despite some very variable reviews, including ones which I personally feel are so off-base they might as well be on a different planet, generally the action MMORPG has been well received, despite criticism (unfair perhaps, but certainly something to be listened to) that the game is merely a direct console port. I won't disagree that certainly the console side has clearly impacted on the games design. But I personally feel that if you're going to take the cross-platform approach, which for many games companies is the ultimate holy grail to be honest, a subscription MMO game that you can hit PC users AND console users with, you're going to have to at some point hit compromises between the platforms. Sony so far in the pre-launch phase, the launch itself and the now post launch phase have though some issues, and certainly some things they should also be praised for. The things they need to address and the challenges they've set themselves are, in my eyes, the community communication strategy, the on-going content pledge, the RP servers, the buddy code issues (only if you get a collectors edition? What?) and the poor chat system implementation. They should be praised and remembered for though running an outstandingly visual based pre-launch marketing strategy, creating a game which has some amazing production values and producing a high quality action-based MMORPG (admittedly, on the near horizon many more action MMORPG's are heading our way and it has been attempted before, but this games certainly embeds action better than most).