DC Universe Online Review

This being my first MMO I wasn't sure what to expect but always wanted to try one the only problem was I didn't have a PC powerful enough to run it so when DC Universe Online was announced for the PC and PS3 and growing up around superhero cartoons like batman the animated series etc I was excited to give this a try and after nearly 2 years of playing this I can say I'm hooked.

The combat system is fast like an action game you can string combos together using the weapon of choice which all have different combos weapons include bow, duel pistols, staff, brawling, martial arts, shield, handblasters, 1 handed and 2 handed, rifle and duel wield. 

the story is deep and pulls from the hundreds of stories from the comics there's tons of loot to collect and with each dlc it gets better as they add more missions, loot and stories etc.

There are 9 power types to choose from each with its own unique powers you can select 6 to use in your loadout but theres alot to choose from so its a good idea to experiment with different loadouts till you find one thats right for you the 9 power types are split into the following Healer/dps are Sorcery, Nature ,Electricity Controller/dps are Mental, Gadgets, Light Tank/dps are Ice, Fire, Earth My main character is Sorcery and my alt Mental I've changed powers a few times to try out all the different powers but always seem to go back to these.

Movement mode is the way you want your character to travel you can choose from Flight, Super speed, Acrobatics I've also tried all 3 out but my favourite is flight.

Once you create your character you start your journey by doing solo story missions to level up to level 30 once there the real game starts.

There's currently four tiers once you hit level 30 you start at tier one and work up from there you can buy the pieces using marks earned from doing duos,alerts,raids and solo challenges there's 8 pieces for each set of armour head, chest, legs, shoulders, hands, waist, feet, back also you have weapons, necks, face, 2 rings and a trinket.

Along the way you meet new players and will make new friends even if you don't have any real world friends playing the game you will make some and you can always join a league of like minded players or start your own I've been in a few leagues and made alot of new friends.

when you create a character you can also choose to be either a villain or a superhero and will work with lots of iconic characters (like Batman, Superman, Flash, Joker, Lex) during missions, alerts and raids you also have your own base the heroes have the watchtower and villains the hall of doom here you buy your tier 1-4 armour, shout for alerts and raids and theres also an auction house to buy and sell things you want or don't want.

Alerts are 4 player and the best player setup for these are a tank too pull the aggro from the other players a dps to burn the enemies a controller to help replenish the groups power bars and also debuff the enemy bosses and a healer to heal the group if they take damage.

Raids are 8 player and the setup is pretty much the same except you will have 1 tank 3 dps 2 controllers and 2 healers.

Team work is a must during alerts and raids it can go wrong if people just do their own thing and not stick with the group and i'd say the best thing to do is follow the tank at all times he should always be the first person to attack an enemy so he can gain the aggro as he will have the highest health and defence stats.

Theres also PVP arenas and PVP legends in arenas you use your own character in upto 8 vs 8 player battles and in legends you use iconic characters which you unlock with marks you earn playing legends in upto 8 vs 8 battles.

Two massive cities to explore Metropolis and Gotham here you will find solo missions fighting with and against iconic characters theres also races here with times to beat that unlock emblems to wear and collections that are hidden all over these are blue, green and gold collecting these unlock styles etc.

DC Universe Online is the only game I've played for longer than a year its that good theres always things to do and never seems to get boring.

The Good

• Its based on DC comics so lots of places and stories from years of comics and cartoons
• The combat system is fast and deep but not overwhelming like some MMOS
• Loot lots and lots of things to collect
• The story for the main part of the game is amazing all I'll say is Lex comes from the future with exobytes which create all the new heroes and villains
• Playing with different people everyday if you wish makes doing the same missions feel different every time due to play styles and powers being used
• 2 massive cities Metropolis and Gotham to explore
• DLC every 3 months adds new content like alerts, raids and new features
• Updates roughly every 3 weeks that fix bugs and balance out the powers

The Bad

• Sometimes you'll meet players you don't like due to shouting at you or acting like their the best player ever to play the game (but you can always add these players to your ignore list that way you won't have to see anything they write in the chat window)
• There are bugs like freezing randomly and having to restart the ps3 but with every update it gets better 

Its hard to review a game like this because it changes all the time with new content being added and bugs being fixed its completely different from what it was in the beginning alot of reviews i read when the game released said it should of had an auction house and player houses/bases from the start but these features have and still are being added to the game the next dlc will be called Home Turf which adds player lairs like a penthouse or sewer hideout and can be customised with items dropped from missions all over the game.

The last thing I'll say is if you haven't tried DC Universe Online out yet now's the best time late last year it went free to play which means you can download from the PlayStation store for free and pay nothing if you wish you can buy extras from the in game marketplace or pay a subscription which gives you pretty much everything.

DCUO NEW R AND D PLANS AND PARTS

Below is a list of new plans and components needed to make them. The only component without a plan at the moment is Otherworldly Chitin hopefully this will be included in a future update.

Also i've found that the brainiac diode parts are extremely rare and only seem to drop in south Gotham i've received six so far after hours of farming there.

My Favorite plan so far static grenade due to the stun and damage it does from range, most of the others are good to but you need to be within melee range to use but these are great for clipping powers so they have a good side and bad unless you are a melee character lol.

Ancient Vellum

Found: Mannheim's Chinese Theater (Heroes)
Used For: Karmic Hex

Battery Fragments
Found: Lantern Recruit (low droprate)
Used For: Cryogenic Solution, Mass Provocation Agent

Brainiac Diode
Found: Brainiac Bounders in South Gotham
Used For: Explosive Detonator, Polarization Mechanism

Cybernetic Actuator
Found: Omacs around Knightsdome
Used For: Expendable Disguise: Amazon, Expendable Disguise: Brainiac Unit, Expendable Disguise: HIVE Drone, Expendable Disguise: Assassin, Expendable Disguise: Morrowbot, Electrostatic Pulse Device, Static Grenade

Enchanted Beast Horn
Found: Beastiamorph Berserker (Heroes), Beastimorphs near Giganta/Minotaur (Heroes)
Used For: Ampoule of Terror

Metagene Fusing Solution
Found: Star Labs Facility Challenge (Heroes), Lexcorp Agents around the Metro Hospital (Heroes)
Used For: Formula of Crushing, Napalm Atomizer, Shock Inducer

Overcharged Matter
Found: Paradox Reapers in CC (low droprate)
Used For: Mass Shadow Concoction

Otherworldly Chitin
Found: Soul Reavers and Greed Demons on the Trigon Rising storyline
Used For: ?

Silicon Wafer
Found: Falcone's men near Cape Carmine Lighthouse (Heroes), GCPD (Villains)
Used For: Dazing Device, Personal Dampening Field

Red Dead Redemption REVIEW

It's been a while since my last post (almost a year!) So I thought I'd post a quick review of Red Dead Redemption- written in one go without a read-back.



At first I expected this game to be almost a carbon-copy of Grand Theft Auto, replacing the towering buildings with quaint wooden houses, the trendy bars and clubs with saloons and the hookers with... Well, hookers.

But really, in essence, Red Dead Redemption was much more.

The best comparison would be with GTA4, and although I've never completed GTA4 (I got to the final Island about a year back with a mate before getting bored and moving onto Saints Row 2 [a truly fantastic game]) I would say RDR comes out on top.

The similarities between Niko Bellic and John Marston are by the book- characters from a foreign land (one geographically, the other chronologically) torn between doing good or bad- often forced into doing bad deeds due to the sinister past that they endeavour to leave behind. Each character is also bland enough for the player to project themselves onto- something which makes these games hugely enjoyable. The first difference that struck me, however, was how much more captivated I was by RDR then I ever was for GTA (4, or any of the predecessors).

At first there seems to be a wealth of things to do in RDR- play poker, blackjack, liars dice, hunt, sell animal pelts, pick flowers, train horses, take hostages, kill innocent people, protect the weak, duel, collect bounties, inane challenges involving shooting birds, hunting animals and saving/robbing carriages etc...

But soon enough you realise that that's basically all there is. Sure, there are various challenges and yes you can watch a cartoon and get drunk- but really there's not much to it. What really captivates you is the mentality of being a cowboy.

In GTA you can kill as many hookers as you like, have high speed chases down the street, eat a burger at a humorously tongue-in-cheek restaurant, but after an hour or so you can get bored of this... The mentality of a gangster is too cheap. A cowboy, however, is something different. There's a certain amount of freedom attached to the term “cowboy”- something that is instantly appealing to almost everyone.




One aspect of the game that was lampooned by people who doubted the game before its release was the hunting. I'd like to say that it's something that you don't have to do throughout the game but I'd be lying. Aside from being the best source of income (a commodity that is basically redundant by the end of the game from the amount of animals that you'll undoubtedly kill) it was also a key aspect of a cowboys life. This means that there are missions that indeed call for the slaughter of animals (a rare choice of target given the frenzy of pro-human killing games out there.)

The life of a cowboy in the game seems almost lackadaisical at times. I often found myself simply killing hours hunting deer at sunset, picking flowers under the light of the stars and herding buffalo come sun-rise. It is, at times, a very relaxing game.

A big buzz around games in the new generation has focused on the “morality choice” systems- games which make you decide whether you're good or bad. Most games, often against their original intentions, often boil down to Hitler-hailing evil or God-gobbling good. The morality choices in RDR, however, don't have a real bearing on the story, and therefore becomes an actual choice of morality. That said, the higher your honour (granted though good deeds) the more discount you have at shops, therefore you often feel inclined to do the good thing- something I think makes the morality system truly work. Instead of blowing open a hookers head because it's funny you realise that there are real consequences to those actions- and if you're willing to live up to those, then have fun! And if not? Then you can still have the same amount of enjoyment. A good example of this is in duelling. You can either gun down your foe with great skill and blood-shed, before looting his body and gaining some soiled cash, OR you can disarm your foe by shooting his gun (and maybe shoot off his hat for added enjoyment) to gain some honour. Either way, your fame will go up.

The story itself starts as something quite generic- the government have captured your wife and son in order to coerce you into hunting down and killing your old gang members. It works for a while to simply move along the plot- get you from A to B nicely. However, somewhere along the line I found myself actually caring for this family I've never met, and hating the captors I've never seen. The story telling it something quite impressive, something that works perfectly with the type of game-play it's complementing.

SPOILER
SPOILER

SPOILER
SPOILER

This segment talks about the ending. I'll clearly mark when it's over, so don't read these bits in italics...

The ending for me was another spectacular moment of the game. While protecting your family on the farm, John Marston is gunned down in cold blood by the very same government officials that hired him. At first I couldn't believe it. I opened up the wiki page just to make sure it wasn't because I fucked up in some way... It wasn't. He was supposed to die.

Then as the image looms over his grave, we are transported a few years later, after the son you struggled to bond with has grown up into a young image of yourself.

At first- I was gutted. I didn't want to be this young impersonator- a shadow of the man I've grown attached to, with his feeble beard and wussy voice... Eugh.
And then you embark on your final mission- to seek vengeance upon your fathers killer. Although it was a short mission, I quickly became the son- writhe with anger over the death of John Marston, desperate for revenge.

Then, after a short duel, the deed was done. And I was relieved. The credits rolled, and I felt for-filled.

END OF SPOILER
END OF SPOILER

END OF SPOILER
END OF SPOILER

So, in essence, I thoroughly enjoyed the game. Sure, it does seem to be lacking at times (like when you have to tediously round cattle or tame horses) and there could be a bit more (like a real reason to herd cattle or tame horses... Or pick flowers most of the time) but it's a fantastic game. I've yet to play it online, but I've heard it's equally as fantastic.
Critics always say that games must stand on their own single player before even consulting multi-player and I must say- this game stands strong.

...Unless you're on a horse in cougar country- then you're fucked.



--Biznitch

Review – God of War III

More than 5 years ago the God of War series started Kratos on a journey that has been as exciting as it has been bloody. The final installment of the series is here, and it doesn’t disappoint.

If you are a fan of the series, then you already know that God of War and God of War II were remastered and released for the PlayStation 3 in the God of War Collection (see our review here), and God of War III takes up where they left off, but the previous games aren’t a prerequisite in order to follow the story line.

Almost everything in God of War III seems to be on a much grander scale, and the graphics are definitely top notch. The detailed environments and bad guys show how a first party title should be done. Santa Monica Studios put an amazing amount of effort and hard work into this title, and have far outdone even their previous work, which was admittedly stunning.

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Review God of War III

Free Final Fantasy XIII DLC

Many owners and PlayStation ® 3 Final Fantasy XIII owner wondered if there ever downloadable content for Final Fantasy XIII would appear. Today we have good news for Final Fantasy XIII fanatics among us ...

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Final Fantasy XIII DLC