DCUO: Part 3 Brain Punchery

Ok there are a number of reasons why I am writing another post. Four to be exact

1. Mike wants to vicariously experience DCUO through my beautiful fingers

2. I did my first instance or in DCUO terms Alert

3. I've progressed to level ten but still don't really know what the fuck I'm doing

4. I FOUND A BRAIN PUNCH FOR MY CHARACTER

OK I'll start with the most important one obviously, THE BRAIN PUNCH. Anyone who knows me knows that I easily get obsessed with video games for one of two reasons A. Something is Hilarious or B. Something is awesome. When it is magnificently both, well I shit my self.

I've been obsessed with brain punches since I played to game Two Worlds waaaay back at the beginning of this blog when I chronicled my adventures through the game. One thing that happened on those adventures was my character kept getting brain punched by a troll. At first I thought it was pretty funny and decided that I would kill the troll no matter how long it took. You see in that game when you died and came back to the same villain who killed you they still had the same amount of damage you managed to inflict. Mike thought this was bad design and I sort of agreed and proceeded to do my favorite thing in games, exploitation. Not in a dirty under ceded criminal way but in the way that has me win, the best way.

Eventually I killed the troll after about 237 tries but the brain punch with all it's awesome was born. In reality it is nothing more than a jumping over-cut aiming a blow at the top of the head.

Now to get this train back to the station. The way combat works in DCUO is it's action style you press a button you attack. Left mouse is mele attack Right mouse is ranged. I found out also that as you power up you get combo attacks ie hold left mouse for BRAIN PUNCH or right then left does an arc attack and so on and so on at increasing complexity and awesomeness.

Here is what my Brain punch looks like, please keep in mind as this was taken my charcter is about 12 feet in the air.

In DCUO the instances are called Alerts. It's a pretty cool idea Martian Manhunter lets you know where trouble is going on around the globe and you can warp to those areas and solve the problem.

The first one you get is in Area 51 where you have to stop brainiac from acquiring green kryptonite. That's all that I could really gather about the whole situation because the whole time I was running around like an asshole trying to figure out what the fuck I was doing.

The downside about the super speed movement method is you can run up walls. Which is awesome most of the time but it's also fucking annoying. Your running along then you hit something like o say a lamppost then you run up the side of it. The camera will spazz and invariably end up zoomed into the side of a building then I'll spazz then some fucktard will have their computer turned up way to high so all you hear is ear bleeding tinny echo of the game noises on their end mixed with feedback and what ever fucking horrors are going on in their real life house. It's actually pretty stressful all around. Since everyone is just zipping around the area of the alert doing their roles and completing the dungeon like well trained video game nerds I end up loosing them and getting mobbed by a throng of brainiac robots who inevitably knock me out (the death equivalent in DCUO). Then have to run back from the alert entrance, rinse, repeat and swear. I do have to assert that there is no ghost run in DCUO and for that it deserves a medal or an award of some sort. Further more in the games defense I am pretty sure the running wouldn't be so spazzy and disjointed if I had a better video card... but I don't so fuck the game.

The good old roles are still in DCUO. There is the option of being a Tank or Healer or Damage in the alerts but I'll wisely be sticking to damage for some time. I'll need to get a better idea if any of what is going on in the dungeons before I attempt anything else. I really hope I figure it out at some point though because I do love tanking. Speaking of which I found a beautiful coincidence, Fire and Ice are the two power types that can tank, which is nice seeing as to how I chose fire. It's a weird system though, were you change your role at any time by hitting 't' and it will toggle through the roles. For me it switches between tank and damage and then it automatically adjusts the stats of my character. I find this an amazing way to approach the whole party system, the ease of switching back and forth will allow you to make the most of game play either Dungeoning or questing. The toggle system is much better than setting up a skill tree specializing in one way and just being screwed when your playing the other.

Dungeoning aside the quests have been entertaining so far. The first string had to do with Gorilla Grod and stopping his army of devolved humans. Running around beating up gorillas wearing pin striped suits and carrying hand guns is exactly as fun as it sounds. When you complete the kill these and get those quests you have to fight Grod with the Flash's help. It's pretty cool that you get to help real heroes in the game and even fight along side them I found it drew me into the plot happenings a lot more thoroughly than if I would have had to fight him solo.

There is a side quest line that is basically a tour of Metropolis with a delicious booster gold voice over. You run from one tourist kiosk to the next and it's pretty uneventful aside from the aforementioned voice over which are full of self indulgence as you'd expect from ol BG.

I have stuck to Metropolis and have only quested in there but I am getting pretty ansy to move on. The HIVE quests aren't really holding my attention like the gorilla ones. The next area I will move to Is Gotham which I am anxious to see because since Metropolis is so beautifully rendered I can only imagine the magnificence of Gotham. This sounds like a good place to end with promises of Batman and his Gotham for part 4