The Small Cave

Not a DC Universe Online Review

I am typing all of this while I’m waiting for DC Universe Online to load. I don’t think that the game has any real intention of loading at this point, to tell you the truth. It’s kind of just a piece. I had fun the with character creation, though. It’s been loading for quite some time. I think it’s just messing with me at this point. Keep in mind that everything that I type here happened DURING me waiting for DC Universe Online to load. This can’t be the real load time. It must be broken.

I didn’t actually start typing right away. First, I waited a long-ass time, then I thought to myself “wow, this is taking a long time. I wonder if I could write a blog post while this loads.” Then I went into the App Store on Danielle’s iPad, downloaded the WordPress software, set up this Bluetooth keyboard, input my WordPress credentials, and then I started typing. I haven’t exactly been typing at full speed either. I’m still getting used to this keyboard, as I just got it today. If I’m not very careful, I start typing wrong things and it just gets all nuts.

This can’t be right. This load time must be a freeze. I’m going to quit out of the game, then restart it and see what happens. BRB

…

This is all after the fourteen gigabyte initial download, by the way. I was letting that run in the background this afternoon.

…

Okay, I’ve restarted the software and I’m now going through the initial load. I hope it saved my created character. I can’t say I like the character design on the DC superheroes, but I guess they don’t figure into the everyday of the story that much, so it’s not a problem?

Okay, I’m now at a screen where it lets me select my created character from earlier. Good.

My character is a female Martial Arts/Gadgets/Acrobatics type named Punchy Punch. I decided to go on a PvE server (Player vs. Enemy, as opposed to Player vs. Player) because I don’t play MMOGs that much and I don’t know which gametype I enjoy. I figure PvE is easier and more friendly. But what do I know.

DC Universe Online converted from a subscription-based model to a Free-to-Play one on the PS3 on Tuesday, so I don’t expect the servers to run all that well this weekend. I thought it was worth a shot, though, because I guess I have no life. The game originally came on a Blu-Ray disc, so the 14GB download wasn’t too much of a shock. It was kind of a pain in the ass that the game refused to login after the download finished, though. After a while, I figured out that I should Quit out to the XMB and restart the software (this isn’t a flashback to the beginning of the post, this actually happened earlier in the evening before I built my character). Once the game loaded, the first thing they showed me was a fifteen minute video that I already saw a year before the game came out, and it really looked like they didn’t bother with any compression on that bad boy. If the video was as poorly optimized as I have no trouble believing it was, that probably added about half a gig to the dl. No big, I’m off Comcast these days. If I were still living in the world of 250GB download caps, I may have flipped out a little. The character creation, as I said earlier, was not bad. I’ve been given more options, I’ve been given less. I think this comes with the MMO territory, though. Correct me if I’m wrong. I’ve been sitting at the character select screen since I started typing the previous paragraph, so let’s see if it loads now.

So, I clicked “Play” and I was informed that there was a login queue and that I was number 2828 in line. That was kind of a kick in the balls. I could have been waiting in line while I typed all that. The line seems to be going at a decent clip, however. I’m now number 2351. I jumped five hundred spaces in just a couple minutes. I don’t have the capacities to effortlessly do the math in my head anymore.

I have to say that blogging on the iPad with the WordPress app and Bluetooth keyboard has been a pretty good experience so far. I’m using the Keyboard made for the HP Touchpad, so I got a pretty decent deal on it. I’m really planning on getting this novel together, even if I don’t make the NaNoWriMo goal, which I almost certainly won’t at this point. I felt bad about that for a while, but now I’m kind of over it. I’m just not that kind of writer. Maybe I should be, and should try harder. Tomorrow’s another day, you know.

I’m now number 1136 in the login queue. I hope this doesn’t mean I have to go through that loading screen again.

Just made a couple edits to the earlier paragraphs in this post and I’m in the game!

The actual story conceit of this game is pretty clever. Lex Luthor comes back from some doomed future where Brainiac enslaved the human race by stealing power from super heroes. But Luthor steals the power back? and injects it into normal humans, who become the MMO players and hopefully buy extra character slots. Brainiac then Matrixes your dude into some creepy Brianiac mothership and Oracle hacks you out into a training area where you can fight weak security robots.

This game has tens of thousands of players who all got hacked out. You’d think Brainiac would have patched this glaring security vulnerability. Although I guess this IS Sony we’re talking about…

Okay, so I did a tutorial level, fought alongside Superman against a bunch of stupid robots, and we both punched them until they all exploded. Now I’m watching a video about Batman because he’s who I chose as my Mentor.

Oh christ now I’m in a common public space with a bunch of MMO players. On some level I always knew that I would end up here, but I never really thought hard about what that meant. I don’t know anyone who plays this game. I’m a pubby. I’m no better than the other heroes I see jumping and douching around in this…hero base. Guys like Larkspur from Clan, Professor Rhett and fleaman, BlazingHawk and Mikee20…Bloodshed Arrow and…Commissioner Gordon? Oh, nice, an NPC. Oh, Professor Rhett is one too.

Okay, this game is weird. Whenever I talk to an NPC, the camera closes in way too tight on the back of my character. She goes transparent, and then the camera clips through her hair so I’m looking at the back of a see-through bald woman. It really distracts me from all of the superheroes telling me that Gotham needs “every hero we can get,” which I guess I knew already because they dropped the subscription model.

I’m supposed to talk to a vendor, but I don’t really have a sense of what I’m supposed to be buying or selling, so there’s not much to do there. I guess I can buy this upgraded Martial Arts weapon with half my money? And then I can equip this cape, but my character doesn’t really use a cape. She’s a martial arts acrobatics-type dude. But capes increase your stats? So, if I don’t equip a cape, I’m missing out on stat bonuses? That feels wrong to me.

And now I’m supposed to read some messages from Batman? Wonderful. I don’t really feel like doing this. I know that sounds like “READING? Ick!” and it is. At 1 in the morning, you bet your ass it is.

What I don’t get: if Lex sent powers back into the past, and they basically infected all sorts of normal people, why didn’t they imbue non-powered characters like Robin or Oracle? Does Oracle feel cheated that thousands of people can fly now but she is still in a wheelchair? Did the powers just go to people who live in traditional DC hotspots, or are there people all over the world jumping around with fireballs now? What does this situation look like in the rural South, or the Middle East? My character is wearing cargo pants and sensible boots? Why did all these people get powers and suddenly decide that they should dress like idiots?

I guess it was kind of novel to play an MMO on a console, but I really just can’t be enthused by the genre. I don’t think it can be said on any scale that I gave this game a fair try. I played the character creator, and the tutorial level. But it took me a little over twenty-four hours to get to this point. And at the end of the day, I just mashed Square a lot. Can you look me in the eye and tell me that you think that maybe the rest of the game might be different?

While I was typing this last paragraph, I got booted off of the server for scheduled maintenence. At least that part was easy.

Are You This Man?

I’ve tried tackling it from every angle and there’s just no getting around it: I am poking fun at this guy by featuring him in the layout to my website. I scrapped and scraped my subconscious for the better part of five minutes this even looking for a better explanation, but there just isn’t one.

This is a balding, pudgy fifty-year-old man with a pedo mustache and deafeningly loud, I’m-being-ironic-but-kind-of-not “Otaku Master” t-shirt and he is having the time of his life at the Japanese Festival in Uptown Charlotte, North Carolina. And, you know what? That should be the final word on the matter.

But it just isn’t.

Because he’s not the only one in the picture, is he? If it were just him, that would be one thing. No, this picture is special because of the other, completely normal guy in the background.

The nigh-imperceptible twinkle in his eye. The enigmatic mouth! Is is a chastising grimace, or a wry smile of tacit collusion? The CD he’s holding in his hands like a talisman, as if to say “Back, ye fiends!  I’ve made my purchase; I’ve justified my presence at this delightful free cultural event!” He’s a trickster. Every day, he plays by the rules. He works a nine-to-five, votes Republican, and makes love to his wife every Saturday. But maybe he just loves Taiko, and when do you get to see a Taiko drum show in Charlotte? Maybe his not-quite-right son wanted to go because he loves anime, so Smile Guy thought this would be a good opportunity to bond with the little freak. At the last minute, though, the kid invites his friend from school and they run off together to check out the plush Raichu dolls and Phoenix Wright keychains and dad’s stuck over here wading through throngs of weirdos (and plenty of wonderful people, I’m sure),  holding on to the Gackt CD that he paid for, but would never in a million years want to listen to.

But all of that melts away for just half a second, when he sees this fat nerd lifting up his Droid 2 to sneakily snap a picture of another fat nerd who happens to be wearing a stupid shirt that’s a size too small. And just for that one moment, life is good. Yes, he thinks. Let the fat one take a funny picture of the other fat one. He captures the image of his future, and he doesn’t even know it!

Moving on.

If you were either of these guys, would you be offended by the layout of this site? I like to think of it as a loving tribute to a couple of guys who’re going out there and really kicking back on their weekend. They’re the kinda guys that I want to be when I get too old to do anything actually fun.

Uhm, if you look at the layout of this site, and you find that you are one of the two gentlemen in the picture, and you want me to take it down, drop me a line. We’ll hit up a sushi bar, and the first round of sake’ll be on me.

What Happened to the Old Site?

That is a perfectly reasonable question. I’ve revamped the blog in the past, but I’ve never felt the need to completely delete the old blog and start fresh. Why did I feel the need to go all “reboot” on myself?