Sony Online Entertainment and Warner Bros. Interactive brought the first playable build of DC Universe Online to New York Comic Con. There was a panel discussion that allowed the development team to give fans some new information and make a major announcement concerning the creative team. But, the real treat was the chance to finally go hands on with the game. We’ll start with what we know and then move on to how it plays.

Game Information

Jim Lee and Geoff Johns head up the creative team for DC Universe Online, which will be released for the Playstation 3 and PC. A panel was held at Comic Con to talk about the game. The first major announcement was the addition of legendary comic writer Marv Wolfman. Wolfman has been brought on board to flesh out some of the individual story events that will occur over the course of Geoff Johns’ sprawling epic story. All of the people and places that make up the world will be drawn by comic superstar artist Jim Lee. This is awesome, because, as people who read Batman: Hush or Superman: For All Seasons or any of the other thousands of things he’s drawn will attest, JIm Lee’s art rocks. The panel also revealed that there will be faction alignment in the game. Locations in the game will be situated all over the world. They include Metropolis, Gotham, Central City and Keystone City. Individual missions will be categorized differently for heroes and villains. Heroes will have Cases, Villains will have Capers. In response to an audience question, the Sony Online team comments that there is a possibility that someone playing on a PC can play with someone on a Playstation 3.  The game world is meant to represent the “ideal” version of the city you are in. Color schemes will also be different as you change cities. Metropolis, for example, will have a lighter color palette, full of blues and yellows. Gotham, by comparison, will have a color palette full of blue , black and grey. Shadows in Metropolis will be lighter thank those in Gotham. There will also be a huge amount of options on the character creation front. So much so that the developers are saying there should be no duplication of character look. There is no death in the game, instead you will get knocked out. After getting knocked out, you get back up, but you have a little less health. This makes it harder for you to win, and forces you to rally. They talked about powers briefly. They confirmed that there will be Green Lantern-style Light Constructs. They also hinted at Telekinesis, though they didn’t use the word. Finally, they mentioned civilians. They said that their reactions in the final game will be varied. They also said that the pedestrians are surprisingly agile. The demo movie they showed in the panel was the same level that we would playing shortly: a Metropolis mission featuring Superman and Doomsday. To say the game looks good would be doing it an incredible disservice. However, finding an adequate adjective is difficult. That ended the panel discussion and significantly whetted everyone’s appetites.

But, I know you’re still asking: how does it play? The answer is: much easier than I thought. Playing with a PS3 controller, the controls are instantly familiar. The demo charcter we were given to play with can be described as a female warrior of Atlantis. She was blue and had gills. Her powers were lightning based and she fried lightning from a staff. In addition she had super speed. Using the super speed ability, you are able to run up the walls of buildings. The main scenerio has you accomplishing a series of objectives that gains you access to STAR Labs, Once inside STAR Labs, you find that Superman and other heroes are fighting Doomsday, who has escaped containment. In addition, a group of villainsled by Lex Luthor is trying to capture Doomsday for their own nefarious plans. You must keep the villains at bay while Superman wears down Doomsday enough for you to run over and contain him. The demo ends after Doomsday is contained. I must say that fighting alongside Superman against Doomsday really made me feel important. The game looks great and the controls seem tight at this early stage in the game, I will tell you the game worlds are going to be huge. The demo they showed us contained 300 blocks of Metropolis and the game’s producer told me during the playtest that that is just one eigthth of the total size. I am really looking forward to this game. There is no release date yet. We will continue to update information on this game as it becomes available.