Finish (or just start) the fight in ‘DC Universe Online’

DC UNIVERSE ONLINE's superhero bench is impressively deep. I've talked to Batgirl, and I can confirm that she is a meanie. (SONY ONLINE)

In their first few minutes, video games are almost never honest.

That’s a boondoggle developers have been sorting through since the dawn of gaming. How do you kick off entertainment that’s meant to last a dozen hours or more? Tipping the scales in any direction — too exciting or too placid; too instructional or too obtuse — can muck things up.

Consider a case like GOD OF WAR III, whose first act has you scrambling up the backs of giants in a madcap rush to the top of Mount Olympus. The front-loaded spectacle completely deflates the rest of the game, which is worth playing but, relative to that introduction, a hair anemic.

Then there’s FINAL FANTASY XIII, which gestated for years before releasing last year to extraordinarily mixed buzz. The game delivered all the audiovisual spit and polish that Square-Enix’s tentpole franchise is known for, but it forced players through 20 hours of insufferable cutscenes and largely scripted battles before loosing them on its beautiful universe. There’s quite a lot of fun to be had in Gran Pulse, but you have to look for it.

This is all very troubling for me and my ilk — serial starters of games, people so taken with new, shiny stuff that they almost never get farther than a few hours into anything. Aside from the titles I’ve played for review, I’ll clear a game’s tutorial and get a little further, if I’m lucky, and then I’m on to something else. It’s a sickness.

So my top resolution for 2011 is to commit. Not necessarily to finish, given that much of what I play doesn’t properly end, but to commit.

At least, that’s the excuse I give people when I try to explain why I just dove fingers-first into Sony’s DC UNIVERSE ONLINE.

It is, of course, exactly the sort of thing I shouldn’t be playing. People have been toiling away at  WORLD OF WARCRAFT — now with three expansions and more than 12 million subscribers — for six years. Six years!

DC Universe, which went live Tuesday, has been in development for nearly as long. It allows you to enlist a superhero of your design in the fight for or against Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and the rest of the Justice League. And while I’ve dabbled with World of Warcraft (expect that post once I get my first mount) and a few other MMOs, I’m especially enchanted by this one.

It’s much, much too early to diagnose the game’s successes and failures — MMO launches are notoriously fluid, shaky things — but as a public service (and a means of self-assurance), I’m going to try to explain why I’m committing to this one.

First, know this. In DC Universe, you actually fight.

Most MMOs are point-click-wait exercises in delayed gratification. You select the creature you’re going to fight; you select the punishment you’re going to visit upon it; you wait for the violence to happen. There are benefits to this approach, but they invariably disconnect you from your avatar.

In DC Universe, your clicks and presses produce immediate, real-time results. You don’t queue up your ice ray or laser vision attacks; you actually freeze or lase your opponents. The feeling is incredibly tactile, and it eliminates the floaty distance that most MMOs drop between you and your character.

There’s also the matter of locomotion, which is similarly visceral here. Where MMOs generally ask you to click on a destination and wait for your dude to get there, DC Universe gives you (or requires of you, depending on your attitude) full analog control of your superhero.

In a game that stakes its appeal largely on your outsize heroics, that connection is absolutely crucial. Flight in World of Warcraft is a prize you won’t unlock until dozens of hours of investment, and it’s more of a tool than it is a thrill. In DC Universe, you can summit any rooftop from the get-go, because of course you can. The ability to go anywhere quickly is a right, not a reward, and it has to feel spectacular. Thankfully, it does.

But actually inhabiting this world — taking credibly voice-acted orders from Batman (Kevin Conroy) and Circe (Michelle Forbes); feasting on the enormous spread of intricate and wholly authentic artwork — has smitten me most.

I can pinpoint the exact moment when the game sold me. I had just finished a boatload of diverting but disposable quests and decided to take my hero (a capeless, five-foot acrobat called “Vega,” after my dog) to the top of the tallest building in Gotham City. I was panning the camera around this gorgeously realized urban hellscape, admiring the fidelity and draw distance of the chaos below, when the Bat Signal flickered on.

“Trouble,” I thought, and dove into the night, ready to beat up … something. (There was, of course, no trouble at all. The signal powers on and off on a timed cycle. But it says something about my investment — my willingness to play a role — that I pretended to take the whole thing seriously.)

I can’t speak yet for the quality of the questing, the balance of the skill trees or anything approaching end-game content. The game locks several features until you max out at level 30; fortunately, it wants to push you there as quickly as possible. I’ll report back at some point with the view from the top.

As with any newborn MMO, there are heaps of problems to iron out. I had trouble getting even some of the earliest quests to advance properly, including a frustrating trip to my safehouse mailroom that took two cold restarts to register.

There are polish issues, too, including a clumsy PC interface (it mirrors the PS3 version’s controller-friendly menus, to its serious detriment) and a few amusing copy-editing errors (in at least one instance, the game asks you to “tavel” between neighborhoods).

But if World of Warcraft is any indication, these gaffes can and will be corrected. From where I’m sitting, DC Universe Online has launched with confidence and verve, and I’m in for the long haul.

For now. Or at least until next week, when LITTLEBIGPLANET 2 hits.

— This article ran in slightly modified form in the York Dispatch on Jan. 13, 2011.