DC Universe

I started playing this when it went F2P I tried a little of it at beta but my old computer kept crashing it so I had to stop.

It had a few bumps in the terms of lag and bugs. Lag was due to all the people attempting to play it and only 2 servers being up to try and handle all the people. So I figured that would smooth over soon. The other was bugs that should of been fixed a long time ago but were apparently still there and after it went Free to Play did they bother to fix them.

The game plays a little different then others, it's level based of course; but your attacks are based on what weapon you have equipped and that weapon gives your character stats or moves depending on where you put your skill points. You can at least add a new weapon to play with after level 10 plus.

You select from a small list of powers that have two branches you can put points in depending on the role you want to play. Some have different versions of a role in either tree just different ways of doing that role with them. Light was released near the time it went Free to Play but you either had to buy it or be a subscriber to get it; just recently Electricity was released which is a new healing power.

Hero creation was not as extravagant as City of Heroes or Champions where you had a decent amount of costume pieces to use. City of Heroes (in my own opinion) had the best costume creator. You can build up a nice selection in Champions or DC universe but you had to either find or buy the costumes.

You will have some fun with this game if you liked the other two hero games, but which one you choose in the end is up to you.

Star Wars The Old Republic - A game I've played before

I've been beta testing Star Wars for about three months. I had high hopes being a BioWare game with their story telling, and I wasn't disappointed in that aspect.

The plus area

• Great Voice acting for missions and story plots. I am glad that I'm able to skip some with spacebar after already experiencing that part.
• The stories are written out very well which like I said I wasn't surprised with Bioware.
• It's Star Wars!

The Negatives

Really these are the big negatives I find and what makes them stand out the most.

• They didn't branch off from World of Warcraft/Dark Age of Camelot or Rift (to name a few). It still has that leveling grind feel from constant questing with quests that don't stimulate or capture myself in the world.
• Once you max level which I know some will attempt with-in a week or even less. What are they to do next in a level based game? PvP and Raid constantly in the same area, or make a new character to meet the same fate at the end. It's the eventual wall you meet with these types of games which I'm glad that the eventual ArcheAge is going to remedy (hoping, always a dread there)
• Crafting is done by companions, there's hardly any involvement by you, they really wanted people not to have to bother with this; and that's a very sad feeling I liked doing crafting in Galaxies.
• Planets - They say there are numerous ones, but it's limited to a small area of that planet. I'm left wondering why am I traveling to these when so little is explored of these huge planets
• Space Combat - There was no free flight in this, you are left on a set patch only using the mouse to move your cursor to attack. I hope they improve this feature with a later expansion.

The Neutral feeling

• Companions - They are nice to have to fill a spot, but otherwise they make the game more solo play then groups as like I said the companion fills a spot. So you have a healer or a tank companion and you do the other part and go off to do elite quests.

If I was to compare Star Wars Old Republic to Galaxies (early edition not what Sony did to it) I would choose Galaxies as I had more fun, it was open world and wasn't limited by levels or small worlds.

1-5-12 After playing it further

Giving the game that after release play through; I'm still on the fence about the game. One part of me likes it, the other part of me doesn't like all the quests; and I mean there are a lot of quests to do. Even after you think you're done with the planet they throw bonus missions at you as you're heading to your ship. Not that you have to do them, but sometimes you feel compelled to do them.

I noticed something new that a few other share are the graphic glitches. I didn't experience these during beta but now I'm seeing weird flashes of light or character faces act distorted at times; among the bugs or character movements that still lurk in the game.

Space combat is still lackluster with no improvements to it that i've seen.