We crack a few criminal skulls in SOE's DC Universe Online

MMORPGs are deep, involving, and intricate games, so it’s hard to assess one from 30 minutes of play in a crowded E3 show floor, when you can see a large-breasted woman dressed in leather S&M gear gyrating out the corner of your right eye, and a speaker, solely devoted to pumping pure bass vibrations, is thundering into your left ear. And it's even more distracting when someone dressed in a bloody tiger suit from crispygamer.com then walks up to you and starts seductively rubbing your shoulders for no apparent reason.

Anyway, DC Universe Online isn’t your typical deep and intricate MMORPG, it’s designed to be accessible and fast paced for us attention-devoid console gamers. The demo at E3 was focused solely on combat and involved us playing as a beefy fella with “earth powers” while trying to defend a hero base from an attack by Lex Luthor and Harley Quinn.

DC Universe Online doesn’t let you play as any of the famous superhero characters under the DC banner, but rather lets you create your own hero or villain from scratch. We didn’t get to try out the character creation, but from what we were told it’s a simple affair compared to most other MMORPGs, underscoring SOE’s attempt to create more of an action MMORPG than anything else.

When it comes to combat there’s no World Of Warcraft-style macros and auto attacks here, we had to pummel our foes with good old-fashioned combos and avoid them with inane jumping. Square initiates a light attack, triangle heavy, while holding R2 brings up your various super powers. You can also make use of in-game physics by picking up various objects scattered about and lugging them at your opponent, which we did quite a lot because it was rather fun.

Previous screens of DC Universe made the game look a bit clinical and bland, which is unfortunate because the actual game is very vibrant, with lots of bright colours and chunky, comic-book, characters running about. The combat does feel a bit chaotic to be honest, not to mention glitchy, but nonetheless the potential for a fun PvP experience is discernable amid the rough.

Well, that’s about all we learned on DC Universe Online at E3. All that superhero action has made us tense… where did the tiger-suit man go?