All the money, the talent, the fan favorite characters and they STILL got it all wrong.
This game irks the crap out of me, because there's absolutely no good reason for it to have ended up an utter waste of time and money, that of SoE's and the playerbase's. They could have had a gem, and they squandered it. I'm not even sure how I can get in all the things that went wrong with this game, so I'll split it up into categories.
First, let's get the bad out of the way:
Music - Not bad, nothing memorable.
Sound/Voice Acting - Not bad, nothing memorable. Some of the voice acting is better done than others, but the emphasis is on the word 'some'. None of it rises to the level of good, which is striking considering the resumes some of those voice actors have. If this had been their first venture into voice acting, I doubt they'd have had jobs in the future. Several of the voices are just flat out unbearable; Giganta, Power Girl, Raven, Booster Gold, all made me want to stab my ears. Worst part? YOU CAN'T SKIP IT. EVER. You can't skip cut scenes (which btw, there are a ton of, even for the most stupid mundane things), you can't stop them from talking, you can't even shut them up when it's just quest text that you've already long since read and no longer give a **** about. They just talk and talk and talk AND TALK. Christ.
The good:
Graphics - It's a pretty game. No getting around that, they put a lot of work into making the game beautiful. Clearly this was their primary focus since everything that's good about this game is on the surface. It's purely skin deep. The armors are lovely, the shadows are realistic, the textures are well-done. Everything is beautiful, except the faces. Because evidently they were too busy adding extra polygons to the oversized **** of every woman in the game, they didn't have enough to spare for their FACES. It's like putting a marrionette's head on a real person's body. They're just atrocious. For that, Graphics only get a 'good' from me instead of a 'great.'
The ugly:
EVERYTHING ELSE. But to be more specific....
Controls - Failure. In every sense of the word. Never before in any game I have ever played in the 25 years I've played and all the (literally) thousands of games I've been through have I ever seen such a horrible, clunky control system with complete and utter lack of proper manipulation. The buttons using a keyboard are scattered in ways that make me wonder if the people that made this bloody game were 7-fingered freaks of nature that could hit all the buttons we're expected to, cuz I sure as hell couldn't. The camera is focused on the mouse, which is unchangeable, so you'll be using your mouse to move the camera a la FPS, and the right and left buttons in various 'combo' iterations to get off your moves. It's clunky, and it's an excellent way to destroy your mouse. The fighting is also unresponsive as hell, so often you'll find yourself not getting off that power you just spent 4 button presses prepping, while the next go around you'll press the buttons to get off a power you need and somehow end up with the power you tried to get off before but didn't manage to. Yes, it's that bad. Your skills are the typical 1-whatever affair, press the button to watch the pretty colors, except don't get too happy about that for reasons I'll explain later on. I'm told the game is better with a controller. Fortunately for me, I have one! But there's a catch...it has to be an XBox controller ONLY. Why? Because other controllers are wired and made a bit differently, have different button presses, et al, and the options menu DOES NOT GIVE YOU THE ABILITY TO CHANGE THE BUTTONS ON YOUR CONTROLLER. Like that one? Me neither. So now I have a keyboard that's irksome as hell to play the game on, and a controller that doesn't function with the game because the game defaulted the buttons I need all over the goddam controller instead of where they should be, and I can't change it for my own enjoyment. **** you too, SOE!
Gameplay - Oh. My. God. Really? Fetch and kill quests, SOE? That's ALL you could come up with? All the money and all the years spent on this game, wtf what were they doing with it all? Nothing productive, evidently. 90% of the game it's just get quest, kill 20 of something, call quest in. That's it. The only reprieve's from this are as follows: PvP -which means NOTHING since the servers are completely empty and abandoned, with good reason-, Alerts - which could be fun except that they're just much grander versions of fetch and kill quests and once again, there aren't enough people around to help with them -, and Raiding - which only happens when you're high level, HOPEFULLY, considering once again, everyone has seen this game for the crap it is and ABANDONED IT. Not to mention, raiding for gear? Really? It's a superhero MMO. Superman didn't go raiding for gear, he powered up and ****ed **** up! I could understand that for heroes like batman, but that's Gadgets; a single lone field in all of heroism that benefits from gear. That's not for everyone else. Having gear raiding in a superhero MMO is flawed and should not be done. Ever. Champions tried it and it flopped. Learn from the mistakes of those around you!
Difficulty - This game doesn't know whether it wants to be hard, or easy. There's no in between. You'll either be bored out of your mind killing things that offer no challenge whatsoever, or dying constantly from groups way too big for you to challenge, doing way too much damage for their level, with ridiculous crowd control abilities that leaves you spamming the block button too long to get off a hit of your own. Fail.
Customization - It's a bit of a toss-up. Character creation is a failure in terms of options compared to the majority of AA titles in this day and change, let alone superhero MMOs. There's little option to make your character look different from everyone else, the differences will come from your gear. Except here's the problem; most of the gear is gotten in-game. So, you start the game looking not...really...very cool at all, actually. Eventually you'll start getting nicer pieces of armor, except these are the pieces that everyone else your level has as well, often in the same combination. So you're still left pretty much unoriginal compared to others. As you get to a higher level, more costume pieces are most likely unlocked, and this becomes less of an issue. You also have the option to wear a piece of armor while still looking like you're wearing a different one, a la the Style menu which is available anytime, anywhere for free. I did like that, I must admit.
Powers - Lackluster. I made 3 characters, an Ice/Staff, a Sorcerer/Hand Blast, and a Gadget/2 handed. None of these powers were particularly fun, though I didn't get anyone past 20. I tried, but I just couldn't take the mediocrity anymore. I touched on this earlier, and now I'll explain more. No matter what powers you choose, be they innate or iconic, no matter what powerset, none of it really matters. They're NOTHING compared to the damage you'll do with your choice of fighting style, and all you really need is one or two combos regardless of how many you end up with. So there's just no reason at all to try and be unique with your powers. Just spam the first couple of skills and you'll be fine. That is of course, until you Tab into the wrong mob and somehow ended up surrounded by more things than you could possibly handle. It happens quite often. You'll get used to it, or quit. If you're smart.
Other issues - These are problems that are GLARING but have been beaten to death already, so I'm not going to get into them:
Tab Targeting - Fail
Auto Targeting - Fail-er
Chat System - Horribly Fail
Content - Fail
Healing Abilities - Fail
Fun - Fail
If you stuck with me through the entirety of this review, spiffy. If you did so and are going to go play this game anyway, then God bless ya. I suggest to grab some Rogaine in preparation for when you start pulling your hair out.