First, a quick update: my state refund ended up arriving early, too, so I now have money for food and at least one important expense, so that's a relief. Still no scanner yet, but we'll see.

So, like I mentioned, I bought myself DCU Online and a Lifetime subscription since they were available and pretty reasonably priced, too. There are some definite problems, as expected of a new game, and after the INSANE depth of the CoX customization tools, the limitations of DCUO are damned frustrating. Seriously, no lightning/electricity powers in the universe of Captain Marvel? The game designers were clever enough to incorporate several of those limitations into the meta-origin of the game, though, since the "exobytes" that give all the PCs their powers are limited to those of the major DCU heroes and villains; while the CoX backstory is limited enough to get the Hell out of the players' way, the DCUO one says "THIS is where your powers come from, at least for now. Suck it up."

Also, the costuming is both more and less flexible than CoX's: you start out with a limited number of various gear and appearances, but you can modify them on the fly from the beginning, unlike CoX's "You can have anything you want, but you're stuck with it until you can get to the tailors and/or unlock your other costume slots." The DCUO system is much like switching armor in WoW, only you can pick your look based on whatever "styles" you've unlocked...Hell, you can even switch your skin type, like from metal to fur or whatever (it's just kinda expensive to buy the new skin types), but there are only three builds per gender (Small, Medium, or Large, literally) and you're pretty much stuck with the general color scheme you started out with.

So, yeah...here my snarky ass was, preparing to bitch and moan about this game when a funny thing happened:

Superman told me he was glad to have me on his side.

SUPERMAN. TOLD ME. HE WAS GLAD TO HAVE ME ON HIS SIDE.

Dude.

I geeked out. My little robot girl character, Wardoll (not TECHNICALLY Maisy, but similar in spirit; this one was apparently a piece of Apokaliptian tech that got absorbed into Braniac's Harvester ship and, in turn, absorbed an exobyte, gained a familiar sentience, and decided to leg it to Gotham initially...if you're ever on "Virtue and Vice" US server and you see a shiny Goth chick in black pigtails fly by, say hi), totally got wet at that. Hell, I totally got wet at that...even Batman seemed to be less annoyed at my toon than expected.

Not ALL of the VAs fit...I still can't hear Wonder Woman's voice without wondering where Wash and Jayne are...and some aren't that good, but Kevin Conroy as Bats and Mark Hamill as Joker (plus they got the guy who did DCAU Braniac to reprise the role here), and, for all the magic-users in the DCU, they still had to saddle those who shose Wondy as their mentor with a bunch of lame generics "Sentinels of Magic" instead of, well, any magic user other than Zatanna? And they couldn't put her zone anywhere other than Metropolis' Chinatown district? They could've used Gateway City or even Boston...plus side, though, you can easily zip back and forth between her and Superman's zones.

Still, it was damn cool saving Raven and the Titans from Trigon (Wardoll bounced around all three zones) and fighting the Scarecrow alongside Batwoman (and I got his hat as a souvenir!)...which is where the games primary appeal lies. Which is cooler, having Statesman or Manticore tell you you rock, or having Superman and Batman do it?

So...fun, surprisingly addictive game, especially since I don't ever have to pay for it again.