I had the chance to sit in on a presentation for DC Universe Online and a gameplay demo and presentation for Champions Online.

Sony Online Entertainment has teamed up with DC Comics and Warner Brothers to bring DC to life online.

Meanwhile, Cryptic is working with 2K Games and they are not only developing the game but they actually bought the Champions intellectual property. Plus for all of you who forgot, Cryptic did City of Heroes which was a pretty damned fine game.

Since Marvel bowed out of the MMOG arena for the time being it looks like these are the two 10,000 pound alien-dino-gorillas that will slug it out for superhero supremacy.

And why shouldn’t they be alien dinosaur gorillas? They are after all superhero games. (See I did listen while we were talking over hot dogs Cryptic...) There should also be Fish Police and Dinosaurs with badges. Some mutant turtles, Alien Ducklings and big blue guys named after insects and maybe even a flying Fiero...

Who do I think will win after seeing both?

Well both are equally cool ideas and both are great graphically. However, the major deal here is the feel. When the DCUO presentation started I thought cool it’s a video game with DC characters. But it looks like any number of other games available at present in regards to graphics quality.

When I walked into the booth for Champions Online I said, Cool it’s a comic book...game.

Do you see the difference? Champions Online has the actual look and feel of the tabletop game and the comics and everything about Champions. That distinct look really translated well thanks to Cryptic’s great development team. In fact since they now own Champions altogether it only seems right that they would make it distinct and true to the original. Even if you head over to the Champions Online site you can see the style I am talking about. They told me what the style was called but I’ve forgotten, it was Comics Line or something similar. They even go so far as to have speech bubbles in the game and of course many of the distinct characters from the pen and paper version are there.

Now DCUO has a distinct style as well thanks to Jim Lee. But it manifests itself mostly in the cut scenes and not in the game itself. Much of the presentation that they showed us can be found over on the DCUO site. But the gameplay video just didn’t have that ’pop’ I was expecting from the art style. It seemed like it could be any 3D game and not even based on a comic book company’s IP. It almost seems like they didn’t manage to convey Jim Lee’s distinctive style into the world fully or only focused on getting it into the cut scenes.

DC Universe Online is obviously far from done as they didn’t have anything playable for us while the Cryptic/2K team was actually playing Champions Online while we were there and it’s cool.

Whether you’re a denizen of DC or a Champions cheerleader, you will definitely have a game worth playing I’m sure. If I had to make a choice where I could only play one from what I saw here in Leipzig today without hesitation I would have to say that Champions Online will be the ones protecting my gaming experience.

Stay tuned as I process the piles of information here. I will try to get DCUO and Champions Online done in the next few days for you to get the full force of what is to come. Until then, start sewing that spandex together.