Scintillating scenery
The first thing that is obvious to me is that Maxis has spent its time creating something meth head addictiveness, rather than a great game. With five different characters with 25 different variants to collect, it all gets a bit Team Rocket.
Watch out for the bloody hole
Darkspore is pretty-pretty. I loved the blood splatters as you click, click, click to hack and slash, and the crystals looked amazingly bling. Exploring whispering forests, nocturnal planets, icy wastelands with lava geysers kept me busy and there are a variety of enemies leading to some scary bosses with welcome random pickups to keep you clicking.
The ambient sound and music seemed like a post rave afterthought and, like the storyline, a missed opportunity to add more atmosphere to the game. The UI is basic but polished, letting you see what’s going on while not distracting you from game play. That said, sometimes the weird top down angle you play from got a little distracting.
Feel the fire within me
Talking of game play there really isn’t that much to talk about, it’s all point at nasty, click on nasty, kick that nasties arse. Like my beloved World of Warcraft, dead nasties drop loot – the rarer the loot the lower the drop rate. Anyone can play as long as they can click a mouse and the more you click, the more lovely random drops you get. Your loot upgrades your stats such as attack power, intelligence, and crit chance.
Next page: Team play
COMMENTS
HoN/DOTA/LoL?
contrary to what Heff says, its not really anything like HoN/DoTA/LoL. well, you control a hero from a top down view. thats pretty much it. the DoTA clones are all about pvp - the pve in them is just thrown in for something to level up on. in this, its the pvp thats fairly pointless - no rewards as far as i'm aware, and the balancing leaves a lot to be desired.
the main part of the game is much more akin to games like diablo or titanquest, in that you slaughter hordes of enemies, then a boss, then lots of enemies, etc, then swapping some gear around to fight better.
the character-switching is a nice touch, and makes it so that your 'character' is actually the whole squad (especially given that they share some abilities), and you have to make sure that your 3 heroes together work well.
i dont recomend playing it solo though, goes best with freinds.
So have the got rid of the dodgy DRM?
...like I said have the got rid of the DRM that got them sued yet?
Spore Engine
It uses the Spore engine, but its not like Spore, its an Action-RPG / Diablo style / hack and slash. Instead of the normal classes and skill trees, there are 25 basic heroes and 4 versions of each with a different "#2" ability.
nostalgia lane, Im afraid
this is more, "lets use the Spore engine to bodge up another DOTA / HoN clone. we'll try and work in a storyline (and fail. hire a writer, maxis, fucks sake) and elements from crawlers like Dungeon Siege and Diablo" (random loot with a save-it-to-upgrade-it system) its much more modular, equip-items-to slots than Evolva was.
Played in since Beta, on and off, and its... ok. It still feels unfinished and clunky, and the single player is a miserable waste of time. multiplayer is more fun, but... well, if you're want to play fun multiplayer, there's better more immersive examples in every other genre, and in this specific one, you're already playing HoN or DOTA and you're not leaving for this.
pretty poor offerings from maxis these days. 'The Sims', Spore and darkspore. Its been a while since a city-a-like, and societies was just dreadful, it would be nice to see them re-imagine sim-farm, or sim-life, or any of their early titles, rather than push forward uncompetitive and unimaginative titles like this one :/
Confused....
So this is an RPG ? Reading the review I thought it was an RTS at first !
If this confused me then it's bound to confuse other people. I've been playing long enough to have played Sim City 1 in its day and I remember Spore but never played it.
Maybe I missed something but there is an assumed knowledge of Spore here
