WARNING! The following are the ramblings of Jud and his thoughts of Maxis’ latest game, Darkspore.  The article takes a look at the game from an ‘average joe’ perspective and is not the work of a proper journalist.  Due to his hatred of the English subject, expect to see a poorly written article with the skills of a fourth grader and tons of grammatical errors.  You have been warned.

Introduction

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If you are reading this, then I take it you are interested in hearing my views on Darkspore!  Darkspore is the latest work coming out of the Maxis Studio.  It’s hard for me to describe it properly as, well it’s a type of game that I don’t really have any expertise in.  I suppose to sum it all up, it’s a sci-fi action RPG with elements of Spore mixed into it (the creature creator for example).  I was lucky enough to get into the beta at an earlier stage, but due to my real-life schedule and working on a house, I hadn’t really had the time to play it until this past weekend.  Below is my take of the game through the limited amount of time I was able to play (which sadly, was up to level 1-3)… This isn’t a detailed report on the game – plenty of reviews that already cover that, not to mention an excellent wiki site is available for Darkspore if you wish to know all of the details.

Note:  All images used in this report are ones that were already released.  I did get clearance to talk about the beta, but I did not get permission to post screens/videos.  Out of respect, I will not be using/linking to any either.  🙂

The Story

The story isn’t groundbreaking by any means, but I was hooked because I don’t play many games like these in the first place.  Long, long time ago, in a galaxy far away (hey, had to fit this in here somehow), an advanced race known as the Crogenitors were dicken’ around in their labs and created a powerful kind of DNA known as E-DNA.  Well, like most science-fiction works of art, the scientist soon discovers their creation unleashed hell and started to mutate everything it touched – spreading from planet to planet.  Being the wussies that they are (well, technically they tried to fight it and many Crogenitors lost their lives), they decided to book it and flee, putting them into cryo-sleep.

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Fast forward to many, many years late (1,000 I believe) the Crogenitor’s onboard computer, HELIX, researched and finally was able to purify the E-DNA strand, thus waking the Crogenitor up from their sleep.  With this purified strand, the Crogenitors are now able to put together a team of heroes to finally defeat the Darkspore and hopefully take back their planets they once lost.

The Arsenal

This is where you will be able to select the three heroes that make up your squad.  You first start off with 1 squad and three heroes – with the ability to add more when you progress throughout the game.  You’ll be able to view each creatures bio’s which lists their stats, origin, etc.  There really isn’t much to do here when you first start out, so I didn’t spend a lot of time within this section.

The Levels (my play-through up to 1-3)

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4093/4813401042_bd5c3a1ebe_t.jpgGetting into the actual gameplay, let me rephrase that I do not typically play RPG’s, so I’m pretty bad at them.  While I love Maxis to death and support them, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to fully complete this game all the way to the end because during the first three levels, I got whooped pretty badly – and this is with online play.  During the first level, my first creature became trapped in some sort of force field that a Darkspore casted, and my team mates would not kill the creature.  So I winded up loosing my first creature within 2 minutes into the game.  How lame am I?!

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4080/4812776639_19472db7e7_t.jpgBut after that, it was pretty much a breeze.  You use the mouse to walk and attack, swiping at various enemies and draining their health down to zero in which they perish.  Some will leave behind DNA points in which you can construct your creatures with in the Editor, others drop health and magic refills.  You have a few abilities offhand depending on which character you use.  I mostly stuck with Zrin, the Sun Fist.  He may not be the fastest, but he knows how to pack a punch.  I really don’t have much to say about the gameplay experience – I was able to spend roughly two hours with the game as I don’t have much gaming time as I’d like to (priorities in life, that sort of thing).

I can say though, for those two hours I had a blast.  I’m hoping to get some more time in during future betas.

The Editor

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5052/5474079984_a74196372f_m.jpgI didn’t really spend much time in here, because when you first playing, the editor isn’t really all that useful.  You can change the colors of the creatures and view the parts it is currently using and its stats…but until you actually start the true gameplay and begin to collect pieces is when you can finally start to piece, mix and match parts to define your creature.

Much like the Spore’s creature creator, you can take the existing parts of a creature and move, rotate or resize them.  I only spent a limited out of time in the editor after each stage to put on new parts, so I can’t really dive into details about this subject.

I do have one minor annoyance, and that would be the time it takes to paint your character.  I love that they use the props in the editor to spray your creature with color, but it seems like it takes 3-5 seconds it to display.  It gets a little annoying when I’d like to see what different colors look like on each creature.  I’m sure I’ll get use to it though.

Where to purchase Darkspore

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I have to give my favorite developers a plug in terms of where you can pre-order the game.  It’s only fair, after all!  Darkspore will release on March 29th in the US, and April 1st in the UK (check your local retailer in other countries for your release date) for the average price of $49.99. The list below consists of various online retailers in which you can pre-order the game. Remember, the Limited Edition of Darkspore will net you a special character unlock pack as well as armor to help you gain a strategic advantage come day 1!

Conclusion

If you managed to have made it all the way through my ramblings, then I have a special surprise for you!  If you somehow haven’t gotten into the beta and would like to get your hands on the game for yourself, Maxis was kind enough to give me a limited amount of keys.  If you are interested in a key, all you need to do is ask and leave me a valid email address to I can email you one.  Once all keys are used up, I’ll stop taking requests. SORRY – WE ARE OUT OF KEYS! Thank you for reading my thoughts, and I hope you’re able to form an opinion on the game for yourself!