Short preview on DarkSpore from PCGamer.

But interestingly, unlike Spore, these characters aren’t entirely handmade— in Darkspore, you recruit your squad from a set of “hundreds” of premade creatures, then tack on hundreds of pieces of loot— including armor, shoulder pads, wings or gauntlets—to boost their stats and round out their combat personality. It’s alien warrior dress-up. Spore’s creature creator tech, however, is still intact in this part of character customization—the dev team shows me that you can free-adjust, resize, recolor, and even apply animated textures (like a glowing, magenta magma skin) to your gear. The same idea applies to enemies: they’re premade, but there are heaps of them, all guided by a system similar to Left 4 Dead’s AI director that will dynamically manage the type and count of enemies you’ll have to mash.

That’s good—but it didn’t hide how dull Darkspore’s environments felt. We wandered from symmetrical platters of open terrain, bare spaces that lacked the sense of discovery we’re used to in most dungeon- crawlers. I’m concerned that the character-swapping mechanic will make combat feel less grounded, too. There’s a looseness and sense of non-attachment to your character when you and three co-op partners each have a trio of heroes to alternate between. But we remain excited about its potential in a way we might not be for, say, Spore 2.

preview here