Darkspore Reviews

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Written by Brother None on April 30th, 2011

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The presentation of the game is nothing special. The best graphics can actually be found in the character editor. The environments are all kind-of bland. You just hop from generic sci-fi stereotype planet to generic sci-fi stereotype planet, and it never gets much more interesting than that. A couple of my friends tell me I'm being too hard on the game and that some of the environments are pretty, but let me say this. I didn't like Avatar. I don't want pretty, I want interesting, and I didn't get interesting.

That isn't to say that Darkspore feels totally fresh, however. There's too little context for all this hacking and slashing: it's all grinding for levels and loot, with little sense of purpose. That might sound like a damning flaw, but some hours in, the game hits its stride, throwing greater challenges at you on the battlefield and balancing the dungeon crawling with the satisfaction of maintaining the look and equipment of up to 100 different heroes. These elements don't fully compensate for the missed opportunities, but they're enough to make for dozens upon dozens of entertaining hours in front of your monitor.

Make sure to note the "online only" bit. Though you can play on your own, you must be online and signed into the game in order to play. Once signed in, you enter a game hub and a chat lobby, where you can find other players to group up with while futzing around with your inventory. The first time you sign in, a tutorial gets you quickly up to speed, putting you in control of a nimble little scamp called Blitz. Blitz, like all of Darkspore's heroes, is a creature that would have been right at home in Spore. Some of the game's heroes look like insects; others, like robots; and still others, like the monsters your childhood self imagined might be hiding under your bed or in your closet. In any case, Blitz is easy to get a handle on: you click to move, you click to attack, and you press a numeral key to perform special attacks. In Blitz's case, he can teleport forward for a quick, stunning attack; deliver a flurry of slashes with his claws; and surround himself with electrical globes that zap nearby enemies.

That pretty much sums up the goal of the game nicely. Darkspore is a fairly fast Action-RPG game that can feel very hack-and-slashy at times, in a good way. It's almost Pokemon-esque in that you collect new heroes as your Crogenitor level increases. As you unlock heroes you can customize their looks (and stats) by giving them items and changing their colors, skin tones, weapon size, body part size, etc, etc. The hero editor is EXTREMELY in depth and based off the Spore editor. Many of the items you place onto the heroes you can change exactly where it actually shows up visually, thus making no two characters similar.

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