The only question that worries most for the first time Darkspore people – this is where he actually came. In order to avoid confusion, we immediately inform – this is by no means an addon for SPORE 2008, and an independent game, let and uses the same creature designer. It is easiest to describe its genre with the words “Diablo with a pair of pink tentacles”, the growing of which is replaced by the usual body kit with armored vehicles.
There is nothing outstanding (SPORE at the being of the creature was already remotely similar to Diablo, and this was the best part of the game), but on the award for the courage Maxis can accurately claim: after the announcement Diablo 3 Few decided to work in the genre of isometric action-RPG, so that, God forbid, do not fall under the wheels of a rushing locomotive Blizzard Entertainment. Only the fact that this locomotive crawls to the counters at the speed of the racing turtle plays into the hands of the daredevils.
Exterminatus
And this is even good, because in order to get a maximum pleasure from DarkSpore, it is very important not to know anything about him. Exiled expectations greatly harm the new Maxis project: recalling the previously released SPORE, you involuntarily imagine hundreds of options for the genetic development of your creatures, sawing off the tentacles of the boss and their further hoisting on the chitin shell of your hero – in a word, something large -scale, bold, fresh and ambitious. And if Will Wright had not left the studio after Spore, it would most likely come out, and you would have read a review of the most non-trivial-RPG decade. But now it is clear that all the ambitious Maxis was kept exclusively on the ruta-Darkspore as if it were invented and designed by the calculator.
Genetic mercantilism
According to the plot, the super -developed race of Krogenites fell victim to his own hobby – games in God. The aliens loved at leisure to play with genetics and on one -beautiful day they brought dark disputes – an infection that affects all forms of life and turning any humble Burenka into a bloodthirsty monster. The plague quickly spread throughout the galaxy and destroyed almost all its creators. As usual, only one hero-crop hero survived, miraculously escaped death. Now he will have to lay out porridge brewed with his predecessors, with the help of characters specially bred in the test tube.
In fact, the salvation of the world looks pretty routine. Instead of inventing an elegant plan to clean the entire universe, we need to ride a stubborn bulldozer from us for every captured world and literally manually crush every infected fly. Neither quests nor the variety of tasks – nothing. Only an endless meat grinder, spray of alien blood and abundantly lying loot.
By the way, about luta: contrary to expectations, the same vulgar system of dressing characters, like the genre’s brothers, is only slightly disguised as genetic setting, acts in DarkSpore. It seems that Spore was not at all: you can’t supply your beloved genetic hero with a couple of extra legs that would double his speed, or, for example, attach long tentacles to their hands to cling to opponents from afar. Instead – boring shoulders, knee pads and scum, giving +3 to intellect. True, if you wish, you can put a helmet on a gibbed back or even on a claw – this is where the spore editor came in handy.
As a result, our epic on the salvation of the Galaxy is more likely to the everyday life of the worker in the Vietnamese textile factory – the whole process takes place on the same instincts, through the endless repetition of the same actions. We plant a detachment of three genetic heroes on the planet (and only one of them is active, two others are waiting in stock). Waving with massive false knuckles, we shred to minute the entire visible fauna, we collect generously pouring antennae and facet eyes, and at the end of the linear stage we unscrew the horns of a particularly thick monster. We return to the ship, put the hero into new things – and running to the next stage. Repeat the world.
Hack ’N’ Slash, meaningless and merciless, is all that Darkspore can give a player. Needless to say, because of the monotony and monotony of action, I would like to quit the game already at the fifth level?
Already horror!
The lack of the ability to create his man -made freak in Darkspore significantly spoils the impression of the game. But you do not despair-in the creation of truly vile and dangerous creatures, nature has already tried for you.
Vysus drying
Call: Haementeria ghilianii
Dislocation: Venezuela, French Guiana
Length – up to half a meter. Width – about ten centimeters. Trunk-fifteen centimeters! As a pleasant bonus – two suckers. All this is together – the Amazon leech. Gigantic sizes of the beast. Rumor has it that three or four of these monsters are able Candy Land Casino to fill up a whole cow-the poor Burenka will die from acute blood loss, because each gigantic leeches in one meal is able to draw into more than a liter of blood. To kill a person, two, and maybe just one leech is enough. True, a person in the mind of a leech will not be so simple – you will never miss when a huge sting will stick in you. Those who have experienced this on themselves say that the pain is hellish, although it passes quickly – the leech injects an anesthetic wound into the wound.
Eh, swallow ..
Call: Chiasmodon Niger
Dislocation: Tropical ocean depths
Vigorous. This little fish with a romantic Latin name is not much different from its deep -sea brothers. That is, yes, terrible, but nothing outstanding. Big head, large eyes, huge mouth full of sharp arrow -shaped teeth. Amazing begins when the livelote decides to have lunch. Pointing with photographs on the abdomen (these are such small luminous lights that have many deep -sea predators on the body), he lures the gullible fish and swallows it entirely. In principle, many fish come in a similar way, but only vilot is able to swallow prey exceeding the size of its. Imagine?! A twenty -centimeter fish swallows a half -meter! It all looks pretty creepy. A livelog swims, and under it in a thin bag of a stretched stomach and walls of the body, a slowly digested sacrifice hangs out. There are frequent cases when this deadly cocoon breaks and lives lively.
Tipun to your tongue
Call: CYMOTHOA Exigua
Dislocation: Pacific and Atlantic Oceans
Cymothoa Exigua, or language mokrin, is a small crustacean that barely reaches a length of five centimeters. Outwardly, he is similar to their many brothers, who have been spent all their lives, rummaging in the Podonnaya silt. That's just Cymothoa Exigua is not such. He does not rummage anywhere, but settles where food can always be found. In fish mouth. Through the gills, this wonderful mokrin penetrates the oral cavity of the Lucian fish and … eats its tongue! In the most literal sense. After that, the crustacean is firmly fixed at the place where the organ important for the fish has recently, and … begins to perform its functions – the crustacean with his back pushes food into the throat and facilitates the fish swallow. This is the only case known to science when the parasite replaces the whole organ. The crustacean feeds with the remains of the meal and the mucus of the fish mouth. Fishermen who happened to catch Lucian with such an additive remembered this meeting for life. You open the fish to the fish to take out the hook, and from there you will stare a couple of someone's eyes … and sometimes four eyes, because two small mokrits can settle in the mouth of the fish at once.
Bram Stoker fish
Call: Danionella Dracula
Dislocation: Burma
Dracial fish looks like a real monster. Not only is she a huge head and giant eyes, but two fangs are also located on the upper jaw. In general, you just have to see a photograph of a kind of monster, as you immediately imagine how this creature pounces on its unfortunate victims, sticks your teeth and sucks out a leather – almost like an Amazon leech. That's just, except for fangs and an awesome appearance, nothing connects the drama fish with the hero of Stoker. The piquancy of the situation is that the paragraph fish is very small: two centimeters are not a size. And she eats mainly algae, well, perhaps sometimes swallows little daphnia. Males use fangs during marriage games. However, they do not think to stick them into each other. Funny sticking out the upper jaw, the raging cavaliers only shove their teeth. Although … what other teeth?! This is not the teeth at all, but only the outgrowths of the upper jaw, which are only similar to the teeth.
Blug
Call: Lethocerus indicus
Dislocation: Thailand
Imagine: the sun-flooded sandy beach tay, azure edge of water, thickets of lotuses … You enter the water knee-deep, stretch out with pleasure … and then something clings to your thumb on the leg! After that, a swift puncture follows, and you feel a burning pain rising to the knee. You are in horror!
Do not worry – there is no danger to life. This is just a huge bug of chronotserus accepted your limb for prey. The twenty -centimeter insect crept up to your finger, so similar to a fat worm, wrapped it around its arthilized extremities and stuck it under the nail the sharpest sting. If you do not pay attention to disgusting habits and a terrible appearance, chronots – the kindest soul of the creation. They take care of their offspring (the male hatches the masonry on their backs, heats it in the sun, cleanses, ventilate it), and in his free time they decorate the tables of gourmets. In the same Thailand, well -fried giant bugs can be freely bought on the grocery market. Oh yes, we completely forgot to mention another sweet feature of the chronicles. If you scare them, they throw a stream of stinking liquid from the anus, obviously believing that their dirty form is not enough to scare off the enemy.
Urethral parasite
Call: Vandellia cirrhosa
Dislocation: Amazon
Kandira, she is Vandelia, is a small cat in the Amazon. Locals are afraid of him more than pirania. The fact is that Kandira has one very cute feature: Somik leads a parasitic lifestyle, he climbs under the gill covers of fish, spreads his sharp chest fins there, is fixed in this way and begins to eat the gills of the victim. The focus is that, in addition to the gills, Vandelia can penetrate the male urethral canal, simply speaking the penis. There, the fish also spreads the fins, is securely fixed and … dies due to lack of oxygen. It is possible only to take it out of the urethra surgically, cutting the genitals along to the core itself. If there is no experienced surgeon at hand, then there are only two outputs – to die (from pain shock or gangrene) or chop off the penis for yourself. Vandelia also has genuine interest in women, but climbs as it is easy to guess, into the lumen of the vagina. In this case, the fish can be easily removed with ordinary tweezers.
Pikachu, I choose you!
However, there are two points that keep Darkspore afloat. Firstly, these are genetic heroes themselves. The game abstains you from finding a pet and his pumping up to the victorious end. In the campaign, we are given as many as a hundred heroes with unique characteristics, appearance and abilities. New animals are opened with growth in level, and with each “level-up” there are several at once, but you can choose only one at a time. As a result, two different players have different sets of heroes, and therefore different styles of passage.
Surprisingly, this collecting new monsters clings to a dead grip. Darkspore lives on the principle of Pokemon – "We will collect all of them together". Since each hero has only three active abilities, the game is bored with any character in a record time. Fortunately, you can add a new hero to your detachment, change the tactics fundamentally and get rid of boredom (at least for some time). As a result, at some point, you notice that you continue to be frantic to knead evil spirits, just to quickly open that tree-like multi-tone with a huge club.
In addition, new heroes promise additional opportunities for old characters. Some of the abilities of beginners become accessible to other members of the detachment. That is, sometimes you will include the hero in the detachment only for the sake of an extremely pretty “quantum jump” that would be great for your “tank”. Thus, manipulations with heroes almost completely leveled the uniformity and monotony of the gameplay of DarkSpore.
Finally, the second point saving Darkspore is a cooperative regime. Do not even try to go through the game in proud loneliness – turn it off with irritation through the first half hour. The main fun here is in high-speed races of the horned monsters of heroic monsters on compact worlds with total extermination of all living things. The ability of players can be dashingly combined: someone breaks into a crowd of monsters with a jump, attracts the surrounding enemies to themselves, and his associates fill the area with massive spells.
And do not forget that each player goes on the battlefield with two more heroes in your pocket, between which you can freely switch. So at any time the composition of the party can be changed beyond recognition: if in battles with bosses the most useful thing will be the standard MMO set “Tank, Hilery, Druid”, then for quick sequent of large areas all players can switch to magicians or agile robbers.
* * *
Let the Maxis studio no longer invent new genres every year, but it is still able to collect its Diablo from improvised means. This is not very smart and not too beautiful, but spending some time before the release of Diablo 3 is still possible here.
Reigracy – Yes
Cool plot – No
Originality – No
Easy to master – Yes
Gameplay: 7
Graphics: 6
Sound and music: 7
Interface and management: 8
Waited? Diablo from Maxis – without quests, craft and pumping talents, but with a powerful editor and many heroes.
Mania rating: 7.0
"Fine"
