Quickly!! A Darkspore Video Game intro by Cousin Matt!

If there is anything that playing the Beta of Darkspore taught me, is that ‘do not put your entire opinion on the beta’.  Now, reading that, all you readers out there probably took one look at that statement and thought:  “Wow, the beta must have really bombed.”  The answer to that is….that’s only a sliver of the truth.

Really, I was pretty awe inspired by the beta of Darkspore, it gave me a lot to work with, being able to choose between different creatures that the creators made, each with their own unique ability that made the entire visual stimulating enough.  With only a tap of a button, I went from a powerful melee attacker to a ranged quick attacker, then straight over to a fighter with an awesome special attack.   Then you get to level up, which then you get another alien breed that you can trade in to replace one of the three in your slots.  It’s quite a lovely feature for a video game, really.

My original issue was my own fault, really.  Upon hearing about this video game called Darkspore was created ‘from the creators of Spore’ and it is a ‘Sci-fi Action RPG’, I was instantly enthralled with the idea.  You see, I’m an artist, and my favorite part of what I do is create beings, aliens or fantasy type beasts.  Spore sadly was…boring after the character generator, because, like all ‘Sim’ video games, I’ll lose pretty quick.  Mostly because I get bored, or I tried to too-overindulge too quickly, and killing the point of the game.  This includes losing all my residents in SimTower or accidentally getting my female girl dead because she forgot to eat and I didn’t notice. So thus I’m bad at ‘life-simulator’, but great with action RPGs!  So I was all for it.

But then came the Beta, and after playing it, I thought this is very, very cool…but it doesn’t have the character generator that I originally thought.  Upon receiving a piece of armor during the beta, I was…well, stuck.  I honestly had no idea what I wanted to do with the silly little piece…

A week later somebody finally mentioned to me that Betas really are just the video games only ‘locked‘, and hidden so that you will only get a taste of what is to come.  After that, I rechecked my game, and found out that the armor was for the ankles…while I was placing it on the guy’s shoulders.

So yeah, tossing out my idiocy, I bring to you Maxis Entertainment’s newest video game, Darkspore.  An exciting sci-fi based RPG that is very similar to Diablo, for all of those hard-core fans out there.  By just playing the beta alone, I can reassure to you that it is very much unique and interesting to play.  In fact if I didn’t know what Spore was or that Darkspore was made by Maxis, I might have mistaken it for a unique Blizzard video game, which already wins me over!

The levels themselves feel very much like an enhanced sci-fi stage that you can wander around in, albeit a little on the linear side.  Still, it was far better than my time in the video game called  ‘Loaded’ where I spent nearly 2 hours looking for a key and wasn’t able to find the room that had the guy that had said silly equipment.  The missions were easy enough, truly, and some of the villains seem a little on the repetitive side.  Still, it is an RPG, in which some of the baddies can be taken down easier by a different alien, so thus always come prepared with your best fighters, and I do mean plural.

You will receive a lot of hero aliens to work with, each one carrying their own abilities, though some may overlap, but I do believe that’s so that you can decide for yourself which one you’d like to use.  Would you like the quick fire-based warrior that can shoot from afar or the Fire-based Tank that can smash the ground and incinerate everyone around you.  It’s one of those video games that you should actually play at least six of the aliens, so you can rebuild your tactics if it doesn’t work.  I am a firm believer that this video game you will have to play a little bit more strategic than just going in and bashing your opponents.  So for all of you ‘shoot first ask questions later’, you may have to replay the stages a few times.

Still, between you and me, I’d rather have a little more open freedom to Darkspore, including altering my aliens a bit more…though I’m pretty sure my friends would role their eyes and say that I would probably make a small army of Amazonian females that kick serious butt…

…And I would…

…And it would be Awesome…