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Author Topic: Darkspore  (Read 1149 times)

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François

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Darkspore
« on: March 30, 2011, 12:11:39 AM »

I'm surprised at how much fun I've been having with the Darkspore beta. That said, I'm not smart enough to tell if it's really any good by itself or if it's just that the part of my brain that gets pleasure hormones from Diablo-type games hasn't been tickled since Torchlight.

It's got the Spore customization thing, but it's really more of a Pimp My Alien deal because you have to work with preset body shapes; that's a missed opportunity, but if you look at it another way, that means you can more easily identify stuff at a glance. If you see one of your party members is using the regular-sized blue humanoid with wrist-mounted blades, you he's got the Haste aura and the time stop skills, and if you see the four-legged tree guy, you know that's the healer, and so on.

The thing is, the drops you get from enemies are usually weapons, equipment, or body parts, each with the typical random stat effects. You can only ever equip one of each type, and they have race restrictions, but there's a function that strips all the stats and restrictions from items and allows you to put them on any of your character's bodies. Essentially, if you find something that looks cool but isn't very good, you can keep it as a decoration. There's only ever one slot for, say, eyes, but if you've got decorative eyes then you can cover your guy with them without affecting his stats.

When you go into a mission, you choose three of your characters, and they go together. You only ever use one at a time, but each of them has a skill that is shared with the entire squad. By which I mean, each character has its three personal skills, plus one shared skill from each of his squadmates. It took me a while to realize how it worked, but it's actually a lot of fun to mix and match abilities.

For example:
Hero A has skills I, II and III. Skill III is shared among the party. In battle, he can use skills I, II, III, VI and IX.
Hero B has skills IV, V and VI. Skill VI is shared among the party. In battle, he can use skills IV, V, VI, III and IX.
Hero C has skills VII, VIII and IX. Skill IX is shared among the party. In battle, he can use skills VII, VIII, IX, III and VI.

So I can use a slow melee tank, squad him up with a spellcaster and a quick fighter, and suddenly the slow guy can throw lightning bolts and use a long-range dash attack. As you progress in the game you unlock more and more character types each with their own skills, so even though each of them only has three special moves of its own, it doesn't feel like there's a shortage of ways to kill stuff.

It gets even more fun once you go in multiplayer, because each of the possible four players has his own squad of three. Skills aren't shared between players, but there's a lot of stuff that synergizes well so there's usually something cool going on.

So yeah, long story short the beta ends on Friday and if I'm not sick of it by then it's probably a purchase... even though giving money to anything even remotely connected to Will Wright makes me feel like I'm supporting terrorism.
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jsnlxndrlv

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Re: Darkspore
« Reply #1 on: March 30, 2011, 02:32:08 AM »

I think I'm one of the few people who actually enjoyed the original Spore around here to still occasionally play with it this much later. I finally got my Creepy & Cute parts pack fixed so I can actually use those features, and a while ago they added the ability to make asymmetrical creatures, so the game's been kind of born again in my eyes. I don't really mind that it's lightweight substanceless strategy for casuals, and while I haven't played Galactic Adventures in order to actually know, the custom quests people occasionally post for that game seem pretty interesting. If we were living in a world where I wasn't financially in the red and not moving up any time soon, I'd like to get this.
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Ziiro

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Re: Darkspore
« Reply #2 on: March 30, 2011, 07:09:01 AM »

A few of us on Ventrilo have been playing it, actually. I'm up to level 11 now.

The best feature is the fact you can chain missions together for extra reward. You bet your winnings from the previous mission on the next mission, and keep going. The only limiting factor is the "Engines of your Ship", which is basically tied to level. You unlock the ability to 3-chain at 10, and I saw the unlimited chaining engines are at 29 - meaning you can do the whole game in one, glorious run for theoretically the best items in the game if you're good. That shit gets difficult, though.
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Norondor

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Re: Darkspore
« Reply #3 on: March 30, 2011, 07:33:03 AM »

I think I'm one of the few people who actually enjoyed the original Spore

yep
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sei

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Re: Darkspore
« Reply #4 on: March 30, 2011, 08:18:36 PM »

I've been playing, but can't connect to LB Ventrilo. I'm almost 15.

EDIT: Got vent info.
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François

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Re: Darkspore
« Reply #5 on: July 23, 2011, 02:13:49 PM »

So yeah I just clocked in my 200th hour at this not counting the beta. It's to the point where I'm wondering how Diablo 3 could possibly make me prefer it.

Well, okay, the plot is entirely garbage, never improves, and persists in entirely ignoring every last molecule of what potential it has, so that's a possible avenue I guess. But then again, D3 is gonna be "big guy's back lol" so who knows.
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