Spore Series
Game Rant – Darkspore interview with executive producer Mike Perry
Feb 17th
GR: I’m not particularly good at Action RPGs — I’ll quite happily admit that. The guy sitting next to me, however, was very good. During one of the levels, I kept getting killed by one of the bosses, but he sailed through with ease. How does the game accommodate for the different skillsets of different players?
MP: “That’s a great question. There are lots of different types of Action RPG players, with a very broad set of skills, right? So what we did with Darkspore, is we created a system called an AI Director. This was something very inspired by Left 4 Dead and their design for their AI Director. The AI Director in Darkspore pays attentions to everybody that’s playing the game, and what it does is: controls the number of NPCs that spawn in, it controls the type of NPCs, their behavior, how hard they are. It watches how you’re playing, and adjusts the difficulty dynamically depending on how you’re playing the game.”
“It also takes into account how many people are playing together. So if you’re playing solo through the campaign, the AI director will spawn one type of enemy, and if you’re playing in Co-op, it’ll do something a little bit differently. We want to make sure that the AI director supplies a really good experience for everybody who plays the game
, regardless of your skill level. That said, the difficulty of the game absolutely increases as you’re playing through the campaign, and as you go from level to level, it gets harder and harder, but the AI Director is there to ensure the difficulty level is always tuned to how you’re playing.”
continue reading the interview with Darkspore’s Executive Producer Mike Perry here
GamingUnion – Darkspore beta impressions
Feb 17th
One of the bigger and more exciting features of Darkspore is the level of customization. Using an enhanced version of the Spore Creator editor, Darkspore’s editor allows you to customize your heroes’ equipment to a great extent. You can also edit the default look of your heroes. However, equipping items and weapons isn’t quite clear and will take a bit of tinkering to get adjusted. A tutorial on this part of the game would have made understanding it a lot quicker, in my opinion. Unlike games like WoW and League of Legends where players are given item slots that are clear on their purposes, Darkspore requires you to actually drag items on to your hero, some of which aren’t quite obvious as to what they actually are or do until I read the descriptions. New items can be picked up as drops or purchased through the ship’s shop. However, what’s neat is that you can customize each item and how they are placed on your hero.
VideoGamer – Darksporep preview for PC
Feb 17th
But despite not being Spore’s sequel it successfully mixes Spore-like character creation with combat in a way Spore never quite managed. And this is possibly the most interesting aspect of the game. Once you finish a level you can go back into the character editor with the DNA and parts that you’ve collected, and then use your accumulated DNA to buy limbs and re-design your Hero. The re-designs aren’t exactly drastic. Unlike Spore it’s focused more on function than straight and pure creativity, so unfortunately you can’t expect to fight brigades of penis-shaped enemies in PVP. Limbs have more of a practical purpose in this game, with every part giving your Hero additional HP, strength, stamina, and so on.
ZAM’s hands on look with Maxis’ Darkspore
Feb 15th
To get right into the middle of things, Darkspore is basically what happens when you combine the easy to pick up game mechanics of Pokemon, and you mash it in with the dungeon-crawling, treasure hunting game mechanics of Diablo. The storyline of Darkspore is relatively straightforward, owing to its wide target audience: as a “Crogenitor,” your race went about the galaxy, modifying the DNA of specific creatures to grant them special powers and strength. Over time, your race also developed an experimental type of DNA (E-DNA) that promotes the growth of super-powerful creatures. Of course, this is where it all starts going bad, and the unstable E-DNA mutated your once friendly creatures into rampaging hordes of hostile aliens – the Darkspore. Your character wakes up on a ship, where HELIX, the ship’s A.I., has finally managed to stabilize the E-DNA and has now charged you with saving the galaxy, with the help of your powerful creatures.
MMORPG – Darkspore preview
Feb 14th
In a nutshell the game has many elements that MMOs should heavily factor in before they launch.
For me, Darkspore is a game that spans playerbases. Now, hear me out on this. I played the game with my son who is just about old enough to get into video games. He plays Torchlight and some of the iPad games, but nothing too in-depth yet. Darkspore was a great game for him to try because it dealt with monsters, DNA, mutations, and space. What kid now-a-days doesn’t like those topics. The game play was manageable for him and he mastered moving and fighting very quickly.
That is not to say the game is easy by any means. It is one of those, easy to play difficult to master titles. In playing through the campaign mode the environments are awesome ranging from destroyed planets held together by shield style technology to amazing colorful worlds full of life. Either way there was a lot to see on the environments created.
PC Gamer – Darkspore preview
Feb 14th
When I first started playing, I felt like I was reliving childhood memories of browsing through the Toys-R-Us action figure aisles. A hulking purple skeleton that smashes face with a giant axe? Awesome! Floating tentacle-teeth that shoot black holes which randomly teleport you? Cool! I even quickly grew attached to a favorite hero: Vex the Chrono Shifter, a DPS’er who could freeze and rewind time. Each member of your squad has two active abilities and one global ability that carries over between each hero. One of my favorite combos was having Blitz, the Storm Striker’s plasmaball shield combined with Vex’s time lapse burst damage. The UI is incredibly clean and easy to understand, and each level has bonus objectives for better chances of rare loot.
Digital Spy previews Darkspore
Feb 14th
I know I’ve been posting a number of previews for Darkspore. My time will come in terms of getting a preview up – just awaiting premission from Maxis before doing so – don’t want to step on anyone’s toes when it comes to breaking any NDAs!
While the genre is traditionally steeped in fantasy, Maxis’ latest takes a more contemporary approach in its setting. Akin to recent blockbuster sci-fi franchises, Darkspore arrives with a fully crafted universe filled with backstories and diverse planets, all fighting against relentless, mutated virus consuming its many alien races. The damage, however, is already done – you play a Crogenitor, a member of a long-dead race woken up from cryogenic sleep to discover that the Darkspore has practically taken over the galaxy. With the help of an on-board AI piloting your drifting spaceship, you construct heroes from the fragments of DNA remaining on board and send them on missions to stop the mutated army from total domination.
It’s comes with a dark, moody and strikingly different feel to the family friendly Spore that we all know, and compared to its peers in the genre, it’s structurally different too. While the likes of Diablo featured a familiar hub world and dungeons to return to, Darkspore adopts a simple arcade-like structure, with each planet featuring four missions that end in a boss battle. Each stage is perfectly suited for quick game sessions, lasting around 15 minutes in length with simple, linear layouts to abide to. The gameplay itself is also cheerfully straightforward, requiring players to reach the teleporter at the far end of the area once you’ve taken out enough enemies, and occasionally, sticking to a single zone to wipe out advancing hordes. Elsewhere there’s the standard co-operative play online – for up to four players – as well as two-on-two PvP to put their warriors to the test.
Darkspore may come to consoles – if you want it, that is
Feb 14th
See, this is where The Sims Team/EA can learn from Maxis – they care a whole lot about the community and knows that customers come first when making a great game. Darkspore Executive Producer Mike Perry told Now Gamer that a console version of Darkspore could hit consoles – if us, the customers, would want it. Mike and the rest of Maxis will be keeping a close eye on the community, commenting the following:
“We’ll definitely pay attention to our community as we launch the game, but this isn’t the kind of game we’ll ship and then move onto something else. Darkspore is going to be a community – when we launch the game in late March we’re going to continue to support the community as long as we can.”
He also touches base (and makes it clear) that there will be no restrictions on Darkspore like there was when Spore originally launched:
“We allow players to install the game client wherever they want to, on as many PCs as they want to,” added Perry.
Good for you Maxis, show the others how it’s done!
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