f13.net

Rather than force you to focus on a developing a single character that belongs to a single character class with a limited skillset, Darkspore will actually let you select a team of three different hero creatures to take into battle, and will also let you gather a huge collection of alternate heroes for you to use and develop as you see fit.

The game will offer five different playable races, or "genesis types" which determine the basis of your character's attacks: "bio" (plant- and organic-based attacks), "cyber" (robotic attacks), "plasma" (fire- and lightning-based attacks), "necro" (death- and poison-based attacks), and "quantum" (time- and space-based attacks). It'll also offer different playable classes that roughly correspond with the archetypes you've seen in other such games, such as the sentinel, a "tank" class (which fights enemies in up-close combat and is tough enough to soak up damage), the tempest, a "mage" class (which fights with ranged attacks from a distance and is too fragile to sustain a frontal assault), and the ravager, a "rogue" class (which uses surprise attacks and stealth to do battle). In any mission, you'll control only one hero at a time (but can instantly switch to one of your other two characters if you need their powers or are getting too beat up), but interestingly, certain powers that belong to your heroes will remain "universal" to your team and can be used regardless of which hero you're currently controlling.


You and your teammates will need to work together to survive. And you get to split the take at the end.
Each profession will have multiple abilities in battle that include direct combat, support, and evasion that will work well in solo play and even better in cooperative multiplayer. The Maxis team suggests that Darkspore will be at its absolute best in co-op, since its missions, which are planned to take place in levels which will have randomly-placed landmarks and monster spawns each time you play them, will offer substantially better loot rewards when tackled with a group, particularly if, after you defeat a mission's boss and complete its objectives, you decide to use Darkspore's "chain game"--a system that lets you wager this round's victory and spoils against a more-challenging version of the next mission. If you forgo this round's rewards, you can receive even better loot if you can successfully complete the next mission in the chain, and so on and so forth until everyone in the group either fails the next mission by getting wiped out, or enough players in the group vote against wagering.

Maxis suggests that loot and collection will be the heart of Darkspore--not only unlocking and collecting new heroes, but picking up tons and tons of items, including temporary power-ups that immediately heal your heroes and replenish the energy they spend on executing their special abilities, but also new types of equipment that can be worn on your heroes (and actually edited in appearance to change their size and orientation using the creature creator tools), as well as new, powerful body parts that can be added to new slots on any of your heroes to provide powerful bonuses…along with cosmetic body parts and accoutrements for which your heroes will also have separate slots, and can place them simply for looks. In addition, your characters' inventory screens will be accessible from outside the game on the World Wide Web, which means you can play around with different item sets and plan your next in-game strategy while you're not even playing, similar to the deck-building "meta-game" that fans of Magic: The Gathering know and love (and talk about endlessly).


The fate of the universe is in your hands/claws/webbed feet/spider creatures.
While gathering loot will be a big part of the final game, Maxis is taking a slightly different approach to creature creation, by focusing on using created critters built mostly in-house at the studio so that players can recognize hero characters and enemies (and their powers) on sight, rather than randomly populating the game with the thousands of player-created creatures. However, the studio does plan to hold contests to let players create the best critters they can, and the winners will be included into the game as regular characters. And in case you were wondering, the studio currently plans to ship the game as a full retail product with no microtransations or subscription fees. We'll be honest with you--this is a bold new step in a new direction for the Spore series, and hopefully the game's premise of combining the wacky, body-part-swapping of Spore with the addictiveness of hack-and-slash games will pay off. Darkspore will ship next year.

Maxis is taking a slightly different approach to creature creation, by focusing on using created critters built mostly in-house at the studio so that players can recognize hero characters and enemies (and their powers) on sight, rather than randomly populating the game with the thousands of player-created creatures.

I'm getting an image of Will Wright off crying in a dark corner, arms tightly holding himself as he rocks gently.

This looks pretty awesome

Total Biscuit did an hour long rundown of the beta on his youtube channel that is worth watching (or at least watching some of).  I actually really like the look of the game, but between Torchlight 2 being in direct competition with it, and then Diablo 3 coming after that, it has some pretty stiff competition to my mind.

http://www.youtube.com/user/TotalHalibut#p/c/2272A4EE84269E1F/3/fuzwBNOoPeU

Umm, there's no competition whatsoever.  Darkspore comes out in 2 weeks.  T2 and D3 come out.. uhhh, who knows when.  (T2 is a maybe for July).
These games dont have long half-lives anyways.  4 months between releases is fine.

As for an opinion on the game, I can now no longer comment.   :nda:

Basically sounds like Spore Pokemon. Yuck. The only thing decent about Spore is its ability to be an authoring tool: anything that repurposes it by losing that one great feature is completely pointless.

While I've more or less boycotted Spore products thanks to what they did to WW's amazing vision....

Darkspore has little to nothing to do with Spore, seriously.

Given that Torchlight was 20 dollars, the 50 dollar price tag on Darkspore strikes me as a bit too much.   Especially given what I said earlier about buying a bunch of ARPGs in one year (even if D3 doesn't come out for a long time, Torchlight 2 will come out pretty shortly). 

Unfortunately, EA has put some conditions on the game that are likely to put a damper on the experience for a few gamers.

According to the game’s official online disclosure notice, Darkspore will require a “persistent Internet connection” in order for gamers to play it. This includes both retail copies of the game as well as Steam’s digital version.

Are they doing this on purpose?

They could, oh I dunno, make it an optional feature for those who were to actually care about such things. Or give people the option to keep it local only, if you must see the achievements themselves, but don't care about sharing them with everyone?

Well, I know it's an excuse for anti-piracy but really, how else would they track achievements, leaderboards, do the social-network thing, and so on w/o a persistent net connection?

Well, I know it's an excuse for anti-piracy but really, how else would they track achievements, leaderboards, do the social-network thing, and so on w/o a persistent net connection?

The lines of what is an "MMO" and what isn't are beginning to blur a bit, and will probably become even more blurred over the next five years.  I expect almost all games to have a serious online component soon, even if it is something like Demon's Souls that allows for somewhat different forms of PvP. 

4) only old gamers and pirates are seriously put off by not being able to play offline.

4) matters less and less every year.

Most people bitching about the online requirement are likely sitting forever on Steam, Xfire or some such.   :oh_i_see:

Most people bitching about the online requirement are likely sitting forever on Steam, Xfire or some such.   :oh_i_see:

But DO you?

Steam doesnt function unless steam is online, otherwise it's just a glorified loading screen.

It will still let you play your games, though.  That is the crucial element people are complaining about.

Jeez, even consoles are pretty much required to have an always-on connection these days (at the very least a registration), otherwise you're not getting even remotely your money's worth.

Can we agree that it's only crucial in "designed to be" single-player or local co-op games?
Jeez, even consoles are pretty much required to have an always-on connection these days (at the very least a registration), otherwise you're not getting even remotely your money's worth.

DS is centered around co-op play, kind of like Magicka actually... especially with the synergies involved with some of the builds.  Buying it to play solo is just  :why_so_serious:.  Using that logic, requiring a connection isnt too much of a stretch.

DS is centered around co-op play, kind of like Magicka actually... especially with the synergies involved with some of the builds.  Buying it to play solo is just  :why_so_serious:.  Using that logic, requiring a connection isnt too much of a stretch.

4) only old gamers and pirates are seriously put off by not being able to play offline.

4) matters less and less every year.

I don't really give a shit about Darkspore. I was addressing the bullshit point you made about how "always-on" is pretty much required for consoles these days. Which you chose to ignore. Good argument, well done. Good job.

Do you logoff (nay, physically DISCONNECT) your console even though you dont "require" it to be constantly connected?

Do you logoff (nay, physically DISCONNECT) your console even though you dont "require" it to be constantly connected?

In this sense, DS is NO DIFFERENT.  I dont understand why you cant fathom this.

Do you logoff (nay, physically DISCONNECT) your console even though you dont "require" it to be constantly connected?  Regardless of your perceived value, MOST people have their 360s and Ps3 (I do not count the Wii  :oh_i_see:) connected to the net at all times.  Furthermore, MOST people have an app. on their PCs eating packets as soon as they turn their box on... many of which are autologin, not even including stuff like Steam.

In this sense, DS is NO DIFFERENT.  I dont understand why you cant fathom this.

I guarantee the pirate version will not have this problem.

I kind of assume the persistent internet connection is so it can go grab everyone else's silly penis monsters to populate your game rather than anything to do with extraneous fluff like achievements.

Do you logoff (nay, physically DISCONNECT) your console even though you dont "require" it to be constantly connected?  Regardless of your perceived value, MOST people have their 360s and Ps3 (I do not count the Wii  :oh_i_see:) connected to the net at all times.  Furthermore, MOST people have an app. on their PCs eating packets as soon as they turn their box on... many of which are autologin, not even including stuff like Steam.

In this sense, DS is NO DIFFERENT.  I dont understand why you cant fathom this.

DRM or not this game is really slow and boring.

Sunspots?  :oh_i_see:

They need to increase the pace a bit too.   Increase the hero speed and add like x3 mobs and they might be getting somewhere.

Indeed. I'm hoping this will be the case farther into the game. Things do seem to be picking up now that I'm a few levels in. I shall do my best to forgo studying to play more and find out if this is the case.

I enjoyed playing the game, but not enough to justify dropping the full retail price. I'll probably wait for a steam sale or something. It is a fun game, but the opening pace is a bit slow to really thrill me, and the character editor is a cumbersome addition that needs to be de-emphasised