We take one last look at Darkspore

Previously, on Darkspore... With barely a couple of weeks left to go, we're still concerned that EA haven't really handled the game's marketing properly. Even turning up at the EA offices in Guildford for one last play through, several of the other journalists there didn't really know what the game was about, and we wouldn't be surprised if some of you guys didn't either. My personal favourite analogy for this title is Diablo meets Spore, so forgive us if you see that used a lot.
 

The campaign can be done co-operatively as well

In our last preview, we only had hands one with the PvP experience, but now we've had a go of the public beta and so have a better feel for the game over all, especially the single player campaign section. As you already know, you play one of the last surviving members of a race of beings who were masters of genetics. In a story that's oddly reminiscent of The Flood from Halo, one of your creations goes out of control turns into the 'Darkspore', and starts spreading across the galaxy like a plague. It's up to you try and your 'genetic heroes' to try and reclaim what was lost.

The campaign mode in Darkspore is based on two key things: progression and loot. There is an actual story to the game, although it's more of a side-show to the actual gameplay. You start off with three 'heroes' which you use to battle through the twenty plus levels in the game, as you level up you get to unlock more. There are apparently 25 'main' heroes, and then an additional 75 that are basically subtle variants of the main ones. This is probably the most oddest bit of the game so far, as if we're being honest that seems like a little bit too many, especially considering that apparently the difference is nothing more than an ability that's changed. Seems a bit of a waste to me.

Obviously, you can take your genetic heroes beyond what you can do in the main campaign. With PvP available, and the multitude of items that you can collect, you'll want to keep playing after you've finished the story. Darkspore utilises a 'chaining' system, whereby you can do several levels in a row in order to get bigger and better rewards. Each time you chain, you're effectively gambling as if you lose, you lose all of the bonus items you were going to collect. You can chain in a linear fashion as you go through the story, but once that's complete, the levels are then randomised in a chain, so you never know what level you're going to do.
 

Big bosses are usually at the end of the last sector of a planet

The randomization is key in this game, as it helps prolong the onset of repetitiveness. Whilst the physical layouts are always the same, the placement of certain objects, the type of monsters that are spawned, and even the loot they drop are always different. There is a grind aspect not dissimilar to what you'd find in an MMORPG, so provided you're at the very least tolerant of grinding, there shouldn't be too much of an issue here.



Which brings us to the other major portion of the game – customization. Once collected, you can outfit your heroes with loot in order to make them more powerful for use in PvP or higher level campaign missions. The Editor is not too dissimilar from the one in Spore, although it's improved naturally over the years, although why they don't let players go the whole nine yards and make their own heroes from scratch is a puzzle. Perhaps it would have been too difficult to implement with the items, or maybe they didn’t want to associate with the Spore franchise too much, who knows.

Regardless, as you collect more and more heroes – and purchase upgrades like stat increases, extra squad slots, etc... you can easily spend ages in the this mode outfitting them all, choosing their colour scheme, choosing who goes into what squad, in what order etc... This is the only real point of concern for us at the moment, that the late-game micro-management gets too fiddly to be enjoyable. I don't much fancy sifting through 100 slightly different heroes, and then outfitting just a handful for use, do you?

A quick note on PvP, since we got a decent enough session on that. Little has changed since we last saw it. It's Arena based, with either one vs one or two v two matches. Matches are best out of three, and the loser of a round is actually allowed to change their squad between rounds so that they can counter whatever the winner has got. Whilst it's extremely fun – being a matter of countering and out-manoeuvring the enemy via hot-swapping – the modes seem limited. Hopefully we'll see more via DLC.
 

You have to make sure you use the right 'type' of hero for any given situation

With the game pretty much feature complete now, all that's left is to give it a proper work over at the review stage, and see how Maxis post-release content. We're not too worried about Darkspore in terms of the quality – it's a good game, but we hope that there will be enough awareness to help it sell. Aside from that, provided Maxis keep it properly supported after launch, then we see a bright future for this nifty little title. Darkspore is due out on PC on March 29th.

Most Anticipated Feature: The PvP is the most engaging aspect of the game, it has to be said.