Impossible Creatures sounded like it was going to be a great game, it advertised itself as a game where you could breed and design creatures - combine the most menacing and powerful features of different creatures to create terrifying, horiffic animals for your armies.
I don't know what kind of game I expected Impossible Creatures to be from the blurb or advertisements. When I downloaded the demo and discovered it was basically an RTS with unit design features I was a bit disappointed, but I decided to keep going anyway.
It felt rather kiddish with the plot, the patronising tutorial, and the overly colourful and cheerful interface. I blitzed through the tutorial and demo missions in a very short afternoons worth of play, and resolved not to bother with this kids game.
A friend of mine though was very insistant that the game was going to 'rock' and that it was definately worth getting. So, I picked it up thinking that if it was rubbish I could just give it to him. He had stressed, repeatedly, that this game was by the same people who did Homeworld - and, unfortunately, Homeworld 2. Now Homeworld was a game I have some respect for. Not the 'cult, amazing, genre changing' kind of thoughts that many supporters of Homeworld have, but a respect none the less.
The full version of the game is, naturally, slightly better than the demo - less bugs for one. It's still difficult to decide what to make of it though.
The premise is simple - you play Rex, a war reporter searching for information about his father who went missing some time ago. You meet Lucy, a friend of the family with some decent knowledge and skills to help you out, and learn about Upton Julius - the wealthy bad guy, who has been breeding himself an army of nasty creatures.
You are given a brief introduction to combat and breeding via the tutorial and popup help, then you are let loose to build a base, gather resources, build generators to make electricity, etc. It feels a bit more like Settlers than Command and Conquer, but the principle is the same for all RTS games really. It's just a shame that they make gathering fuel and building so dull compared to those guys in settlers who are prospecting and go 'Yipee!' when they find gold.
From then on the game is relatively plain sailing. The breeding options for the creatures, which had been the main draw of the game for my friend, and myself, aren't that great - you can make some nice sounding creatures with cool names, and the graphics for your new designs can be nice, but the creatures themselves don't do much - the differences in the stats and powers aren't as great as they could have been, and your ability to create a world dominating super monster is rather limited.
The controls are adequate but flawed - they are similar to most other RTS controls which is a good thing, but you can't configure all the keys, and some of the ones you can't change are ones that are rather critical to actually playing the game. This makes for an unpleasant first few sessions until you get used to the wierd controls, and, if you have a favourite setup like I do, will drive you insane.
The graphics were decent for their time - in fact if I was writing this when the game first game out I would have called them good. But, I'm writing this a long time after the games first release, and by the standards of, for example, Battle For Middle Earth, the graphics in Impossible Creatures are just average. They're clean and smooth though, so it hasn't aged too much in my opinion.
The interface graphics are a little too cheesy and cheerful for me though, and sometimes it does feel as if you're playing an educational game from a cereal box, not a REAL computer game. Even just smaller buttons and less stupid pictures would have helped there.
In terms of dialogue, thankfully this has avoided one of the problems with RTS games - sometimes it sounds a bit contrived, but it certainly isn't downright irritating the way some of the smaller developers games end up. The units do make sounds, but they aren't over the top or irritating.
This game is a bit too forgiving and easy, and the missions rather formulaic - destroy here, capture this, nab this technology. Granted that's what most games ask for these days, but most games engage you while they do it, keep the tension up a bit, and keep you motivated. In Impossible Creatures you advance quickly because the missions are easy, but still feel as if you're getting nowhere. By the end of the first few real missions I was just eager to get the game over and done with.
I said earlier that the full version has less bugs than the demo - that doesn't mean it's stable and fully functional though - on two different machines I experienced problems with crashes, locks, interface issues, and just general buginess - for example being told you couldn't do something, then clicking again and it allowing the exact same thing. Little issues like that are permissable I guess, but the sheer number of them was infuriating. Even if this had been a really good game, I'd probably be criticising it on here for it's buginess.
I've refered to this as a kids game several times. Before anyone jumps on me about how kids games can be fun for adults too, I'd like to stress that I normally will give 'kids games' a look - I've even had a laugh trying out Sitting Ducks before, and found that relatively engaging, if rather corny. Simple, funny, entertaining games for younger players can provide adults with light relief. Patronising, overly simplistic games dressed up as 'real' games, but with plots that are dumb and aimed at youngsters just because they've hopefully never seen a plot like that before and will think it is exciting is another matter.
Impossible Creatures is a Real Time Strategy. If you've played CnC, Warcraft, Warhammer, and Battle For Middle Earth to death then you might want to give this one a look out of desperation, but there are other RTS games out there I'd look at long before this one.
Maybe if it wasn't by the people who did Homeworld I'd look at it more favourably, but those guys know how to make interesting missions and keep peoples interest throughout a game. Hopefully next time they'll avoid the 'light relief' stuff and stick to serious strategy.
I'm afraid I can't recommend this one though.
