DarkSpore PC Review

I came across this game while looking for a co-op RPG for me and a friend to play that wasn't a fantasy or middle ages type genre. We were mainly looking for scifi so this kind of filled the slot.
How did it fare? Well I will get to that.

Over all it was enjoyable to play though it was the demo version. I think it could be quite a bit more fun with a buddy hacking away with me but not much different over all. It felt like most other dungeon crawler Hack-N-Slash RPG games I have played in the past. Nothing besides the fact that my character was a monster and the environment reminded me that it was a scifi setting. The only thing that stood out a little bit to me was that it wasn't just one hero I brought into combat, it was a team of 3 that were hot swap-able at any time during play with a cool down of a couple seconds. Besides that it was the typical fare of special powers that were usable from an action bar after being gained from leveling up. Kill your way through the map to the end point, picking up DNA(experience) and loot along the way from dead enemies, chests and the randomly placed and seemingly useless destructible structures. Enemy types were quite varied, though besides the actual models, nothing drastically set them apart from run of the mill monsters.

So besides being quite meh in most other areas, the game controlled fantastically well! The smooth flow of combat and control tightness was really the only thing that kept me playing as long as I did in the demo. Though I will probably return to see which monsters I unlock next, I got enough of a feel for the game to write about it. Obviously the love of loot collecting was there but it wasn't a super special affair.

The story is really non-existent. You are a super scientist woken from millenia of cryo sleep to find that your genetic experiment that wiped out most of the universe has finally evolved into usefulness. These useful creations (your heroes) must be tracked down and unlocked in order to purge the galaxy of the mutated menace side effects of your experiments. That's about it, in the load screens the game tacks on some back story and history to each location but seeing as there aren't any NPCs that you converse with, it is mostly forgettable.

The main cool feature of the game is the crazy amount of customization you can do with the loot you pick up and equip on your characters. Each piece as usual goes on a specific slot, but the look and feel of that item on your monster and be custom sized, colored, and placed. I can see endless amounts of fun and combinations involved with this as long as the equipment is varied.

All in all it is a fun game and fairly entertaining, it would be more so with friends. Having found this on steam for $15 I've decided that I am going to wait for the price of the game to drop. Can't honestly say that I would be willing to spend more than $10 on this game.

7.5/10

LittleBigPlanet PSVita Beta - Impressions

When I got the email that I had been selected as a tester for LBP PSVita beta I was pretty excited. Even though I was never very skilled at creating levels, I enjoyed trying to make some of my own ideas come to life. Most of the time they ended up limping out the gate though. Some of the levels created by the community could easily be considered full fledged expansions to most other games though.
When the download and install completed there was an immediate update to the build I had downloaded. This tells me they are still constantly working on the systems that we know and love from the PS3 LBP games. The first thing I was impressed by was how great the game looked graphically. Besides the small screen, the game could have easily been mistaken for its console predecessors. All the controls were the same, as were all the animations. Everything we have come to know and love from the console versions was there.

There was of course added functionality for the equipment that the Vita boasts. Specifically the touch screen and rear touch pad. There were four developer made levels to play on when I logged on to play the game. All played brilliantly until I had to use the touch features. When something required me to drag/pull on it with the front touch screen obviously my hands had to leave the controls I would normally be occupied with.

The rear touch pad didn't seem to get as much use, at least with the levels that were present at the time. One of the levels is however controlled entirely by touch. It is interesting but doesn't feel like the LBP I grew to love.
The other thing that really bugged me was the completely broken nature of the net code. Now obviously this is a beta, but the game is built around playing with others and community involvement. I was honestly hoping that I could enjoy slapping other players while I was waiting around at the airport or wherever non-productive waiting is done. Sadly this is not the case as of yet with the beta anyways.
All the advanced level building features we saw added with LBP2 are still present. Thankfully the touch screen controls shine like a diamond when used here. No more slowly moving the sack boy around the screen or constantly pressing directional buttons for menus. Everything can be done with a simple and quick swipe or touch.




Overall I completely enjoyed my time with LBP-V beta. Lets just hope they have everything ironed out before launch. One thing that might become a problem though would be user generated content using up a lot of space on the vita storage card. There's a lot of user generated content already which means the community is already alive and kicking for plenty of new and interesting ways to play.