A wild idea by developer Relic
Entertainment (creators of Homeworld),
and published by Microsoft
Games, Impossible
Creatures is an RTS where players get to custom build their own animal
units and pit them against each other. This is an RTS where you assemble
your units from a library of existing animals. For example, you can mix
parts of an archer fish with a baboon (see right) or fuse a mountain goat
with an owl (bottom right). There's a huge number of possible unit combinations
you can come up with, all which take existing attributes and abilities and
mix them together in new forms.
Impossible
Creatures takes
the basic premise of the Island
of Doctor Moreau and develops it into an easily accessible and
smartly put together game. The crazy animals and island setting is
reminiscent
of Black & White minus the psychology tests
(or any kind of ambivalent edge), the game engine and graphics begin
where WarCraft III stops, and the single player
campaign uses a mad inventor plot starring a rather nice young, heroic
couple who could have stepped out of any modern animated Disney film.
There's a collection of stereotyped, comedy villains to deal with,
and a fantastical flying locomotive for a headquarters. Its housed
in an
Art Deco 30's retro matinee with rich colours and a snappy soundtrack. Impossible
Creatures is a slick RTS designed to attract the general
public. It lacks that "hard core" feel (for want of a better
word) that usually screens out casual game players.
Even so, its not that radical, in spite of
its wild unit creation. There's a lot of familiar territory here; the
economic and research models
are
very "typical" of
the real time strategy genre. The deposits of Coal and Geysers look
like
they
came straight
out of StarCraft after
a quick paint job. The lightning towers and geothermal plant felt very
Total Annihilation.
There are gangs of Henchmen digging coal, building and repairing
buildings, and even attending to injured animals. You get
specialised buildings and defences that offer new build trees or upgrades
to existing units. Impossible Creatures looks and feels like a superior
version of WarCraft III; a seamless and cartoony 3D world of island
maps to play in, except Relic is offering something quite genuinely
new.
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Combining animals together is at the heart of this game: everything else
is just there to let you do it without having to learn anything new. You
have to completely devise, develop and produce your own forces from scratch,
unless you opt to use pre-existing armies in skirmish mode. This allows
you to create an entire force to your own specs, or the needs of the map;
and it gives players a tremendous scope for experimentation to produce their
own signature forces. You can only squish two different animals together
at a time (damn!), but there are absolutely no restrictions on what you
can cross and even two animals can give you a lot of options. The system
of combining different animals together and producing your own armies is
simple and lots of fun, and lets you easily massage those vital statistics
and special abilities to give your creatures that tactical edge.
Each animal's DNA offers a different set of attributes:
electric eels give a creature an electrical attack; a chameleon camoflauge;
a tiger a pounce attack; a bear lots of health points; or a lemming
the ability to burrow. You can cross an orca with a wolf so it can
walk across
land and have acute hearing; or cross a fish with a bird and have it
fly and swim. With very little effort you can generate some outlandish
monsters. Despite the fact players are ordering animals to fight each
other to the death, this is all Family Safe: there's no blood or fuss
(bodies fade away very discreetly) and there's lots of weird spells
and Pokémon style
attacks, all staged within that clean cut, sumptuous cartoon fantasy
world mentioned before. The engine is excellent, playing on my older
PC with a surprising amount of fluidity, and the game mechanics seem
sound. The basic idea is superb, offering something different - but
still playable - for a change. About the only downside is that a lot
of people prefer their RTS units pre-built, and having to completely
devise your own is going to put some people off. Still, Impossible
Creatures is
definitely recommended, but it does feel pitched towards the kiddies.
The demo clocks in at
285Mb.
There's an expansion: Insect
Invasion, adding 15 insect bodies, 6 new
map environments and 9 new animal abilities to
dabble with. This expansion relies on the gaming being patched to version
1.1.
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Hægemonia:
Legions of Iron
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