When I sat down to play Darkspore at an event for Electronic Arts in NYC yesterday, a producer for the game asked me what I know about it. “It’s Spore meets Diablo” I said in a somewhat joking manner. “Not really, “ was his reply in a slightly perturbed manner. After spending some extensive time playing the game and talking to the game’s lead designer it became clear why he was so upset - this game is so much more than just another Action/RPG.
The core of the game is all about collecting loot and upgrading your characters. Instead of having one persistent character that you build and customize throughout the game, you instead have 25 of them at your disposal, with only three at the start. There’s three classes of character across five different types making fifteen unique combinations of character abilities you can use. Now what sets Darkspore apart from any other action RPG I’ve seen is that each mission has you bringing three characters with you - but you don’t control these characters simultaneously - instead you tag them in and out kind of like the recent Marvel vs Capcom 3.
As I clicked and moved my ranged character around the screen I came across a shielded enemy encampment. Since it was shielded my attacks didn’t do anything against it, so I quickly switched into a melee/tank class character that looked a bit like a fire golem and charged in. Switching characters on the fly offers some unique bonuses - the character you sub out slowly generates health back for one. Depending on which characters you choose you also get three shared abilities - so while each character has three base abilities, its their fourth ability that any one of your characters in a squad can use. This becomes crucial for things like healing and the other support abilities.
These abilities are earned by collecting parts and DNA (think gold) scattered from killing enemies and destroying objects on the missions. The item drop system in co-op is a first-grabbed, first-served basis, so make sure you play with folks who play nice with others. While you won’t earn experience to level up, the more powerful parts you earn and attach to your character in the editor increases that character’s level. Your level determines which missions you are able to go on earn more loot and continue the story. The base maps on the missions are all static, but the game’s AI Director will randomly generate certain parts of the maps as well as enemies and defensive structures. It’ll also scale and tweak what enemies are in the levels depending on the number of players present.
One interesting concept I was told about was a mission “chaining” system. Its a risk vs reward system where you can basically buy into doing consecutive missions in exchange for getting better loot. Basically you’d finish a mission and earn X loot, the game would then offer you another mission to go on with a reward of X and Y loot, with Y being a rarer item. If you win the mission you can get both items, if you lose, you lose both. These “chains” can be many missions deep, and the deeper you go, the better the rewards will be. This becomes an even bigger risk when you reach the end of a mission. Why? Because each mission ends with either a giant boss character or a survival style section where there’s a horde of creatures launched at you.
The co-op side of Darkspore is where things really get interesting. Like the single player, each person brings along three characters that they can switch to on the fly and since Darkspore support four player co-op, you can essentially have 12 of them 15 possible combinations of characters present.
I sat out the co-op play after playing through a mission solo and let Tally get her hands dirty.
Tally’s take:
As I jumped into a co-op game of Darkspore with a guy who I believe was part of the PR team for Darkspore, I started with a ranged hero. I quickly switched to melee when I noticed that he was playing a ranged character, too, as it looked like we’d need someone who could go toe-to-toe with the enemies and take the majority of the hits. For the first few minutes playing it, I attempted to play it similarly to Diablo II or Demigod. I happily hit my number keys 1-5 (these are the skill buttons) to see what kind of effects they had. I soon noticed, however, that unlike the previously mentioned games this wasn’t a very good strategy. All of your skills cost a good chunk of power (the game’s mana bar) and this power doesn’t come back (or, if it does, verrrrrrrrrrrry slowwwwwwwwwwly). Little blue or green vials drop on the ground to give you a slight power or health boost, but these vials dropped few and far between. We soon found ourselves in a situation where it would have been very beneficial for me to utilize my healing ability that one of my heroes had, but I had been out of power for a long, long time. The moral of the story? Use your skills more strategically and not willy-nilly.
But there were other important lessons I learned as well from my brief time playing Darkspore. I was very intrigued by the idea of switching my heroes whenever I wanted to for the sake of using the most effective hero possible for the current situation (think like in the single-player experience of Trine). Though I had been warned there was a cool down between switching heroes, the length was more substantial than I anticipated. So when you switch to one of your heroes, make sure you’ll want to stay on him for a little while! Don’t switch to a squishy guy to use his awesome ability in the middle of a horde of enemies, then not be able to handle the beating you’ll be taking.
Creature Editor: It doesn't give you the freedom that Spore did, but it's still pretty open ended.
Nick and I were assured that the game was built with special emphasis on co-op, so expect a scaling of difficulty the more players you bring in (more enemies, for example). We were also told that there would even be some special creatures or encounters in co-op mode, such as a Cager creature that ensnares a player in a net. Ensnared players cannot break out on their own, so other players will have to pay attention and break them out when they get trapped.
Darkspore surprised us, not only wasn’t it the game we expected, but the things it did do we really liked. It’s easy to see that careful consideration was given to co-op players and there’s a fair bit of customization thanks to an indepth editor that not only lets you place parts you pick up just about anywhere, it lets you customize the color of your character too. This means that the chances of players have the same character in co-op are pretty limited.
Darkspore is entering a beta phase shortly and then releases on March 29th for the PC.