Darkspore

In spite of its title, Darkspore has connection to Spore worth mentioning. Instead this is a Diablo clone in a science fiction setting, that brings with it a lot of new ideas - most of them great.

First of all you are not limited to controlling one character, instead you have a squad of three heroes. You control them of at a time, and can freely shift between with a short cooldown. It comes in very handy to be able to tag in a healthy hero, if your current hero is about to die, or if you need a certain kind of attack to tackle a situation. On top of this you have the "squad ability" that each heroes brings and that can be used by all members of the squad. Therefore they all contribute even when they're not used.

Your heroes are sorted into five energy types - Plasma, Bio, Chrono, Cyber and Necro. Pretty much self-explanatory and within each type you will find heroes who are better up close or from range, and there stats divide them into your typical roles, such as tanks or support.

Enemies are divided into the same five energy types and your heroes will take double damage if attacked by an enemy of their own type. Every level contains enemies from two categories, so you're forced to keep a certain amount of variation among the heroes you use.

It's all about mixing and matching - find heroes whose abilities combine well, while also making sure you build a squad of heroes equipped to take on any challenge the game throws at you. It's a concept that I really enjoyed.

There is a massive selection of heroes. It starts out simple enough, but as you gain levels you will unlock more and more heroes. All in all there are 100 heroes, and while some will be unlocked late in the game, it's still an overwhelming amount.

What you cannot do is to create your own hero. There are certain ways you can customise them and colour them any way you want (this is the only part of the game that bears any relation to Spore), but your still restricted to using characters created by the developers.

One area where Darkspore breaks the traditional rules of the genre is character progression. In games such as Diablo, Torchlight and others, your character grows stronger, improves his or her stats and gains new abilities as you progress through the game. This is not the case in Darkspore - your heroes remain the same, they have their normal attack and three special abilities and they never change. Upgrading stats is governed by equipping loot.

And this is where things take a turn for the worse. As your character doesn't evolve in any way, apart from growing stronger, it quickly grows repetitive. The game will prompt you to get more heroes with other abilities in order to find variation, but since all heroes starts at level 0 every time you buy a new hero you need to level them up with equipment. You will spend a lot of time moving around equipment between heroes, and since you have to find the right combination of energy types and base stats (most equipment is also split between the five energy types) you will end up with a lot of equipment you can really only sell on. This is of course something that happens in many loot based games, but you just don't feel the motivation to do all this in Darkspore.

It takes a lot of work to try and keep your heroes at the same level. My primary squad consists of a plasma, a chrono and a bio hero. Far from ideal when I reach a level with plasma and chrono heroes, but the rest of my heroes aren't level up enough to survive the next level and I have to go back and find gear to level them up. Therefore the smart system with energy types is something that turns out to be damaging to the experience.

Since it is such a bother to gear up all of your heroes, you are tempted to just keep playing with your primary squad, and the result of this is that you will suffer through repetitive gameplay. I grow bored of it.

It's a shame, because I really wanted to like Darkspore. There are so many good ideas - the squad system, mixing and matching your heroes, and the option of getting loot at the end of a level or risking it by playing one more level for the chance of even better loot. A brilliant idea, but because of the problems with keeping your heroes on the same level it doesn't work out well in practise.

And even the exemplary co-operative component can't save the game as a whole. It's literally just a matter of one click to find players for a certain level, and as long as your heroes are levelled up enough for the level, it's a frictionless experience.

Loot is automatically raffled out, while health and energy drops are split between players. Maxis deserves a lot of praise for this area as it's rare to find a game with a better set up for a co-operative experience, and for some players this will be enough.

Unfortunately Darkspore doesn't managed to keep me glued in front of my computer. The core gameplay stutters too much, and the good ideas cannot live up to their potential. Darkspore ends up being a classic hack n' slash held back by too much micro management and the need to grind old levels for gear. If you can live with that, there are tons of levels, heroes and loot for you to enjoy.