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[Darkspore] Its Diablo + Pokemon + DotA -- Out Now. CTRL X to skip boring intro
Lucascraft
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Release Date: North America: 4/26/11, Europe: 4/28/11
Limited Edition Contents:
Early character unlock- Enhance your squad on day one. Get instant access to a quantum character. Use his special space-time abilities in combination with others in your squad to gain a strategic advantage over the competition Exclusive armor pack- Field an upgraded squad on day one with an exclusive armor pack featuring three stat boosting items.
What is Darkspore?
Having been fairly unimpressed with EA's Spore, I haven't been paying too much mind to a new title coming out called Darkspore. That is until this morning when I got a random advertisement email from EA offering me a chance at beta access if I submit a Spore creature creation modeled after one of the Darkspore heroes.
Don't get me wrong. I liked the idea of Spore. It was the execution which I didn't really like. The game was all about creating fantastic creatures, evolving them from a single-cell organism into a tribe state, and then to a nation, and eventually an inter-galactic invasion force. The problem was, each phase of the game played like a really watered down version of a different genre. The game had a ton of potential, but the execution left me wishing for a whole lot more.
However, my curiosity got the better of me this morning and I decided to do a bit of research on this new game, called Darkspore. It turns out that advertising can have a positive effect. Consider me interested in this game.
From what I have gathered in my research this morning, this is an action RPG much like Diablo. Your character casts spells, uses abilities, and collects loot.
It also has an element of Pokemon, in that you are collecting your creatures and building a squad from those you have collected. Depending on the mission and your strategy, you can mix and match creatures and abilities to form different combinations.
Finally, from what I have gathered, it has a hero arena style PVP component which looks like it borrows heavily from the DotA style of gameplay. The combat is based around team fights, and micro-managing your characters to defeat the opposing team.
There are some videos up which you can see. Most of them are pretty interesting.
Squads and Abilities Video:
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Then there are different elemental types which determine spells, damage, and abilities. So far, I've seen the following element types: Bio, Quantum, Plasma, Cyber, Necro.
Here are a couple hero samples from the official Darkspore website:
Goliath the Energy Guardian
Cyber Sentinel from Infinity
Then he discovered a devastating weapon—the Protonic Sword.
Confronting his hunters in open combat, Goliath obliterated them all.
Thereafter, Goliath pledged to defend all fugitives and exiles, sometimes holding off or defeating hundreds of attackers without a single ally save his invincible weapon.
Honorable, brave, and compassionate, Goliath is a symbol of hope for all who crave justice.
Confronting his hunters in open combat, Goliath obliterated them all.
Energy Slash
Devastates a target with his energy sword, reducing their regenerative abilities.
Arc Weld
Jolts an enemy with a crackling bolt of electricity that arcs to nearby foes.
Cauterize
Swings his energy sword in a cleaving attack that brutally stuns all affected foes.
Disrupt
Goliath’s weapon continually emits a powerful current that causes all targets that it touches to be vulnerable to future energy attacks.
Blitz the Storm Striker
Gripped by a ravaging ice-age, Cryos seemed as if it could never live again.
But one reptiloid was determined to resurrect his world: Blitz, possessing the hyper-kinetic ability to fire beams of electrical vengeance. He led his brood-mates on a vast trek across Cryos’s tragic, frigid wastelands. Losing nearly all his siblings, Blitz established an enclave in Cryos’s equatorial region that became the centre of Cryosi civilization.
Blitz unleashed the full strength of his electrical wrath.
Voltic Strike
Physically assaults foes with quick slashes from Blitz’s dual claw weapons.
Ride the Lightning
Blitz takes the form of lightning to travel across space in the blink of an eye, stunning and damaging the targeted foe.
Charged
Blitz’s lightning energies flare up when he critically strikes, causing the attack to be incredibly damaging.
Plasma Wreath
Surrounds Blitz with orbiting lightning spheres that discharge when enemies are nearby.
Sage the Life Forester
Once a brilliant scientist, Sage sensed alien forces on his world. Calibrating his detectors, he discovered the presence of unstable E-DNA, spreading uncontrollably. His warning to the Crogenitors was too late.
Powerless to prevent the invasion, Sage witnessed the destruction of his once-green world. Aboard a Crogenitor refugee ship, he repurposed his reforestation technology as a weapon, swearing to free his homeworld.
He spawned mobile, ultra-strong trees and Dendrones as his protection force. His metabolic disruptor slowed and damaged his targets, while his Rejuvenating Blast healed his allies. A force of emerald vengeance, Sage proved that the Darkspore could be beaten.
A force of emerald vengeance, Sage proved that the Darkspore could be beaten.
Rejuvenating Blast
Heals Sage’s allies, ensuring they can fight longer, faster and harder.
Biodrain
Summons thick vines that ensnare enemies in an area and drain their life away.
Tree of Life
Spawns a tree that grows larger as damage is dealt nearby, then explodes in a burst of healing energy.
Dendrones
Swarming destroyers that both protect Sage and harm those who would get in his way.
really really bad
we were talking about it in the cover art thread here and it just reeks of 90s EXTREEM!!!!
i mean
yeah
I really don't think your cover art does you any favors dudes
and regardless of the quality of the work (diablo and pokemon are two of my favorite games ever so my interest is actually piqued), i think a lot of people like me are gonna see the cover art for this, see the name, associate it with the cutesy stuff that dominated Spore, and start laughing at the disconnect
i dunno, just my two cents dude
That being said, the game looks pretty dang nice, and I liked Spore (though not really the last few phases).
What are the chances this hits for Mac at the same time as PC?
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I feel ya on the box art ... we're never going to please everyone. (We've gotten feedback in other places that it's awesome, but we've heard these comments before too!)
We hope you'll give the game a look, because that's what we've been spending all of our time on.
Cheers,
MaxisDave
Can you still invent your own creature like in Spore?
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Tofu wrote: Here be Littleboots, destroyer of threads and master of drunkposting.
Looks like an interesting game, I'll give it a go.
Glad you're interested in the game! Every hero has a type and a class, yeah. The class sorta defines their role (think warrior vs rogue vs mage) and the type determines the sort of abilities that they'll have. Plasma guys are all about damage, stuns and chaining attacks, whereas Bio guys deal with healing, poisons, rooting enemies, that sort of thing.
As for customization, each hero has six slots (Offense, Defense, Utility, Hands, Feet, and Weapon) and you can attach one item per slot. The difference between our slots and a more traditional RPG is that you can put the offense/defense/utility items wherever you want on the hero, instead of being restricted to specific placement. Those items are where you get all of your stat boosts. On top of that you can also attach detail items, which are items that have been stripped of their stats. This lets you keep wearing an item that you think looks cool even after you've found items that would normally obsolete it. And finally, you can take the parts that your hero starts with and move/scale those around as well.
I never asked for this!
Did you work on Spore?
Why?
God, why?
Dave also joined Maxis to work on Darkspore.
but the first thing i would do is distance myself from Spore.
That game had potential, but it was never realized. very few people will have good thoughts when they hear the name.
Its somewhat like calling a new cereal Hitler-oh's
Already it's happened.
ACH! MEIN TASTE BUDS!
PSN: Dyvion -- Eternal: Dyvion+9393 -- Genshin Impact: Dyvion
Basically, should I go into this game expecting action adventure or hack&slash lootfest?
Currently playing: GW2 and TSW
From the videos it doesn't look like it's -those- kind of parts. It just looks like gear. The heros look prebuilt, and you only get to decorate them... and there are six slots where gear can affect stats, but you can strip the stats off gear and use it where you want. it seems.
PSN: Dyvion -- Eternal: Dyvion+9393 -- Genshin Impact: Dyvion
Items - Randomly generated gear. Seven different rarities, hundreds of different affixes, several hundred different unique hand-tuned stat allocations that can be found in a variety of different looks (we didn't want players who wanted a certain item to all have to look the same, although with the editor you can look completely different from someone else who has the same items as you anyway). Hundreds and hundreds of different item models that all can be deformed, scaled and attached to your hero using a modified version of the Spore editor (we all think the editor was the best and most successful part of the Spore, and much of what inspired Darkspore was wanting to make a game that combined the editor with deep and satisfying gameplay).
Talent/skill system - Instead of these we have 25 different heroes that you can collect, each with their own set of four unique abilities (and then a fifth ability that depends on which variant of the hero you have). You build squads of three heroes and then switch between them during gameplay. Each hero also has one squad ability that can be used by any member of the squad, so there are lots of combos even in single player, and even more in four player co-op. Plus there's arena-style PvP, with multiple round matches where the loser can switch out their squad in between rounds.
Multiple difficulties - Yes. Think nightmare and hell modes from Diablo.
As for the way you put your parts on, Dyvion is correct. The problem with making that matter is that it no longer becomes about customizing your hero to look the way you want, it becomes about doing whatever you need to do to maximize your effectiveness. There's definitely room to make that sort of game (don't get me wrong, I think it could be awesome) but we wanted players to have the freedom to build their guys based on aesthetics rather than power. So it's about what parts you put on and not how you put them on.
If not, weird coincidence. But either way, signing up!
CRUNCHEN UBER ALLES!
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Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
My interest is piqued!
I shall spread the word to my friends post haste.
Any chance you'd consider adding group-combination abilities ala Chrono Trigger?
Imma try and sign up tonight
I went to the website and signed up for the beta so hopefully I'll get in. Has there been any mention of a release date?
Edit: Yeah that cover art is a hot mess.
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