Darkspore

Darkspore is a sci-fi Action-RPG by Maxis Software, published by EA.  The player takes charge of squads of genetically mutated heroes which come in five types: Plasma, Bio, Necro, Cyber and Quantum, and fights to save the galaxy from the nightmarish Darkspore.. a hive mind of mutated creatures which are a result of genetic alteration gone mad.

Tim pointed Darkspore out to me a while ago, after seeing a rather nice trailer.. I signed up for the closed beta and had some fun with the first levels, using a couple of the heroes and messing around with the character editor a little.. though not creating any phallic creatures for which the original Spore was known 😉

I’ve been waiting for this to enter open beta so I could play with friends too, and so I was pleased to see it arrive on Steam this week.  Last night we got together to play the first two levels.. and for once it was me who was running off, using Blitz’s rather cool teleport ability to get right into the fight.

Of all the heroes I’ve tried so far, Blitz is my favourite.. look at those claws!  His teleport ability, ‘Ride the Lightning’, makes up for his lack of ranged attack, and he cuts through enemies fairly quickly.  His shield also comes in handy, zapping enemies who come too close.

During the closed beta, I unlocked Arakna, a Necro hero who collects the souls of downed enemies with one ability, firing them out around her in a rapid burst, where they then explode with another ability.  She would have been my second squad member, but my heroes were reset with the start of the open beta, and this time I decided to unlock some different ones, starting with Vex.

Vex is a Quantum Hero, with time-travel abilities.  The Chrono Blink reminded me of Blitz’s teleport, but seemed to use more energy, and I felt that his melee attacks were rather slow.  I replaced him with SRS-42 the Missile Commander, a Cyber hero who uses ranged explosive weapons.. can’t go wrong with that, huh?

SRS-42’s abilities include a Missile Barrage, which brings down 15 missiles in quick succession on a location of your choosing.. best used on a slow moving target, or on a unit stunned or incapacitated by an ally.  His other abilities are more for self-protection; one removes all status effects, while the other detonates enemy projectiles on-route to SRS-42.

The open beta is available via Steam until Monday 4th April.. I hope to get some more time in on this before it finishes so I can try out more heroes.. and I also want to try out the PvP 😉

Sacrifice and Mutation

I had been looking forward to the ‘Sacrifice’ since ‘The Passing’ was released for L4d2, especially as it would feature my favourite survivors, the originals.  I was also fairly pleased it was being released for both L4d and L4d2, and getting it on PC meant it was free.  The launch came with a lot of problems, though..

While my download came quickly for the original game, it took two days for my Left 4 Dead 2 download to come down.. crawling along at amazing speeds of 4kb/s.  When it finally finished downloading, it then refused to work.

However, I was in a better position than others.  Heavy traffic like this always seems to lead to authentication problems and issues with other games on Steam, getting “game unavailable” messages.   While I could at least play l4d, Tim’s machine didn’t even start downloading any updates for two days, and he couldn’t play any of his other Steam games because of… “Game Unavailable”.  Not good.

My first play through of the DLC was therefore with just one friend instead of a full human team 😉

Having Bill sacrifice himself and save the team as per the story wasn’t as easy as expected, though we had two bots with us.  After our sacrifice kept being beaten by the rush of zombies, we found the best method involved jumping back down the ladder early.

In this version, the achievement only comes for the Sacrifice instead of the whole team, but it’s easy enough to play through again.

I was slightly disappointed at the way the sacrifice ends.. once you hit the generator it’s all over.
I would rather have liked a Last Stand style effect, just to see how long I could hold out, or even a cutscene with a tank appearing and throwing Bill to his proper resting place in the smaller room.

Due to playing rather a lot of WoW and Minecraft, I’ve sadly let the mutations slip by in recent weeks.  The TAAANNNKK! mutation came this week.. and if you picked the right map and avoided the bugs, it was a lot of fun.

Bugs?  Oh yes..

On the No Mercy map, we found ourselves trapped as tanks on the wrong side of a fence, with no way of getting to the survivors.  We ended up trying to kill each other in hopes of spawning elsewhere, which worked after a few deaths, but by this time the survivors were too far along.  Another game was weirdly imbalanced; on one level my team was held back from spawning for a good while longer than the other team.. and then as survivors we faced three witches where the other team got none.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen a game that skewed before!

Despite the bugs I would love this to be added as a permanent mode; being the tank feels brilliantly powerful, and it’s a great feeling if you manage to get away as the survivor too.  Just.. maybe fix the bugs, huh Valve?

Headshot

The mutation of this week has been Headshot.

In this mode, zombies can only be killed by headshot.  We found this mode a bit tougher than the last, but more enjoyable.

I did struggle to find a good screenshot to add here, though.. flailing at the zombies during a horde event, or being wildly inaccurate in shooting leads to rather a lot of carnage, and the headshot looks even more gory.  Enough gore that I thought it might look a bit too gratuitous..

So instead, here’s an angry young man brandishing an axe 🙂

Voting has been on all week to see what next week’s encore mutation will be.
I’m hoping for Chainsaw Massacre again, as it was a lot of fun, but I wouldn’t be unhappy for a return of this as we’ve actually played it more than the required try-it-out once.

There’s only room for one..

In a normal game you would be looking out for your team mates, helping them as they would be helping you.  With ‘Room for One’, those other survivors become a threat the closer you are to the end of the level..

I played this with a friend on The Parish’s Bridge level, as we already have a rather set route and plan for rushing to the end.  I won, but it felt rather a hollow victory..

I was prepared to save him up until the last stretch, but I can easily imagine that if playing with randoms you could find yourself abandoned to the first thing that grabs you, regardless of distance through the map.  I’m quite sure this means plenty of random groups not making it very far at all.

There might only be room for one in this newest mutation, but I don’t want to be alone.  Aww, I know..  This game mode feels like a lose-lose proposition to me. If I’m playing with friends I want them to survive, and don’t particularly want to leave them behind.

Next week, I believe we have ‘Headshot’.  I think this will be a bit more of a challenge, as my weapon of choice is the auto-shotty, however:  bring it on!

Lesser Mutations

The first two mutations, Realism Versus and Bleed Out, both appealed to me as challenging new game modes.  I enjoyed playing both, and would quite happily return to either.. so I was quite happy to see that Realism Versus is to be added as a permanent game mode.

On to the newer mutations..

The third mutation was Follow the Liter, a mutated Scavenge mode in which only one group of cans appear at a time.  Testing out this mode on the last section of The Passing, I found it made the level a little too easy.

Normally, my group communicate using mumble, with the exception of the odd one or two who don’t have voice.  We’re fairly good at working together, and on this level at least, are quite efficient at clearing out groups of cans while still being able to defend ourselves.

I feel that this mode just removes the need to communicate.  Everybody knows where to go, reducing the need for communicating to simply dealing with the infected.  I’m afraid to say this mode didn’t really get much of a replay during the week.

This week’s mutation involves my favourite little guy, Gnome Chompski!

In Last Gnome on Earth, the mission is much the same as when completing the Guardin’ Gnome achievement – carry the gnome through the level to the finish and thereby rescue him.  The difference is that this time, Gnome Chompski is a beacon for the common infected, and they will swarm to anybody carrying the gnome.
We found this added to the difficulty a little, which was nice, but having rescued the gnome so many times in Dark Carnival, this felt a little bit too much of the same.

Next week’s mutation will be an “encore week”, with either Bleed Out, Follow the Liter or Last Gnome on Earth coming back for another showing.  I’m voting for Bleed Out 🙂

First Mutations

With the release of The Passing, Valve also started on their series of Mutations; weekly game modes with changes in gameplay which could turn out to be very interesting, and some of which may be made permanent in the game..

The first mutation was Realism Versus, combining the multiplayer versus mode with the rather tough Realism mode.   I wasn’t convinced when I first heard of this game mode, expecting it might be a bit too hard to be really fun.  However, with some awesome friends and a voice server, it was a decent challenge, though the infected side of course had the edge.  A quick attack could easily lead to valuable time ticking away while other survivors located the downed player.. fantastic for infected, frantic for humans, but great fun all the same 🙂

Bleed Out was the second mutation, this time for the campaign mode, and released via slightly temperamental update on Friday evening.   This game mode was billed to allowed the use of temporary health only: characters start off with their health ticking away from the off.  I didn’t expect this mode to be too difficult: when playing with friends, we’re used to rationing our health and surviving on pills for some time anyway, and this is how it turned out for us here too.

We discovered a slight flaw in the final level of The Passing, though, with the original survivors throwing down health packs.  However, you don’t have to use them 😉

I’d be quite happy for either of these modes to be made permanent.. both were a different challenge from the usual game.  Looking forward to seeing the other modes over the next few weeks too..