Impossible Creatures

Review - Sam splices animals to create the perfect army. They won't be selling this in the Body Shop.

How do you get the ‘noob’ into playing an RTS game? Most folk I try to persuade - face all full of innocence and voice inflected with re-assuring tones - into playing me in a ‘little’ game of AoE or C&C take a look at all the things to do and the bulging interface and inquire whether or not I would prefer a game of UT2003. Which I proceed to humiliate them in. Then they give the RTS title a try, get stumped, get whipped, and go off to sulk and play solitaire. Which is annoying because I really love the thrills of RTS games and much prefer the combination of reflexes and brainpower to the twitch play of FPS games. My flatmates have now come around though, and a C&C Generals match or five is now a daily event. And for at least two for them it was Impossible Creatures which eased them into the concepts of the RTS game.

Impossible Creatures is the product of the Relic development studios, the same company which brought us the sublime and groundbreaking Homeworld back in 1999. It seemed that they intended to do another groundbreaking game when they announced the development of Sigma, as Impossible Creatures was originally known. They were promising a new RTS experience, one where the player made up the units according to their needs and tastes. Although a few games had offered this feature before, most notably the fantastic Warzone 2100, also from 1999, but the big deal with Sigma was that as opposed to controlling tanks or wee space mannies, it would be the genetic splicing of animals that would form the basis of unit creation. Now again, a similar game also offered this possibility, the somewhat risible Evolva. Oops, sounds like Relic are covering familiar ground here. But they have still managed to provide a product that, if not unique, is certainly cut from a different cloth. Yes, we have the first beginners RTS title.

Now other games have been simplified to take the RTS genre into the paying homes of those who would not normally consider the prospect. But this ain't no Lego Rock Raiders, this is a seriously designed game, well coded, with great art and competent sounds. It’s also fun to play. For a few days.

Things start well. The menu screens are well done and nice to look at. There’s a single player campaign of fifteen mission, skirmish options and the usual multiplayer online/LAN options. There’s a very good tutorial which shies away from only telling you what your hand looks like and how to make it move from lap to mouse.

Then there’s the Army Builder screen. This is where you will spend a lot of time, honing your animals for multiplayer. From a selection of 50 creatures you pick one beast as your base and then another animal to splice into the first. There are five different body parts that can be swapped from one creature to the other, from tails, front and back legs, bodies to heads. Animals can fly, swim and walk, and combinations of flying bulls or walking sharks are the very things the designers seem to want you to choose. It is a lot of fun and easy to use, with any bonuses or negatives attributes from your mad-scientist experimentations being clearly displayed, along with a fully viewable model of the abomination that you are creating. It’s just a damn shame that all this work becomes rather academical when you take your menagerie onto the battlefield.