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Darkspore beta on Steam
by Garnett Lee, Mar 28, 2011 4:00pm PDTA week-long beta for Darkspore opened today for PC gamers exclusively on Steam (download the Steam client here if you need it). The beta will run through noon pacific time this Friday, April 1. During that time you'll be able to play both co-op with up to four players against computer-controlled Darkspore and 1v1 or 2v2 player vs player competitively.
The email announcing the beta also confirmed Tuesday, April 26 as the Darkspore release date. Though that doesn't allow much time before the release, the developers say they plan to use what there is to "fine-tune the game, incorporating fan input, so that the game is just right when unleashed."
[UPDATE] If you plan on getting the game, you might consider teaming up with some friends. We also got an email from Valve Press with word that as a pre-purchase special a four-pack of Darkspore can be had for the price of three.
Comments
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First of all, it's a sci-fi RPG. Okay, it's still monsters with axes for the most-part, but it definitely tries to steer away from fantasy as much as possible so far.
Secondly, you don't pick one hero, you get a party of three and you have to swap between them on the fly. This is for two reasons. First of all, when one hero gets low on health or energy, you can put them away and they'll regain power from the powerups that the active hero collects. Secondly, heroes and enemies have one of five damage types and heroes who are the same type as an enemy will get extra damage from them.
Other than the damage types, heroes cover a range of classes. I started with a berzerker, a ranged pet/healing class and a necromancer tank. By the time I got through a couple levels, I discovered that there were a total of 100 heroes that you can pick up throughout the game to swap into your party. Each hero starts with a different alien style - some are three legged insects, some are robots, some are monsterous brutes. But you get to change them a bit as you play, which is where the Spore aspect comes in.
While you don't seem to get the full crafting experience of Spore, though, you do get to swap out parts that you'll earn as random drops and rewards for completing levels. It's less play-doh and more Mr. Potato Head. But between the huge number of heroes and all the loot that can be placed on parts of the body, resized, rotated and repainted, you'll spend a lot more time outfitting your character than in a regular RPG. If that's not interesting to you, then you probably will find this tedious as there's no easy way to just equip new items to a default slot with one button-press. The amount of experience a hero has earned seems to act as a limiter for how much stuff you can put on them.
The action in the first couple levels is slower than Diablo or Torchlight was starting out, but I suspect it ramps up as you play. You'll encounter plenty of enemies that have buffing and debuffing stats that make playing against them as interesting as Diablo, but fewer waves or tough rare monsters. The level progression is broken up by being separate levels that you can choose from in the menu to go back and replay, rather than being a continuous world. After each mission, you get the choice of either equipping the items you collected and rolling for a reward, or increasing your chance of getting a better item by pressing on to the next level without equipping new stuff. I guess that provides an interesting mechanic for people who want to try for bigger risks and bigger rewards, but might make it hard to feel like you're progressing regularly. In all, it appears that the number of levels are probably about on par with the content in Torchlight or Diablo 2 sans expansions.
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