It doesn’t happen very often, but occasionally you get wind of a game with such an exciting idea that you really, really want it to work. On paper Impossible Creatures sounds excellent giving you the chance to combine elements of an exotic array of animals in order to create an army of unusually tough genetically modified super-animals before throwing them in at the deep end to see them battle it out against other creatures.
It sounds like the kind of game that you could literally spend hours with, tweaking your creations until you have the perfect balance in your army. Unfortunately, Impossible Creatures falls some way short of the mark.
The main problem that hampers your enjoyment is that the overall feel of the game is a sloppy one. Nearly every section of the game has a couple of niggles which add up and make the game a chore rather than a piece of entertainment.
At first glance the graphics look very good with detailed characters and landscapes, however, what’s the point in being able to create around 40,000 different type of creature when they all look and act pretty much the same? It doesn’t matter whether your creating a monkey, tiger or rabbit, all the creatures look bland with the odd leg or tail sticking out in odd places.
This means that the great sounding idea behind the game is practically useless as all you need to do is create a bog-standard army of fairly normal creatures to be successful. Those of you hoping to spend hours tinkering with each different part of the DNA make-up of the animals will be disappointed as whatever you create seems to be pretty much the same as the last animal you made.
So, ignoring this feature what are we left with? Well, nothing more than your average run-of-the-mill RTS game. It’s basic, but this is no bad thing as it makes it very easy to get into and the resource management is limited to only two things: coal and electricity. In fact, you don’t really ever need to play the tutorial to understand how to play the game, as the interface is rather good and self-explanatory. The camera can be a tad annoying at times though so to be honest it’s probably best just to leave it in the default mode.
The game does provide you with a lot of options and you can opt to play through the single player campaign as well as the usual skirmish options and there is a full range of multiplayer modes to dig your teeth into.
In fact, if anything the game would be perfect for someone who’s never played a RTS game before. The animals appear rather too cute and fluffy to be scary and you can’t help but getting the feeling it’s almost been designed for kids rather than a hardcore gamer. However, a word of warning, if you do play through the campaign make sure you’ve had plenty of practice as even the early levels are extremely hard and take a lot of patience to complete.
The story is rather good in a kind of B-movie way and the script is decent and well acted. Even the banter between main characters Rex Chance and Lucy Willing provides a laugh now and again, yet even this becomes a bit boring after a few levels.
Overall, you can’t help but feel a little disappointed with the game when it had the basis to be so much more. As it is Impossible Creatures plays just like any other RTS game and not a particularly good one at that so unless your new to the genre we’d recommend you save your pennies and buy something a little more worthwhile.
Tame Creatures
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