Customer Reviews

Impossible Creatures

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've spent quite a bit of time with the demo and I'm adding this game to my Christmas Wish List. Over the years, I've tried a number of different RTS games and, frankly, the notion of "gathering resources & building structures" faster than the AI or your on-line opponent just never hooked me. In Impossible Creatures, Relic Entertainment has introduced the concept of player-designed units to the RTS genre, opening a whole new challenge for the player: Zebra+Ox or Zebra+Leopard? Not to mention an intruiging storyline involving our protagonist's long-lost father.

Mission objectives go well beyond the "Destroy Enemy Base" type of play, including collecting DNA from different animals to add to your unit creations, protecting innocent bystanders, discovering new technologies. And all within the first couple of missions.

Graphically speaking, this game is above par, providing a full 3D world for the player to interact with and manipulate. The camera can be positioned, rotated and zoomed to just about anywhere. Perfect for when you want to watch closely as your Coyopine makes mincemeat of the enemy. The animation is top-notch, as are the special effects and textures.

The sounds are also well done, though I do find some of the repeated alerts annoying: The creatures are under attack! Yes, I know that, I put them there to draw the enemy in! Oh well.

I've finally found an RTS I *want* to play! So come on, let's see what kind of creatures you can make!

-- sky

Impossible Creatures lets you play strategy in an unique way - by morphing together your own creature combinations!

First, the background. You're an adventurer in the 1930s whose father is missing. You track him down on an island, where you hook up with a woman to take on a mad scientist.

The basis of both of your armies is creature morphing. In essence you go around finding new creatures and snagging their DNA. You then go into your lab and can combine the body parts of ANY TWO CREATURES, and create your own uber-creature with the best of both!

This means the game is pretty much infinitely playable and is amazingly fun in multiplayer. Do you like dolphins and zebras? Why not combine the sleek swimming of the dolphin with the kicking hooves of the zebra! You can combine tigers and wasps. Leopards and oxen. The combinations are pretty much endless and it is quite a thrill to see how each one works out.

The missions in the game each call for certain tactics, as you learn how to go over, under, and through obstacles. But really the best gameplay comes when you take on other humans, and see how your favorite combos fare against their favorites.

Even if you're not into the fighting part, the creature creation can be quite fun on its own. An enjoyable, imaginative strategy game for all ages.

I downloaded the demo of this RTS-Game and I must say, it's one of the most exciting and innovative games of the RTS-genre I've seen. The story about the lost father of the main character is not like the epic story Warcraft 3 is based on, but none the less it's very interesting.
But the really interesting aspect of "Impossible Creatures" is the possibility to create an army by mixing the DNA of 50 different creatures (Shobsters for example: a mix of sharks and lobsters). The possibilities of combinations are nearly endless. In Multiplayer you will never meet the same type of army in different games because every player has his own unique army of combined creatures.
Everybody, who's interested in RTS-Games and who wants to play something different than the typical standard-RTS, should order this game.

I'm an computer gaming addict. You name it, I've played it. That being said, I'll explain why I gave this game three stars.

1. Graphics are enjoyable.
2. Sounds get annoying.
3. Somewhat improved missions, but nothing spectacular (don't expect something parrellel to Warcraft III or Starcraft)
4. Heavy Counter system. For those of you who don't understand that, it means that like another person said, its "rock-papers-sissors" A beats B, B beats C, and C beats A kinda thing. This is the exact idea that made Starcraft so popular. So its nothing new, but a great concept to be included, and one of the concepts that made Warcraft III less of a block buster hit.
5. Lots of unit variations. This leaves for a variety of attacks and defense. Although they claim an absolutely absurd number of different unit combonations, this is only because you can mix two creatures together in different ways. There are 1275 unique unit combonations, which is still a lot. But there are only so many that are worth using.

Thats my thoughts on the game...

Impossible Creatures, although no longer available in stores and only played online by a select few, is a great game. There is less "strategy" in battle, but the key is to make an excellent animal army by combining two of the available 50 animals (75, with Insect Invasion and the bonus creature unlocker, both downloadable for free) with the army builder feature. And don't be surprised if it takes a good hour to make an army just the way you want it.

This game is good for both noobs and RTS veterans, and is definitely worth the cost.

Im gonna put this like my title:

The Good:
You design your own army. You can make units to fit your personal playing style. This is the only reason I bought the game and the only reason its fun.
A long engrossing campaign allows you to stay playing single player for quite some time.
A lot of strategy invloved.(If your stupid than this is a bad thing)
Exceptional graphics. (3D)

The Bad:
CHEAT CODES! I hate em! (For real time strategy(rts) newbies this may be a good thing)
Poor pathfinding.(but every rts game has this problem)
The campaign is a little stupid and not for anyone over the age of 10
Not enough people online makes finding multiplayer games difficult.

The Just Plain Ugly:
Resources run out 2 minutes into the game. this makes alot of the campaign missions veerrry hard. this is a good thing for the rush minded player but [is bad] for anyone else.
If you cant design good creatures youll have a hard time with the game as some combinations are obviously better than others.
The fact that its a memory hog makes it not worth your hard drive space.

All in all this is a decent game and the question I know your pondering "Should I buy it?" Only if you want to fork over cash and hard drive space to get it. If your over 13 may I suggest Empire Earth or Age of Mythology instead. Warning: both are memory hogs

My son and I have great fun mixing and matching creatures. Testing the high breads on the field can be very rewarding or very disappointing. Try the Sperm Whale and the Wolverine - 1500+ health points. Building your own maps is very rewarding. Deciding whether it should be each person for themself - teams - or taking on all the others by yourself is big fun too. Buy and enjoy - you won't regret it!

I think this is going to be some incredible game.
This game is a 3D RTS game made by Relic. And the best part of the game is that you can combine animal DNA and make some mutant animals. And the number of the unit is limited by player's creativity. And what I like about this game is that it's not some boring old RTS. usually in RTS the things you do is build strutures, mine resources, build units and other stuff, and to win you just need to use your hands faster and build lots of units and destroy other peoples bases. Well this game does not work that way, the units have relations like rock,scissors,papers so one unit can easily konck some units but can be knocked out easily by other units. So you need to be stragical and place and build units carefully, so you get to use your brains more than your hands.
Oh, and this game has some Homeworld's blood in it so if you played homeworld you might find it simliar. This is a game I recommend for RTS lovers.

This game boasts something that no other RTS can offer- mixing two different animal species into one amazing creature and then sending them to wage war against other freakish armies.

There are so many different animal combinations that every battle is different and new. You can mix a lobster with a ram, giving you an amphibious unit that can charge up beaches and gore foes with its horns. By combining an eagle with a piranha you can create a flying fish that swoops down on enemies, tearing them with those impressive piranha teeth. Add a polar bear's limbs upon the body of a killer whale and you have a large walking tank that can traverse both land and sea. These are just some of my favourite combinations and there are many more.

The idea of mixing the creatures and making your own fighting units, each with their own strengths and weaknesses is a very imaginative, fun and interesting concept, but this game is definitely not the best RTS around. For example, the maximum number of units your armies can comprise of is a mere 75- that's including workers (in this game called henchmen).

However, this game does introduce some other good points other than its imaginative selling point. Some animals, such as wolves, lions and hyenas are pack hunters and therefore, when fighting in groups of four or more, recieve an attack bonus. Similarly, as oxen, rams, elephants, etc, are herding creatures, when they are combined with other animals they gain a defense bonus when in attacking in groups. These are nice extras and also feature the skunk's 'stink cloud' capability to stun foes and the whales' 'sonar pulse' to reveal an area of the map momentarily.

The maps themselves are average, with players battling on either a snowy, grassy or arid desert-like maps, each comprising of land- sometimes separtated by water- dotted with areas of coal and geysers to generate electricity with certain structures.

Overall, this is a good game with a different, interesting selling point that will keep anyone amused even if they are not a fan of the RTS games.

Strategy games, both real-time and turn-based, are my preferred genre of computer games. Sadly, there hasn't been much innovation in them since Starcraft added asymmetrical armies (i.e. each unit does not have a direct corresponding unit for another race). This game changes all of that. By allowing you to create your own units, a much greater range of flexibility is introduced (as one other reviewer pointed out, this is flexibility is not as great as the publisher claims, since a large percentage of the combinations would be fairly useless). Because the units are created from existing animals, the process of figuring out what you want to make is also pretty intuitive (e.g. poison frogs poison things, gorillas are big and have powerful arms, and so on).

Some reviewers complain about the relatively high cost of units and buildings relative to the availability of resources. This is true, but I see it as a positive thing. "Turtling" is not a valid strategy in this game. The single most important element at the macro level is expanding your resource gathering and preventing your opponent from doing the same. It also has a vital impact at the micro level as it now becomes very important to try and keep your critters alive and bandage them up after battles.

The graphics are all very good, although if you don't have a fairly new video card (something that was mainstream within the last 12-18 months), you'll find yourself having to drop the resolution or detail level to get acceptable framerates.

The game lacks some of the niceties that Warcraft III introduced to the genre - no hotkey to select idle workers for instance, and no choice of formation based movement vs. everybody-run-in-a-straight-line movement. The path finding at times is abyssmal.

The missions in the campaign are all real missions that will take at least half an hour, with many requiring more than an hour. This is much better than some of the missions in Warcraft III that can be completed in under ten minutes if you work hard and fast.

The cutscenes in the campaign are pretty much par for the course, but at least the developers seemed to realise that, so they are handled with a bit of self-deprecating humour.

Had it been an option, I probably would have given 3.5 stars. It isn't the greatest game ever, but you should get plenty of hours of enjoyment out of it without having to fork over the cash that some of the new releases require.