Top critical review
2.0 out of 5 starsi wanted to like this game
Reviewed in the United States on December 1, 2015
i wanted to like this game, i wanted to love it, but i just couldnt...
i was initially caught up in the hype of the premise of this game - i had been watching the development for a long time - it looked to be an amazing revolutionary combination of things, multiple different game types RTS, RPG, Arcadey Top Down scrollers, new technologies, procedurally generated worlds, procedurally generated animations, player freedom to build anything they wanted and to pull in other player created content dynamically and seemlessly... yes it all sounded good, but in the end i look of this as more of a tech demo proof of concept rather than a game
the basic premise of the game is incredibly epic in description - start as a single celled organism and expand and evolve to become a massive space faring civilization, controlling all stages of evolution in between
the game starts out solid, one of the greatest character/creature creators of its time, make crazy weird animals with weird leg set ups and the game just magically detects how they would squirm, walk or fly - it was an amazing thing - start from a single celled organism and be transplanted into a glob of primordial ooze, you must fight for survival and either grow finding plant based nutrients or hunt and devour other organism, these basic choice will dictate how you evolve over time - this stage was incredibly fun, you had a single purpose, to just survive and evolve building up your organism with more complex creature parts as you evolve eventually stepping out of the ocean and onto land for the first time
The next stage of the game started to lose some of the fun factor, but all in all wasnt bad - this creature phase took this new walking hopping or slithering creature and put it into a basic ecosystem with other creatures around - you needed to either hunt or find plant material to evolve again depending on how you progressed your early organism - monsters were varied in this phase from massive 40ft tall giants that would squash you if you got close, to flocks of bird/chicken like animals, some predatory, some passive, up to you to decide - eventually you will find a mate of your own species and procreate to evolve into the next phase
the tribe phase is where the game really started losing it for me and my wife - in this phase you build up your tribe by harvesting food and creating offspring which will eventually grow up and increase the size of your tribe - to progress through this phase you must become to preeminent tribe in your area either conquering or impressing nearby tribes to join you all the while defending your own tribe from invaders and monsters - my wife hated this section of the game and no longer would play when her creature got to this section - overall she hates conflicts and fights in games and this phase forced it upon you, whereas previously you could be totally herbivore and run away from the big baddies, here you were confronted with them and forced to fight - even the cultural spreading minigame designed to be a path around fighting seems like your tactically playing music to conquer other tribes - all in all lacking
form here the gameplay just continues to degrade forcing combat on to the player, if you dont want tanks that shoot bullets, you have to build music trucks that shoot happiness at things, still combat just with pretty green lines instead of deadly bullet tracers, its all combat - hence why my wife never even attempted this stage - for me it was boring and repetitive - build tanks/harvest resources/conquer neighbors - rinse repeat - there no story, nothings dynamic, there are x number of randomly placed civilizations on your planet, conquer them all (shooting bullets or shooting music) to progress to the next phase... sure you could take 15 hours to decide what those tanks or flying machines can look like, but that gets tiring really quick
the next space phase you just get totally lost in a massive sandbox with little to no direction or story to figure out what to do next, its just kinda like, hey do whatever you want to, want to make a volcano on a random planet, sure you can, but why?...
like i said previously everything seems very superficial, no one phase of the game seems completely fleshed out, it seems shallow - i think this could have been great and epic, but i'm sure things were rushed and corners had to be cut
i would not recommend this game
