Impossible Creatures Hands-On

Relic Entertainment has in many ways proven that they are and have always been the industry's trend-setters rather than followers, and their latest game, Impossible Creatures, is another example that their reputation isn't unfounded. From a company that "invented" the space 3D RTS genre in Homeworld comes this latest 3D RTS set on a cluster of islands in the South Pacific, (which are in a way similar to those of certain Dr. Moreau). This is a very original concept as far as PC gaming is concerned, and if you think about it, it opens incredible possibilities both in terms of game design and sparking the creative nature of the gaming community - using Earth's most formidable animals as building blocks, the player creates an army of unique, mutant monsters in a desperate struggle to protect an unsuspecting world from a horrible fate. Impossible Creatures allows players to combine more than 50 real-world animals to create a nearly limitless number of mutant creatures. The game world in IC is reminiscent somewhat of the one in Crimson Skies (another successful game published by MS), which had that sci-fi retro look about it, coupled with some swinging music from the 30's and bold Errol Flynn like action heroes.

We're digging for gold, but all we seem to find is coal.

We're gonna beam up now, Scottie.

In 1937 the world has been through a devastating depression and sits on the brink of the greatest war humanity has ever known. Meanwhile, on a small chain of islands in the South Pacific a great scientist toils over his discovery: technology 30-years in the making known only as the Sigma Technology. Dr. Erik Chanikov has discovered a method to combine two normal animals you'd find in nature into new creatures that have the strengths of both, and the weaknesses of neither. This is only the first and simplest step towards Dr. Chanikov's final goal: enhancing human DNA for the good of mankind.

Upton Julius, a wealthy American industrialist, has been the sole backer of Dr. Chanikov's work, as well as his friend through the long years it has taken to develop the Sigma Technology. However, it seems that Upton's motives to see this project through aren't entirely altruistic. For reasons only known to his most trusted allies he's begun to look at Sigma not as an opportunity for knowledge and the betterment of humanity, but as a source of power.

Imagine that: somewhere along the line he thought that he should control the power of Sigma for the greater good of humanity - how generous of him! Together with his motley crew of evildoers they are hatching a plan to use Sigma to take over the world, but they're still missing one key element.

Upton's misdealing has not gone unnoticed, though. Dr. Lucy Willing, Chanikov's assistant (and a brilliant scientist in her own right) has heard the whispers in the wind. She suspects that Upton is up to something, she's just not sure what, and why...

Every bomb has a fuse, which in this case is one Rex Chance, freelance war correspondent and adventurer down on his luck. A desperate letter and a call from the past will drop him smack into the middle of the struggle over the Sigma Technology, setting in motion events that could lead to the end of the world as we know it.

And so, players are cast in the role of Rex Chance who is supposed to spoil Upton's plans of world domination by tagging as many creatures as possible, extracting their DNA combining it and then creating an army of monsters to battle in the war of Sigma.

Naturally, this means that the main focus in IC is on the creature combining and the limitless possibilities this original gameplay concept introduces to the RTS genre. Action Trip had a chance to test out the game both in single-player and in multiplayer (and combine a few animals to boot), courtesy of the folks at Microsoft, and from the looks of it, it seems like Relic is on to something here.

There are two things that impressed me the most about Impossible Creatures, besides of course its original idea, and those are the smooth graphics and the very intuitive and easy-to-use game interface. Every cool game concept needs good implementation to truly live up to its potential, and I think Relic has managed to deliver in this regard. In many ways, Impossible Creatures is a classic RTS game. You build up your base; you mine for resources and build power plants, so that you can eventually grow an army big enough to win the day.

Not even excess electricity can help me now.

Better run from that pack of wolves, little man!

As I said, the interface is highly intuitive and easy to use, making the process of base building a fun experience, rather than a troublesome chore. Whenever you put a feature in a game that players are unfamiliar with, you must try extra hard to make it as accessible to users as possible. Luckily, it took me about five minutes to come to grips with the whole creature-combining process and to become relatively proficient at choosing the right kind of tech advances in the least possible amount of time (especially useful in multiplayer games). So, the coolest new feature in this game is actually very cool to use, which is about the most important note you can make about Impossible Creatures.

However, you shouldn't in any way be fooled by the game's friendly interface, because once you get truly into it, you'll discover that this RTS is about as complex as they get, and that those of you who study their creatures' abilities and actually put some thought into designing them will almost always come out as winners. The driving force behind Impossible Creatures creature-mixing is Relic's proprietary chunk of code, The Combiner Engine. Its sole function is to take two animals as inputs; parameters that define how to combine the two inputs; and then generate a unique output creature. The core of the combiner engine works around the concept that each input is a collection of limbs. Each input contains data that defines for each limb what geometry, textures and skeleton the limb is comprised of. The parameters to the combiner define what limbs the output is to be composed of. The end result is a unique blended result of the two inputs, from geometry to animation, to game attributes.

I can't yet determine how important of a role this plays in the multiplayer matches yet, but judging by the animal hybrids I got to try so far, it seems like proper creature combining is one the keys to success in the game. Just to give you an example: I felt pretty good about myself after realizing I had more troops and an advantage on the map (in terms of resources) over my opponent, only to find out eventually that much to my dismay, my Killox were no match for the deadly genetic mix of what appeared to be boulder-wielding chimps with a torso of a hammershark. Their deadly "fire-power" was too much for me to handle, and I got my ass handed to me in the end. Still, I have learned a valuable lesson in my defeat and was determined to study the creatures more and learn their strengths and weaknesses. Each creature has a special attack, which is located on a certain limb, so combining those can certainly be helpful in your quest for the ultimate creature cocktail.

As far as the single-player mode is concerned, I already mentioned that it carries plenty of that retro sci-fi style, and it seems from the 3-4 missions I've played that the characters are colorful enough to keep you interested throughout the SP campaign. The voice acting is very professionally done, and it makes the dialogues seem more expressive and ultimately more engaging. Rex Chance is a character and so is Dr. Lucy Willing (Any Chance she would be Willing? Oh I "kill me"! [uhm...don't quit your day job. -Ed.]) And that might prove very important in terms of plot development. In my opinion, Relic is shooting for a complete package here; something similar to what Blizzard managed to pull off in Warcraft III. This would explain the upcoming unlimited MP BETA test, and the commitment to community feedback as well as the team's determination to deliver the best story-driven SP experience possible.

The single player AI is very good, even in this unfinished version of the game. The path finding and collision detection work together to allow the creatures within the game to move about in a natural looking way without colliding into one another, and I must say this works pretty well in-game even when the screen gets clogged with all sorts of animals. The AI used in the game will be divided into two main layers. The high level scripted layer, and the low-level code layer. Without getting too technical about it I can tell you that playing against the computer in a PC vs. Player match gave me quite a bit of challenge. Its strategies are highly aggressive and effective, and there's no chance in hell it'll wait for you to leisurely build your base's defenses before it attacks. The development team has done an excellent job in making the gameplay challenging, and for building the AI routines without any apparent flaws. This will only make the single-player game more engrossing and addictive.

Finally, I should say a word or two about the game's visuals. IC's attractive, though slightly barren environments, high-polygonal units and complex shadows (for an RTS) thankfully don't come at the expense of the frame-rate. The frame-rate managed to stay solid throughout my time with the game, with only a few visible slowdowns (on 1280x1024, max. detail 32-bit) when the screen would get littered with units; and I played the game on an Athlon XP 2200+ and a GeForce Ti 4400 with 1GB of RAM. The animation of the units is smooth and life-like, which should satisfy those of you who are looking for becoming visuals in RTS games. But, the thing that impressed me the most about the graphics has to be the relatively high number of polygons on each of the models. This suggests that Impossible Creatures' 3D engine features a very effective LOD system, which should certainly help those of you with slightly dated PC's.

The game's release is only a month or so away (Jan. 7, 2003) and from what I've seen of this title so far, it looks like Microsoft has a successful RTS on the way. Impossible Creatures is easy to use but very complex once you dig a bit deeper; pretty and original. Seems like a nice set of pros for a game, doesn't it?