Impossible Creatures

"I used to dream about this game when I was little."

Combine a Tiger and a Baboon and what do you get? A Babger. A Porcupine and an Elephant? A Porphant will be your reward. How about if some company combined Age of Empires 2 with Creatures/Pokemon/Digimon/Something along those lines? You'll find a copy of Impossible Creatures winging its way towards you, if that ever happened. Wait, it just did.

From my clever little bit of writing up there, I'm sure you can guess that Impossible Creatures is a real-time strategy game...with a twist. Uh huh. You fight against other armies, as per usual; but this time you have control over what units you use to fight with. A whole new element is added to the game this way, as you can develop your own unique strategies in the game.

Gameplay 95%
As was mentioned above, there is a whole new thing to focus on in this game. You must develop your own units by combining two Creatures (from a pool of around 60 Earth Creatures) to make a new SuperCreature, hopefully with the strengths of both Creatures and the weaknesses of neither. You can develop units to deal with certain buildings, such as crustacean creatures dealing with tough Bramble Fences, or speedy units to quickly take out base defenses. There are three basic types of unit; Ground, Air and Sea. However, a unit doesn't have to be restricted to one type, you can develop Creatures that can swim and then walk up a beach (a lá Saving Private Ryan) near an enemy base to attack. Creatures can have special abilities, such as Quill Burst or Stink Cloud, and they can have ranged and melee (close quarter) attacks. Creatures are built up in five sections, head, torso, front legs, back legs and tail. These five sections can be from one or the other Creature. Different combinations will develop different attacks, abilities and stats in the SuperCreature. Once you have developed an Army of nine different kinds of Creature, you are ready to play!

The game itself plays like Age of Empires, Command and Conquer, etc. You build a base and build defenses and buildings for improving structures and units. Besides the Creatures, there is only one other unit, your Henchmen. They simply repair and build buildings, collect coal, etc. It is a good idea to build up your base defenses (Sonic and AA Towers) early in the game so you can quickly get onto the task of building an offensive team of Creatures. The gameplay may be a tired RTS formula, but new life is breathed into it with the Creature Breeder.

Story 60%
Aside from the usual Skirmish maps these RTS games come with, there is also a campaign mode in this game. You play Rex Chance, a dude who has been father-less for many a year, until the fateful day when he receives a letter from his ...surprise...father. Rex goes out to find him at his lab, but he is attacked by strange monsters when he gets there. He is cornered by Upton Julius, but is rescued by Lucy, a scientist who worked with Rex's father. You must reach and defeat Upton one henchman at a time. The usual, basically. :/

Audio/Music 70%
Ahh. The henchmen. Gotta love those sound bites...or not. :( You will turn them off, I guarantee it. Aside from the henchmen's voices, everything else, including the ambient background noise, and the Creature noises, etc, are fine.

Graphics 85%
This is where the game moves into the Warcraft 3 side of Real-Time Strategy. In this game, it is possible for you move the camera around the world to zoom in and out, and rotation purposes. The screen is like most RTSs, with controls at the bottom third of the screen, and the top two thirds of the screen showing you the world. The world is nice and lush, often with quite cartoony graphics, and of course, in this day and age, its in 3-dimensions.

Replay Value 100%
Well, everyone will be playing this game again just to develop winning formulae for Creatures and Creature Armies. Then there's the classic replay value of the multiplayer, just like Age of Empires 2, which still goes strong today, about 3-4 years after its release.

Pros
+ The Creature Breeder/Maker Thing
+ Free Camera for greater control.

Cons
- The RTS gameplay itself is just the same as usual.
- Henchmen + Voices = URGH.

Mean Average Overall Score 82% (8/10)

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/21/03, Updated 04/21/03