While the RTS battles are the weakest part of Impossible Creatures, by far the most interesting and entertaining is the Creature Builder. Throughout the single-player campaign, Rex (a playable unit himself) needs to collect genetic samples of the local fauna for use in his creature arsenal. Once a sample is gathered, the animal type can be combined with another to make a unit that has the best characteristics of both. Using a very slickly designed interface, it is possible to tweak body parts from the two animals until the desired combination is achieved. For instance, when combining a rhino and a hornet for a very powerful flying unit, I chose the head of the rhino (giving it a massive horn attack), the tail and back of the hornet (for the stinger and wings), and the legs of the rhino (more for aesthetic reasons than anything else).
Each “segment” of each animal usually imparts different abilities, such as the head containing the bite or gore ability of a particular animal, which the legs can give the speed of a particularly agile creature. Not only is it fun to mix and match, it’s also incredibly amusing. I laughed out loud on numerous occasions, not only in seeing how each animal looks as it’s being constructed, but also at how the game names the new creature. I spent a lot of time just playing with combining new animals, sometimes taking 20 minutes of Creature Builder time for a 30-minute mission. There are a lot of animals to choose from, as well, so the combinations are many and varied. Of course, some animals are just better than others, so soon the best combinations become apparent, and the other poor creatures are underrepresented.
Whereas the single-player campaign is a blast, I just didn’t enjoy the skirmish mode all that much. Either against the computer or a human opponent, the skirmish modes remove the best parts of the game (the in-campaign Creature Builder and the wonderful story), and leave a very-typical RTS outing. For the skirmishes, you need to choose an army of 9 types of combined creatures beforehand, and there’s no tweaking after the game begins. Again, choosing wisely which creatures to field beforehand is vital. But once that choice is made, it’s just a ho-hum swedge.
Impossible Creatures is an incredibly polished game, with everything looking and sounding wonderful. The creatures are very well animated, and a fully rotate-able and zoom-able 3D camera allows for views from just about every conceivable angle. The voice acting is spot-on, overplayed in true B-movie fashion. The sounds of the creatures are pretty good, although there just aren’t that many ways that a creature can audibly acknowledge a command, so things tend to get a little repetitive. Also repetitive are the incessant “Your creatures are under attack!” warnings, which seem to happen a bit too often. Unfortunately, there is no way to adjust the frequency of these warnings, so they can grate on the nerves fairly quickly. Other than those minor issues, however, Impossible Creatures just oozes charm and attention to detail.
As a single-player game, Impossible Creatures is well worth the price of admission. Coupling a great story with a unique unit customization and a serviceable RTS engine, and you have quite a decent game. However, if you’re looking for multiplayer RTS action only, then Impossible Creatures will most likely be a bit of a disappointment—this game seems designed with the single player in mind. With that in mind, I can easily recommend Impossible Creatures to all those closet Mad Scientists out there.
B-
A very entertaining, campy RTS about taking nature’s finest creatures, turning them into genetic freaks, and then seeing who eats whom.
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