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dkirschner's Darwinia (PC)
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| [January 9, 2011 11:45:34 PM]
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Darwinia started crashing on me at the Pattern Buffer level with various errors at various points, so I downloaded the latest patch and it erased my profile and save game. Haaaate. Annoying because the game is a bit tedious. I just looked to see how close I was to the end. Turns out I'd done 7/10 missions, gotten all the available weapons and units, and seen all the enemies. Therefore, I have gotten enough of Darwinia. It's not a long game. 7 missions probably took me 4 or 5 hours, but like I said, the missions get tedious because you've got to babysit units so they don't get stuck moving from point A to point B. It's a neat game, looks like geometry class and a classic arcade. My favorite thing to do was to take my 4 squads of 6 units each and just run into a web of viruses spewing grenades and air strikes. The blasts and ensuing rumbles and screen shakes were satisfying. Mass carnage.
I don't have a whole lot to say, much less than I thought I would. I think I overhyped the game for myself and it was just a bit of a letdown. I was expecting a faster pace and definitely expected not to have to babysit moving units around the map. Maybe that's just something that really inhibits my enjoyment of a game, the babysitting units. Oh well! I'm glad I played a bit of it because I enjoyed the visuals, the premise, and all the unique things about it.
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| [January 8, 2011 09:50:17 PM]
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Darwinia is a neat little game. If I have to pick a game that it reminds me of most, it's Lemmings, and if I have to pick a genre, it's RTS, yet it's very unique and only vaguely resembles the above. The goal of the game is to destroy these computer viruses that are taking over Darwinia, a computer program with little digital living beings called Darwinians. The scientist who created Darwinia guides you through the game, offering help and telling you what you need to do to help the Darwinians and eliminate the viruses.
Basically, it's a game about troop movement and capturing points on the map. Right now I can create 3 unit types: squads that shoot stuff, engineers that capture stuff, and generals (or commanders or something) that lead Darwinians to points on the map. The viruses are little Snake(the phone game)-like creatures, and then there are beefier ones that are like Centipede and some giant spider-like ones. You can tell the scientist to work on upgrading things like laser gun range, number of units in a squad, or number of "programs" you can run at once. When you begin a level, you run "programs," which are your units or groups of units. So at the beginning of the game, you have three available programs, and might choose two squads and an engineer. You run around the level and kill viruses with the squad, and the engineers can collect their souls, which are the souls of devoured Darwinians, and can turn the souls in at a particular building to produce Darwinians, which you then usually have to save by moving them somewhere using a leader-type Darwinian. The path-finding in the game can be annoying sometimes when units get stuck on some piece of geometry or walk into death walls and explode...but all other AI seems good so far. Using the general leader types to rally the Darwinians is also slow and boring because you have to move the leader near to the Darwinians to get them to move to the rally point, and Darwinians naturally drift apart, and running up mountains is slow, so you can spend a lot of time trying to grab the Darwinians, get them all moved to a certain point, and then by the time you do that, they've began drifting again. But I imagine I'll get faster at it.
So your squad goes and kills things, and your engineers come behind to capture power buildings. These will power satellites, the soul generator things that spit out Darwinians, and warp gates. If you open a warp gate, it opens up a new level. Satellites allow you to transport around the map. Then you can also pick up Research, which so far has netted me the ability to toss grenades and assign the general role. That's really about it. It's basic, but engrossing. I hope there will be some puzzles or something difficult that makes me think how to move forward.
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dkirschner's Darwinia (PC)
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Current Status: Stopped playing - Technical problems
GameLog started on: Saturday 8 January, 2011
GameLog closed on: Sunday 9 January, 2011 |
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