Impossible Creatures

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Impossible Creatures
Impossible Creatures cover.jpg
Cover art featuring a tiger-headed scorpion
Developer Relic Entertainment
Publisher Microsoft Game Studios [a]
Director Alex Garden
Producer John Johnson
Designers Jay Wilson (lead)
Quinn Duffy
Andrew Chambers
Damon Gauthier
Programmer Shane Alfreds
Writers Duane Pye
Jay Wilson
Composer Crispin Hands
Platform Windows
Release
  • NA: January 7, 2003 [1]
  • EU: February 28, 2003
Genre Real-time strategy
Modes Single-player, multiplayer

Impossible Creatures is a 2003 steampunk real-time strategy game developed by Relic Entertainment and published by Microsoft Game Studios. Its unique feature is that the armies used in gameplay are all created by the player, and involve combining two animals to make a new super creature with various abilities. The concept was inspired by H. G. Wells' novel The Island of DoctorMoreau. The player-created armies are capped at 9 creatures; each one is a combination of any two animals from a list of 76 (51 with no downloads). Many animals possess inherent abilities and players can multiple such abilities or compensate for weaknesses as they plan units and armies. There is an extensive single-player campaign as well as online multiplayer functionality with different game modes, add-ons, custom maps, mods, and scenarios.

Contents

Impossible Creatures was followed up later by a free downloadable expansion entitled Insect Invasion, which added new creatures and abilities to the game. The last official add-on for Impossible Creatures was released in 2004.

On November 12, 2015, Impossible Creatures was released on Steam as Impossible Creatures: Steam Edition, by THQ Nordic. Relic Entertainment and Sega relinquished the rights of Impossible Creatures to THQ Nordic after it was revealed that neither THQ nor Microsoft Studios owned the rights to the video game. [2]

The Steam version includes all patches and expansion packs released in the past, the IC Online servers re-implemented through Steam's cloud service and the game's modding software development kit included in the package alongside the Mission Editor originally available within the game's files. Steam Workshop support came out in Patch 3. [3] The Steam Edition is also optimized for modern computer systems and software. The game was also released on GOG.com shortly after it appeared on Steam.

Gameplay

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The Five Nights at Freddy's series mainly revolves around a chain of family restaurants under the ownership of Fazbear Entertainment, a company founded by Henry Emily and William Afton. The latter is a robotics engineer who creates a series of animatronic mascots to entertain customers. The four animatronics appearing in most restaurants consist of Freddy Fazbear, a brown bear and the namesake of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, Bonnie, an indigo rabbit, Chica, a yellow chicken, and Foxy, a red pirate fox. Other animatronics include the Puppet, the ghostlike Golden Freddy, Freddy's predecessor Fredbear, and Circus Baby, the mascot of the restaurant's sister location, Circus Baby's Pizza World. William is also a negligent father and child murderer who hides his victims' bodies inside animatronics, which their souls inhabit; he specifically designs Circus Baby to be capable of murdering children, which leads to the accidental death of his own daughter, Elizabeth.

William's direct murder victims start with his co-worker Henry's daughter and expand to include five children visiting the restaurants with their families. Meanwhile, an incident involving William's youngest son being shoved into Fredbear's mouth by his older brother Michael results in the closure of Fredbear's Family Diner, a predecessor location. After accidentally murdering his brother, Michael begins seeking redemption, starting with recovering the remains of his sister. After the closure of a Freddy Fazbear's Pizza location, William dismantles the remaining animatronics in a backroom, releasing the souls that inhabit them who proceed to torment him. Seeking refuge from the ghosts, William hides inside the Spring Bonnie suit. Shortly after, the suit's mechanisms fail and snap shut, crushing William to death as his soul inhabits the animatronic, becoming a bionic revenant called Springtrap. Some time after, the whole restaurant chain shuts down.

Thirty years later, a horror attraction based on the restaurant chain known as Fazbear's Fright is constructed and leads to Springtrap's excavation; a fire destroys the attraction before it can open to the public. The destruction frees the souls of William's first five victims and destroys the original mascots, though Springtrap escapes. Some time after the fire, Henry lures Springtrap and all animatronics that were not destroyed in Fazbear's Fright into a single pizzeria. With help from Michael, Henry sets fire to the restaurant and destroys every animatronic inside, freeing the souls of the children that inhabited them, including Elizabeth. The fire also kills Henry, Michael, and William. Afterwards, William is trapped and tormented in a personalized hell by various animatronics. Years later, Fazbear Entertainment is re-founded and releases an in-universe virtual reality experience based on the past of a new restaurant, in an effort to convince the public the company's previous controversies were merely fiction.

Reception

Multiplayer

There are three game types available during multiplayer mode, which allows for up to six players at once. In "Destroy Enemy Lab", the first to destroy the enemies' laboratories is the winner. Due to the strategy of destroying an opponent's lab without actually defeating their army, Relic in its mod Insect Invasion added a defense shield that can be researched and then turned on to protect the lab, at the cost of 35 points of electricity per second. In "Destroy Enemy Base", the winner is the first to destroy all enemy buildings, including the lab. In "Hunt Rex", each player is given a special unit, Rex Chance, and players must hunt down and kill other participants' Rex Chance units. Multiplayer games can be played via the IC Online (ICO) service, via a LAN connection, or by connecting directly to the host player's IP address.

Plot

Dr. Eric Chanikov was one of the brightest scientific minds in history, but after a failed experiment causes the Tunguska Event and kills his wife, he goes into willing exile at a chain of remote islands. There, he reports the creation of the Sigma Technology, a method which makes it possible to fuse two creatures together into a single organism. These reports are ignored by the scientific and mainstream communities.

In 1937, believing that his last days are upon him, Chanikov sends a letter to his son Rex asking him to visit. Rex, a disgraced war reporter going by the name "Rex Chance", travels to the archipelago. Discovering that his father died at the hands of the evil tycoon Upton Julius, he vows to avenge his father's murder. He is assisted by the late Chanikov's assistant Dr. Lucy Willing. With her help, Rex quickly learns the power of the Sigma technology they were working on, as well as more about his family's past. As he spends time around the Sigma technology, latent abilities are made manifest within him. These abilities make him increasingly superhuman, allowing him to directly assist his Sigma Creatures in battle.

Lucy's and Rex's progress is slowed by those loyal to Julius: Whitey Hooten, a whaler whose Sigma-created creatures are slow and powerful, Velika la Pette, a high-strung aristocrat who relies on aerial units, and Dr. Ganglion, a mad scientist fond of using creatures most would call abominations. Each main enemy has control over an island chain with different climates: from winter conditions, to tropical, to desert.

Julius is confronted and defeated at the end of the game. The reasoning behind Rex's latent abilities is at last revealed: he is the accidental first product of the Sigma technology, a human combined with thousands of animal traits, which explains why Rex has developed these abilities throughout the game. As the game closes, Rex is shown with his pupils missing, a trait common among Sigma-created creatures.

Development

The game was originally called Sigma: The Adventures of Rex Chance. [4] According to early previews, players had to tranquilize creatures and bring them back to the base to collect their DNA. In the final product, though, it is enough for Rex to shoot a creature to collect its DNA. This only applies to the single-player campaign; in a regular multi-player skirmish, all creatures are already available.

Although it would not be released on Steam until 2015, Impossible Creatures was one of the first titles that Valve used to demonstrate Steam in 2003. This was probably due to Valve and Relic’s close relationship; as both had worked with Sierra Online. [5]

The development of the 2015 remastered edition involved recreating much of Relic's postlaunch work on the SDK and Insect Invasion add-on, as well as rewriting the multiplayer networking for Steam and modern firewalls. Before and after the Steam re-release, the Tellurian mod—which adds many creatures, maps, and balancing tweaks—became a large focal point for the game's community. [5] In fact, fixes made by the Tellurian mod developers were integrated back into the base game in an official patch. [3]

Reception

The game received "average" reviews according to video game review aggregator website Metacritic. [6]

Maxim gave it a score of eight out of ten, saying that "Once you get past all the gamesmanship, you can concentrate on bitch-slapping Mother Nature by creating twisted beasts that would make Jack Hanna brown his khakis." [20] However, The Cincinnati Enquirer gave it three-and-a-half stars out of five and said that its gameplay "doesn't match the title's ingenious premise." [18] Entertainment Weekly gave it a "C", saying, "If most real-time strategy titles are elaborate versions of rock-paper-scissors, Impossible Creatures is the world's most sophisticated game of rock." [19]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Impossible Creatures [2003] - PC". IGN . Archived from the original on December 5, 2017. Retrieved April 18, 2016.
  2. ↑ Hillier, Brenna (23 November 2015). "The improbable journey of Impossible Creatures". VG247 . Videogaming247 . Retrieved 5 January 2017.
  3. 1 2 "Impossible Creatures Steam Edition - PATCH 3 - Fixes & WORKSHOP support - Steam News". store.steampowered.com. 2016-03-29. Retrieved 2020-12-03.
  4. ↑ "Net gamer". The Sydney Morning Herald . December 1, 2001. p. 237. Archived from the original on June 6, 2024. Retrieved June 7, 2024– via Newspapers.com.
  5. 1 2 "The improbable journey of Impossible Creatures". VG247. 2015-11-23. Retrieved 2020-12-03.
  6. 1 2 "Impossible Creatures for PC Reviews". Metacritic . Retrieved April 17, 2016.
  7. ↑ Deci, T.J. "Impossible Creatures - Review". AllGame. Archived from the original on November 15, 2014. Retrieved April 18, 2016.
  8. ↑ Edge staff (March 2003). "Impossible Creatures". Edge . No. 121. p. 100.
  9. ↑ Fahey, Rob (February 25, 2003). "Impossible Creatures". Eurogamer . Retrieved April 18, 2016.
  10. ↑ Brogger, Kristian (March 2003). "Impossible Creatures". Game Informer . No. 119. p. 90. Archived from the original on February 25, 2005. Retrieved April 17, 2016.
  11. ↑ The D-Pad Destroyer (February 26, 2003). "Impossible Creatures Review for PC on GamePro.com". GamePro . Archived from the original on March 10, 2005. Retrieved April 18, 2016.
  12. ↑ Silverman, Ben (January 2003). "Impossible Creatures Review". Game Revolution . Retrieved April 18, 2016.
  13. ↑ Kasavin, Greg (January 9, 2003). "Impossible Creatures Review". GameSpot . Retrieved April 18, 2016.
  14. ↑ Osborne, Scott (January 16, 2003). "GameSpy: Impossible Creatures". GameSpy . Retrieved April 18, 2016.
  15. ↑ Tha Wiz (January 12, 2003). "Impossible Creatures - PC - Review". GameZone. Archived from the original on October 1, 2008. Retrieved April 18, 2016.
  16. ↑ Adams, Dan (January 9, 2003). "Impossible Creatures Review". IGN. Retrieved April 18, 2016.
  17. ↑ Poole, Stephen (March 2003). "Impossible Creatures". PC Gamer : 86. Archived from the original on March 15, 2006. Retrieved April 18, 2016.
  18. 1 2 Saltzman, Marc (January 28, 2003). "Clumsy combat hurts 'Creatures' concept". The Cincinnati Enquirer . Archived from the original on October 1, 2007. Retrieved April 18, 2016.
  19. 1 2 Wolpaw, Erik (February 7, 2003). "Bad Breeding (Impossible Creatures Review)". Entertainment Weekly . No. 694. p. 90. Archived from the original on October 9, 2016. Retrieved April 18, 2016.
  20. ↑ Boyce, Ryan (January 7, 2003). "Impossible Creatures". Maxim . Archived from the original on April 13, 2003. Retrieved April 18, 2016.

Notes

  1. ↑ Published digitally by THQ Nordic as of 2015
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