INTRODUCTION
After released the first Homeworld and before being purchased by THQ and Releasing Warhammer 40k Dawn of War and Company of Heroes, Relic Entertainment released this curious RTS which was published(originally) by Microsoft Game Studios.
A LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY...
Impossible Creatures was originally released in Jan/Feb 2003 and after it received a series of free updates and expansion packs that extended the multiplayer capabilities of the game and added more possible combinations to your army. In November 2015 the game was re-released on Steam by THQ Nordic as a Steam Edition which remastered the game so it works on modern computers, all the patches and xpacs, working multiplayer through steam, Steam Cloud support. The Steam Edition also received 3 patches, the last one also adding steam workshop support.61
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| Guess they can count as animals... Right? |
GAMEPLAY
The game features a relatively standard RTS system which for those that played Company of Heroes and Dawn of War games will seem very familiar. The concept works like this: you get your main building, send henchmen to gather coal while also building electricity generators. The creatures in your armies are organized in different tiers and you have to research higher tiers to unlock more powerful creatures. Then you go attack the enemy base. nothing too complicated. The campaign has a bit of a twist as you have to use your protagonist to kill animals to unlock their DNA and slowly build your army. And now comes the interesting and fun part. Alongside some standard armies you got an army builder so you can build your custom army from a set of preset creatures or create your own creatures for your army. While not highly complicated it does give you quite the freedom. You choose to animals and you get a mix between them then you choose which body parts to keep from one animal and which from the other one. With 61 animals to choose from this can keep you quite busy. It sure kept me busy for a few hours fiddling in creating my cool creature army just to realize that it's horrible even vs an easy AI opponent.
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| Is it a Mammbra or a Zemmoth? Well at least it wants to be majestic! |
Yes, Yes it also has a plot
The story takes place in an alternate version of the late 1930s where a scientist created the Sigma Technology granting the possibility of fusing two animals together into a single organism. The story takes place over 15 missions in which your protagonist tries to defeat an evil guy and avenge his father. It's kinda cliche and I'm trying to keep it as spoiler free as possible.
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| Well here's a bit of spoiler. Lucy and Rex are the protagonists. |
AUDIO and GRAPHICS
Well the sountrack is pleasant, *tips invisible fedora to composers*, really fitting into the game atmosphere. Especially the main menu jazzy song. But the graphics didn't age that well I'm afraid and even with the help of THQ Nordic and 4k the game looks a wee bit worse than for example Warcraft 3 nowadays and that is mostly due to the fact that UI is kinda pixelated having mostly been stretched so it still fills the screen and doesn't get too small. But it's still enjoyable and funny to see different weird creatures and put them to the fight.
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| The army builder. And as you can se the UI is a bit pixelated. |
So does it work on modern systems?
Well since it got a Steam Edition update, of course. I just encountered one tiny problem. The cursor was stuck but that was easily solvable by going to the <game install location>/drivers, opening up spdx8_config.txt and setting allowhwcursor to 0. It has up to 4k support, it runs well, no crashes in around 10hours I spent playing it.
WRAP-UP
While we don't have as many RTS games coming out nowadays, this little gem is worth picking if you want to have some fun, make a weird army and beat the AI or your friends with it. It might keep you glued to the screen for a few good hours and for only 9.99Euros it's a steal despite the age! Of course as long as you do not mind the graphics
[Link]
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