Darkspore Game Guide

Darkspore is an online-only role-playing game in which you and up to three buddies (or strangers) slice and dice your way through factory corridors and forest pathways en route to an end boss. There's too little context for all this hacking and slashing: it's all grinding for levels and loot, with little sense of purpose. Though you can play on your own, you must be online and signed into the game in order to play. Blitz, like all of Darkspore's heroes, is a creature that would have been right at home in Spore. As you play, you gain access to more heroes that you can take into battle. In turn, you group these heroes into squads--three heroes to a squad, and three squads in total. Each hero is classified not just by class, but also by a genesis type. While you control only one hero at a time, you can switch between them in dungeons. Each hero has three individual active abilities available, as well as a squad ability accessible by the other two squad members. This means a hero has six skills in total at one time: four innate, and two shared by other heroes. Whether you play as a melee or a ranged hero, the combat is that of most such games: you click and attack. Levels are a series of corridors in alien forests, frigid tundras, and rocky cliffs, separated by glowing teleporters that zip you to the next location. Action RPGs aren't traditionally story-driven ventures, but few give this little context. In time, however, Darkspore fills in these gaps and shows what it's capable of--and to be fair, even the early hours are fun in the way most good loot-driven games are fun. It helps that Darkspore has a spacey, New Age vibe that sets it apart from similar games.