On the other hand, the repetitive nature of the disembodied narration becomes grating. Some of the humor strikes a politically incorrect note in 2015, but many of the jokes stick their landing. Even in 2003, they couldn’t have looked great. It’s all done in a campy, 1930s pulp fiction style, and the generally excellent, competently directed in-engine cut scenes are only marred by some pretty blocky, low-res character models. In 2003, it was still relatively rare for an RTS game to feature a fully voiced and acted story, and Impossible Creatures is gifted with one that is generally well written, witty, and professionally voiced. The hokey names are an immediate clue that the story is not a serious one. Together with his female sidekick Lucy Willing, Rex sets out for revenge. Rex stumbles on the nefarious genetic research that his father had been conducting for a criminal mastermind, Upton Julius. Creatures’ lengthy single player campaign centers on an adventurer named Rex Chance, who is trying to find his missing father. Warcraft 3 introduced the idea of persistent hero units and Impossible Creatures made it seemingly possible to design and construct hundreds of different unit types from the “DNA” of animals found in the environment. While the simple, 1:1, rock-paper-scissors relationship between enemy units of the first RTS games had been complicated by games with three or more factions, the idea of units and counter-units remained fundamental.Ī couple of games in 2003 challenged the ho-hum RTS status quo.
With some minor variations, resource gathering, base building, structures and upgrades, unit types and unit movement were fundamentally the same in Starcraft, Age of Empires 2 and Rise of Nations. By 2003 - a year which also saw the release of Warcraft 3 and Rise of Nations - the tropes of RTS games had become ossified. The first wave of pioneering RTS games such as Total Annihilation and Dune had been succeeded by middle period masterpieces such as Age of Empires and Starcraft. Even as early as 2003, when Relic’s Impossible Creatures was first released, critics and gamers had started to complain that the gameplay mechanics of real time strategy games had become stale and overly familiar.
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