D3 Press Day NYC: The Adventures Of Darwin
Decapitated revenants weren't all I saw today - next up was The Adventures of Darwin, a unique RTS for the PS2 that places the fate of Darwin the monkey and his primate pals into your hands. Everything from the game's currency to incidental details like the save/load dialogue evolves as you gather resources, marshal your forces and grow from a simple monkey through various stages of primate evolution. As Darwin encounters new materials and performs new tasks he will evolve, as will his community: Darwin's home village will grow and expand as the game progresses, unlocking buildings and improvements a-plenty.
Out in the level-based prehistoric world of The Adventures of Darwin, enemies and items abound, and after just a few minutes of holding the controller I had the basic game mechanics down, a necessary and not always successful modification when bringing real-time strategy genre to a console. Darwin is followed by a number of smaller primates who interact with the environment in various ways - picking up fruit or wood or metal may require one or two followers, and as you collect these items you'll have fewer hands available to fight monsters, so frequent trips back to your village are a must. That seems to be a good thing, however, since finding new resources not only upgrades your village but upgrades your weapons as well: want your band of pugilistic primates to throw iron-tipped spears? Not if you haven't found iron, they won't. But unlike many strategy games, Darwin doesn't force you to manage resources - find it once and it's yours.
The squad-based gameplay adds versatility to the level design and puzzle solving - for instance, revisiting an early area after your buddies have evolved enough to stand in a straight line may permit you to cross a narrow bridge without drowning most of your guys in the river (although I did that anyway, because I'm an evil monkey) and access whole new bits of the level.
The Adventures of Darwin definitely seems aimed at the younger crowd, and looks to provide excellent training wheels for the RTS genre, but it also looks like it will work well as a fun and very playable console RTS for folks of all ages. Look for it on June 19, and make the jump to see some screens!
tiny dancer
Posted to Video Games on 23 May 2007
· Comments (1)
Other stuff like this: d3, ps2, the adventures of darwin, Vingt-et-un-Systems
Seems to remind me about Pikmin. I'll keep an eye on it.