''Impossible Creatures'' is a 2003

steampunk Steampunk is a subgenre of science fiction that incorporates retrofuturistic technology and aesthetics inspired by 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery. Steampunk works are often set in an alternative history of the Victorian era ...

real-time strategy Real-time strategy (RTS) is a subgenre of strategy video games that do not progress incrementally in turns, but allow all players to play simultaneously, in "real time". By contrast, in turn-based strategy (TBS) games, players take turns to pla ...

game developed by

Relic Entertainment Relic Entertainment Inc. (formerly known as THQ Canada Inc.) is a Canadian video game developer based in Vancouver, founded in 1997. The studio specializes in real-time strategy games and is known for series such as '' Homeworld'', '' Warhammer 4 ...

and published by

Microsoft Game Studios Xbox Game Studios (previously known as Microsoft Studios, Microsoft Game Studios, and Microsoft Games) is an American video game publisher and part of the Microsoft Gaming division based in Redmond, Washington. It was established in March 2000, ...

. 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 Herbert George Wells"Wells, H. G."
Revised 18 May 2015. ''

''The Island of Doctor'' ''Moreau''. 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 to add more strategic depth to the game. There is an extensive single-player campaign as well as online multiplayer functionality with different game modes, add-ons, custom maps, mods, and scenarios. ''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 Steam is a substance containing water in the gas phase, and sometimes also an aerosol of liquid water droplets, or air. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporizat ...

as ''Impossible Creatures: Steam Edition'', by

THQ Nordic THQ Nordic GmbH (formerly Nordic Games GmbH) is an Austrian video game publisher based in Vienna. Formed in 2011, it is a publishing subsidiary of Embracer Group. Originally named Nordic Games, as was the parent company, both companies were r ...

. Relic Entertainment and Sega relinquished the rights of ''Impossible Creatures'' to THQ Nordic after it was revealed that neither

THQ THQ Inc. was an American video game company based in Agoura Hills, California. It was founded in April 1990 by Jack Friedman, originally in Calabasas, and became a public company the following year through a reverse merger takeover. Initia ...

nor

Microsoft Studios Xbox Game Studios (previously known as Microsoft Studios, Microsoft Game Studios, and Microsoft Games) is an American video game publisher and part of the Microsoft Gaming division based in Redmond, Washington. It was established in March 2000 ...

owned the rights to the video game. The Steam version includes all patches and expansion packs released in the past, the IC Online servers reimplemented through Steam's cloud service and the game's modding

software development kit A software development kit (SDK) is a collection of software development tools in one installable package. They facilitate the creation of applications by having a compiler, debugger and sometimes a software framework. They are normally specific ...

included in the package alongside the Mission Editor originally available within the game's files. Steam Workshop support came out in Patch 3. The Steam Edition is also optimized for modern computer systems and software. The game was also released on

GOG.com GOG.com (formerly Good Old Games) is a digital distribution platform for video games and films. It is operated by GOG sp. z o.o., a wholly owned subsidiary of CD Projekt based in Warsaw, Poland. GOG.com delivers DRM-free video games through its ...

shortly after it appeared on Steam.

Gameplay

Campaign

This mode consists of 15 different missions, spanning over a group of islands in the South Pacific known as the Isla Variatas, indicating the variety of environments presented to the player, ranging from jungles, deserts, or Arctic regions. The protagonist Rex Chance is required to collect animal DNA throughout the campaign in order to add more animal varieties to his army of combined creatures.

Multiplayer

In Impossible Creatures, there are three game types available during multiplayer, which allows for up to six players at once. In "Destroy Enemy Lab", the first to destroy the enemies' main laboratories is the winner. The Insect Invasion official mod added a feature that can be turned on that defends 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. 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. After a failed experiment causes the

Tunguska Event The Tunguska event (occasionally also called the Tunguska incident) was an approximately 12- megaton explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Yeniseysk Governorate (now Krasnoyarsk Krai), Russia, on the morning of June ...

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. Then in 1937, believing that his last days are upon him, Chanikov sends a letter to his son Rex asking him to come visit his father. Rex, going by the name of "Rex Chance", a disgraced war reporter, 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, and 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 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. 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. As the game closes, Rex is shown with his pupils missing, a trait common among Sigma-created creatures.

Development

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 readily available. Despite the fact that the game was not released on Steam until 2015, ''Impossible Creatures'' was one of the first titles that

Valve A valve is a device or natural object that regulates, directs or controls the flow of a fluid (gases, liquids, fluidized solids, or slurries) by opening, closing, or partially obstructing various passageways. Valves are technically fitting ...

used to demonstrate Steam in 2003. This was probably due to Valve and Relic’s close relationship; as both had worked with

Sierra Online Sierra Entertainment, Inc. (formerly On-Line Systems and Sierra On-Line, Inc.) was an American video game developer and publisher founded in 1979 by Ken and Roberta Williams. The company is known for pioneering the graphic adventure game genre ...

. 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 Network, networking and networked may refer to: Science and technology * Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects * Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks Mathematics ...

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. In fact, fixes made by the Tellurian mod developers were integrated back into the base game in an official patch.

Reception

The game received "average" reviews according to video game

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

. ''

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'' gave it a score of eight out of ten and said, "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." However, ''

The Cincinnati Enquirer ''The Cincinnati Enquirer'' is a morning daily newspaper published by Gannett in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. First published in 1841, the ''Enquirer'' is the last remaining daily newspaper in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, altho ...

'' gave it three-and-a-half stars out of five and said that its gameplay "doesn't match the title's ingenious premise." ''

Entertainment Weekly ''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular cult ...

'' gave it a C, saying, "If most real-time strategy titles are elaborate versions of

rock-paper-scissors Rock paper scissors (also known by other orderings of the three items, with "rock" sometimes being called "stone," or as Rochambeau, roshambo, or ro-sham-bo) is a hand game originating in China, usually played between two people, in which each ...

, ''Impossible Creatures'' is the world's most sophisticated game of rock."

References

External links

* * * {{Relic Entertainment 2003 video games Lua (programming language)-scripted video games Microsoft games Real-time strategy video games Video games about genetic engineering Video games about insects Video games scored by Jeremy Soule Video games set on fictional islands Video games developed in Canada Windows games Windows-only games Multiplayer and single-player video games Relic Entertainment games