My God I used to love this game. Years ago it was one of the only games I ever bothered to play on the PC, mainly because our PC was rubbish and this had low required specifications. But my God, I never thought I’d see an Xbox 360 version. Shame I can’t afford it right now, I spent my last 400 points on Chime last week. 1,200 points may seem a bit steep, but you’re getting Darwinia and Multiwinia, both fully customised for playing with control pads and playing multiplayer over Xbox Live – It’s a bargain, to be honest!
I wrote a review of it for Poopgang, when Poopgang had it’s own multimedia review type site, all those years ago. I used to be pretty keen on writing reviews for stuff. Look, here’s a reference to me writing this review, back in 2005! I will now reproduce it, untouched and in it’s original form for you to totally blow apart.
Darwinia
Format – PC
Developer – Introversion
Publisher – Introversion
Release – April 2005
For such an abstract, ambiguous title, Darwinia has a remarkably coherent and believable story. Dr. Sepulveda had built a revolutionary, insanely powerful quantum computer, the Protologic 68000. By fluke, when numerous systems are in close proximity they communicate at a quantum level via resonance, creating a virtual universe inhabited by small programs, or, to give them their proper title, Darwinians. Each of these Darwinians has a unique digital strand of artificial DNA, fondly referred to by Sepulveda as their spirit. These Darwinians would live their life in the macro universe, seeking to improve themselves and learning from their mistakes. When they “die”, their enriched spirits are returned to the Central Repository, or “Heaven”, as it is usually referred.
A decade of up time has resulted in thousands upon thousands of generations being created, but it also unwittingly led to the creation and evolution of corrupted processes. These spread like cancer throughout the Darwinians universe, claiming the Darwinians spirits for itself, fuelling its thirst for knowledge, power and control. Upon seeing the detrimental effect it was having on the universe, Sepulveda cut the virus off at several points, impeding its progress so it would not consume everything. And this is where you come in, hired by Dr Sepulveda to help save the digital universe.
You are effectively playing God here, but in a more realistic and practical way than the usual God simulators. Instead of constantly being brought out of immersion with the game by remembering you’re not a God, the situation that Darwinia presents is that those little polygon men on the screen there could almost possibly, just maybe be, in a digital sense, real. They look and act exactly how you think little abstract computer people would appear and behave, as does the world they live in. Projecting your influence onto the little guys couldn’t be easier, imagine a mix of the intuitive mouse gestures employed in Black and White and your bog standard Windows Interface, with a healthy dollop of arcadey Cannon Fodder style shooting.
You begin with the creation of squads; a 3 man unit, armed with lasers, and ready to fight the red Viral Infection to the death. Destroying a virus releases a digital soul, which is then collected by another unit, the engineer. The engineer takes the souls to an abstract building called an incubator which then converts them into Darwinians. It’s from here that research becomes important, because part of the progress you make in the game is through the updated abilities of the units you can create. Research a bit, and the initial three man squad will eventually become a six strong squad, raising their chances of survival and their killing efficiency. You can also improve the range or your weapons, research new ones after obtaining research items, or improve the Task Manager to allow the creation of more units. This process is then repeated over and over until the day is saved, and although it can become quite tiresome and repetitive, the appearance of new enemies and the opening up of new areas is always an intriguing and exciting event.
The visual style of Darwinia is the main something that caught most people’s attention whilst it was in development. The current trend in games today is pushing toward ever-more photo-realistic graphics; Gran Turismo 4 being one of the recent examples. Darwinia, on the other hand, has its own unique look. Reminiscent of Tron and Rez, the simple, clean lines of the world the Darwinians inhabit are drawn with mathematical perfection, the fractal hills and valleys reminding us of what 3D graphics used to look like. That’s not to say that they are old fashioned; Darwinia possesses a radically quaint visual style that not only suits the nature of the game, but was also a way for the limited manpower of the Introversion team to achieve something remarkable. It is set inside a 1980’s super computer, after all. Aside from its beauty and distinctiveness, there’s not much more to be said; as they say, a picture says a thousand words.
But saying that, there’s one specific part of the game the pictures really can’t relay, and that’s the audio. It not only stands out from the crowd, but head and shoulders above the crowd, by using it’s aural output not just as a background necessity, but to provide a living and breathing world for your little pixilated men. It’s really something when, in the situations where hundreds Darwinians voices are being played at the same time, each one has it’s own frequency, it’s own unique pitch and tempo. This simply is as much an audio masterpiece as a visual one.
I had been following Darwinia closely in the run up to its release, yet in terms of game play, knew very little about. Playing it for the first time was a truly joyous occasion, and being instantly hooked on something nowadays is a rarity. Simple, yet fun to play, it’s a game every PC gamer should at least consider owning, no matter what genre you usually plump for. Calling it a Real Time Strategy adaptation of Rez would be too simple, and too insulting to Darwinia, as it quite clearly carves its own niche in videogame history. [8]
A demo is available for free download on the Official Darwinia website: http://www.darwinia.co.uk/
Ooh, that Edge style 8 I put in there makes me cringe, even now. Still, this has given me an excellent idea for how to celebrate my upcoming 5th Anniversary of blogging! Stay tuned.
