Darkspore

been playing the open beta of this game and have had it pre-ordered since the closed beta came out, love this game, love the graphics, love the creation area and love the gameplay. great game definitely recommended

After playing the beta I preordered the game straight away, gameplay & graphics are excellent. The game excel's in its multiplayer form and is much more enjoyable than going through the same content on your own. The game scales well depending on how many players you have in your party & the boss fights are fun. The customisation of the hero's is good though limited to adding weapons/armor & enlarging/reducing current body parts. You can add new feet/hands and change the colour etc but essentially they are the same hero. Would have been nice to make your own hero's from scratch like in the original Spore. Though this is a minor niggle and doesn't detract from the gameplay itself. I can highly recommend this game to any fan of action rpg's.

Darkspore has a very difficult and problem-ridden installation. It took me 2-3 hours to get it up and running. And don't assume because you buy the disk, you have the game: You have to download a ton of extra content before it will work.

The game itself is good fun and quite addictive. The graphics are very pleasant and it's fun running around shooting aliens with different, customisable heroes.

A couple of annoying things (apart from the install): There is no way to pause the game, and there are some glitches in the editor screens. Also, it forces you to go online (login) every time you start the game, regardless if you want to play single player or multi player.

Overall, a good game, slightly spoiled by a poor install and a few annoyances.