Darkspore – PC performance graphics benchmarks of Graphics Cards

Year of construction: 2011
Genre: Action-RPG
developer: Maxis
Publisher: EA

Darkspore is a computer game based on the video game Spore. The game, which was released on April 26, 2011 (in Russia on April 28), is described as a sci-fi Action-RPG game in which the player will have to fight in the vastness of alien worlds to save the galaxy from hordes of mutated Darkspore organisms.

 

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Review: Playability

Darkspore is difficult to describe without using any cliches… damn it’s Diablo with Spore mutations instead of leveling!). Darkspore is a kind of genetic army that escaped from the control of its creators and began to gradually capture the planets of the galaxy; the player with a whole team of genetic mutants opposes them. Our goal is to thwart the plans of the dark spores to conquer the universe, so we get the task, form a team and land on the next planet to mow down the enemies!

The gameplay is classic Diablo – we click on enemies with the mouse, on especially harmful ones we use skills assigned to the number keys from 1 to 5, the difference from the Blizzard hit is the same team of 3 mutants that we chose before the mission. Using hotkeys, at almost any time you can change a fighter to one of the two remaining on the bench, and continue the battle in a different style (the team consists of a melee specialist, a ranged one and one with average characteristics). When clearing the next planet, trophies remain on the battlefield: blue and green vessels are the local health and manna, DNA units are money, and items for character improvement are actually organs for the character editor. Having cut out all the dark disputes on the next map, we meet the boss – the biggest enemy on the level and, what’s good, with the obvious presence of at least some intelligence, unlike his smaller companions.

It is worth mentioning that, unfortunately, all levels are almost monotonous and straightforward, only the living creatures that are trying to devour us and the color palette of space in the background change. I’m pleasantly pleased with the game’s voice acting and especially the music, which personally reminds me of the sound style from Space Rangers!

The character editor mentioned earlier is available at any time free from missions, here you can attach a couple of new organs, scales, shells to existing fighters, grow new claws or fangs, it’s not difficult to figure it out, especially for those who played the original Spore. This is basically how you level up your fighters, of whom several dozen will open as you progress through the game!

We invite you to evaluate part of the Darkspore game walkthrough in Full HD resolution, where you can see for yourself the quality of this product:

In general, the game makes a pleasant impression; of course, it’s not a hit of the first magnitude, not an epic RPG with a Tolkien-esque plot and dragons, but it’s just right for passing the time on a free evening!

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Review: Graphics

The graphics engine from Maxis has not undergone major changes, but not very different from the original Spore. In Darkspore we will be pleased with an abundance of special effects, various explosions, lightning, plasma, etc. The entertainment value has increased and so has the overall impression of the picture.

The picture began to look juicier, the landscapes became more diverse, there is snow, and dungeons with spreading rivers of lava, as well as very beautiful views of wildlife. 

 

Although the overall picture has become better, when the camera gets closer, the detail of the graphics is disappointing. I would like the rendering to be better, given that modern engines are capable of more. Maxis decided not to make the graphics more sophisticated, for which we were forced to give an average score. 

The quality settings have not actually changed and look the same as in Spore, so you won’t be able to turn up anti-aliasing and anti-aliasing, but the game has good optimization, so by setting the maximum values, virtually any system will cope with it with a bang, for which we gave the optimization a high ratingи Darkspore.

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Review: Resource-intensive game

All video cards were tested at maximum graphics quality using MSI Afterburner. The purpose of the test is to determine how video cards from different manufacturers behave under the same conditions. The minimum and average frame size is taken as the performance indicator. If possible, the most resource-intensive place in the game is selected. Below is the configuration of our test systems.

Less productive video cards up to the level of GeForce GTS 450 and Radeon HD 4870 are tested on the basis of Core 2 Quad Q9550 and Phenom II X4 940 BE processors, depending on the resource intensity of the game, and more productive ones are based on more powerful solutions. Overclocked versions of video cards presented by sponsors were equal to conventional analogues by reducing their clock speeds.

Our video cards were tested only in 1920×1080 resolution in normal mode at maximum visualization settings. AMD Eyefinity and NVIDIA 3D Vision technologies are not currently supported by Darkspore. Due to low resource consumption and direct dependence on the central processor, only average FPS was taken.

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920×1080 

 As we can see, all of our tested video cards coped with the maximum rendering settings in Darkspore and were unable to drop performance below 30 FPS. The upgrade for this game can be left for later…

CPU dependency testing

We tested processor dependence on 9 models of basic configurations, which are the most relevant today. The test was carried out in those places where the value of video cards for the game is minimal and its load was less than 99%, but this time at a resolution of 1280×1024 with maximum quality settings.

 Testing processor dependence at maximum quality settings 1280×1024

 AMD this time was able to show decent performance and outperformed its competitors Intel. But still, this success can only be called rather conditional, since all tested processors were able to cope with the game without problems. Apparently the frequency and number of cores are of little importance in Darkspore, and the architecture of the central processors itself is much more important.

 

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	Darkspore is a good RPG, but nothing more. There is no leveling as such, we only move forward, raising our level. But games on this topic are released extremely rarely and it’s still better than nothing! .
	The graphics have not changed much from other creations of the Maxis publishing house and still focus not on entertainment, but on a beautiful picture that will be accessible to most users.
	The system requirements are “high” and will not make you think about an upgrade during the entire playthrough of Darkspore!

 

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Rating 100% [1 Vote]