Darkspore delayed until April 26; open beta planned

by Alexander Sliwinski on Mar 18th 2011 2:50PM

Darkspore's evolution toward retail maturation has been stunted, and the game won't crawl out of the development ooze now until April 26 in North America (and April 28 in Europe). Previously, its birth date had been set for March 29.

Along with EA's delay announcement on the game's forums, the publisher announced that an open beta for the edgier take on the Spore franchise would begin sometime in April. It would seem the company is still making sure all the mandibles and exoskeletons are reticulated properly for the game's four-player co-op, squad based PvP and robust hero editor.

Via: Big Download
Source: EA

Tags: Darkspore, delays, EA, Electronic-Arts, Maxis, pc, release-date

Reader Comments (13)

Looking forward to this. Open beta is a plus. Delayed release is kind of a bummer though. But if it's going to improve the game then it's a good decision.

@Apakal
surprisingly looking forward to this, played the beta really fun. loot/bodyparts are great.

@Godemperor

This is what I've heard. I'll be waiting patiently.

I got into the closed beta, but never got to play on their servers because the schedule was so narrow I was too late by the time I was able to find free time. Open beta would be a great idea.

@ColorblindMonk

same here. I wonder if its any good.

@ColorblindMonk Well it seems like they have the beta running just about every weekend. I didn't get any notes about the beta for this weekend though, but since they will be openign the beta up you will have a chance. Honestly, I installed the game but have been too busy to really play on the weekends.

The game is a bit slow. The idea is fine but the overall pace of the game in every aspect is slow.

It needs a 25% increase in overall gameplay and a 50-100% decrease in the time it takes to do things around the menus.

Grouping with players is fun and easy though.

I've been ambivalent towards this game, and now I realize why: it's a mod. They took all of their assets from Spore, put them in a bag, shook it up, and pulled out Darkspore.

@ch3burashka

Adding a new map and changing some textures is a mod.

Adding multiplayer (coop, pvp, matchmaking), skill progression, and class-based abilities is a new game imo.

@(Unverified)

"Mod" stems from the word "modification". In game terms, that means that the party responsible for the mod has used the pre-existing assets to create a new experience. Adding a new framework to support RPG elements, co-op, etc. doesn't generate new assets; it reuses them in a new format. Therefore, I see this as a mod.