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When 3D graphics emerged in the mid to late 1990s, there was considerable reluctance on the part of RTS developers to take on this new paradigm. It did wonders for adventure titles. It did wonders for sports games. And it practically created the first person shooter genre. But what about venerable classics like Warcraft, Command and Conquer, so on and so forth? Many of them were still stuck in 2D mode until Relic's turn of the century hit, Homeworld, emerged - fully taking advantage of the 3D landscape. At first glance, Relic's new title under Microsoft, Impossible Creatures, is a little conservative in comparison. For one, it takes place on the ground rather in space and the camera is fixated in an overhead view by default. The green grass, the peasant/peon henchman look-alikes sure make it sound like all those other RTS games. But there's something about Impossible Creatures that most certainly could not have been done if the developers hadn't left the 2D world and that's the creation and customization of individual units.
  
Typical as Impossible Creatures might look, it actually has no "stock" units. There are default sets of units but the beauty of Impossible Creatures is the ability to deploy units that reflect your overall strategy. You do this in the Creature Lab by taking two different animals and in combining them, you synthesize traits from both breeds. You could add a pair of fast cheetah legs but also take on the projectile tongue weapon of a lizard. Or how about adding wings from a not so tough flying creature to a tough melee (but ground-based) one? That's also possible. In fact, the possibilities extend beyond merely pairing someone's behind with someone's head. You can also change individual parts, like tails, legs, torsos, so on and so forth until you get the combination that ultimately reflects you. This type of customization would hardly have worked in a 2D game (how many combinations could your artists draw?) and it is a practical way of putting the 3D in RTS titles to work. If individualism was one of the tenets we carried over from the 20th century, Relic certainly has gotten this facet down cold. A large part of Impossible Creatures is quite familiar. This is, after all, not Relic's first RTS title. They have the mechanics down pat and the interface is very usable, including the camera control, which strikes a balanced chord between flexibility and simplicity. There are two resources you must collect: energy and coal. The first will involve building power generators that collect energy over geysers or lightning rods that receive periodic bolts of energy. Your home base, if it could be called that, looks like an old coal firing train engine. The game itself is set in 1937, with you assuming the role of Rex Chance; a sort of journalist cum adventurer type. You're whisked away to the South Pacific by your father to investigate this new technology; the Sigma technology, which allows people to combine creatures into frightening clones and genetically enhanced creatures that scare Republicans away. During the single player campaign, you'll have to work to get the genetic material for newer monsters so you start off with a relatively modest stock.
  
On the other hand, the multiplayer mode lets you employ whatever army you crafted before. Even the AI players have their own stock and personality too. They, for example, have their own overall strategy quirks and a stable of creatures that reflect that playing style. I actually liked the skirmish mode, which are usually short but highly satisfying. I also liked the fact that the AI players talk to each other. One of them said they were about to crush me and then another piped in that we could defeat them together. The multiplayer mode is not unlike what you see in Blizzard titles with the AI filling in any open spots. Much has to be said about the machinations you can create in the Creature Lab. You could literally spend a good half an hour in here tweaking and preparing your army. The rest of the game looks like a stock RTS title, albeit, a very well polished one. Idle workers who were building will quickly move to assist another structure being built. Idle units, transporters and other informational cues pop up in a timely manner.
  
I have to note the henchmen here look very much like the peasants and peons in Warcraft - right down to their stupid oafish unit acknowledgements. But in this game, they're a little more than fodder as they can be used for base defenses. They can swim too. Units in the game like the gyrocopter actually have to be manned by henchmen so they're not as entirely inert as they are in other titles. This is the first 3D RTS title that I know of to put the 3D to actual practical work beyond letting you see the action from different angles. And unlike Homeworld, which some complained earlier for its difficult 3D camera, this game is relatively mild in its camera work. In fact, you could play the whole game without rotating the camera at all. With a quirky Island of Dr. Moreau type of setting, strong RTS fundamentals and the ability to create your own units, Impossible Creatures looks poised to kick the 2003 RTS genre off with a bang.
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