Fun with Metarooms - Part 2

I decided to give C2toDS a try. I was a little hesitant at first, not because of there being anything particularly wrong with the idea, but I still have sad, unwarm and unfuzzy feelings from my first experience with Creatures 2. Receiving it as a gift when I was a kid, and having played Creatures 1 enthusiastically, I was overwhelmed by the magnitude of complexity of Creatures 2. No matter what I did, my norns always seemed to die. I was never able to develop a stable breeding population, and only experienced repeated death after death after death. Being a creature-adoring child, this was a bit traumatic for me.

However, this is not Creatures 2. This is Creatures 2 to Docking Station, and that makes all the difference.

First of all, the detail added to this Metaroom is simply lovely, even going so far as to transform the appearance of the hand. Moe and Liam have done a wonderful job recreating the nostalgic feeling of C2, (I say this because I was instantly instilled with a sense of fear and terror upon viewing it). However, they've also included some new additions and improvements that make it work well as a DS Metaroom.

There are tons of seed vendors, which makes it very easy to populate your world with traditional C2 plants. Want more walking tendrils, mushrooms, carrots? They're all there. What's even better, is that these vendors make it very easy to populate other Metarooms with the C2 plants and critters as well. (Instead of trying to grab seeds as they fall to the ground and trying to plant them quickly. Am I the only one who does that? There must be a better way...) Of course, the first thing I ran off to do was populate the Biodome.

 

I really like how the C2 agents look in the Biodome! They work remarkably well in the upper, non-customizable areas of the Metaroom, so it's an easy way to populate the area with growing food sources.

Also as a side note, it has been pointed out to me that in order for the area types of the customizable areas in the Biodome to be changed, you need to "lock" the room. Changing the background won't alter the room type until the room is locked! I was a bit confused about this; I thought the lock only kept the backgrounds from changing on you! Anyways, everything seems to be working much better now.

On a similar note, the Biodome agents seem to work rather well in the Creatures 2 Metaroom. Sometimes fish and anemones get into areas that they probably shouldn't, but that's not a huge issue and it's not really the room's fault that I decided to inject mass quantities of agents that were not designed for it. But, I do love how it livens up the ocean areas!

 

I then decided to bring some creatures into C2toDS. I hatched a female Golden Desert Norn named Emma, and a male Gargoyle Norn named Murgo. At first everything seemed to be going well, although both Emma and Murgo seemed to enjoy plunging themselves into the ocean.

 

This was a bit of a problem, as even if the boat was at the dock, the norns could not walk onto it and kept falling into the water. Fortunately the spring still remains at the bottom of the ocean, so creatures are able to get back up again. I was a bit disappointed though, as my norns didn't seem much interested in exploring the vast Metaroom. However, after remembering that this was DS and not C2, a bit of Shift-Clicking magic helped me relocate Emma and Murgo into other areas.

Soon after discovering the garden, Emma became pregnant. Murgo then promptly abandoned Emma, deciding instead that he would rather explore the volcano. Unfortunately, when the egg hatched, I had only enough time to name the creature "Beth" before she had already grown old and passed away.

It was a bit of a sad start to my C2toDS world. However, after relocating Emma with Murgo, they quickly became pregnant again. Murgo promptly escaped on the elevator while Emma waited with the egg. A second daughter was born, and I named her Beth after her sister. Fortunately this Beth seems to be much healthier than her predecessor, as she does not have the same rapid aging problem that her sister had.

Overall I am very impressed with the Metaroom and am enjoying it very much. Like the C1toDS room, it's great if you want to relive the nostalgia of the previous games without losing the upgrades of Docking Station.