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D3's The Adventures of Darwin is a powerful assault on evolutionary theory, and a convincing argument in favor of intelligent design. But it's not a good game. Instead, it's like the primitive, knuckle-dragging ancestor of one, namely Pikmin. You see, if evolution worked like it's supposed to, this game would have come out before Pikmin, maybe by about 35,000 years or so. But no, video game evolution works backward, beginning with an intelligent design and ending with countless dim-witted offspring. This is the story of one such far-fallen apple.
The story begins when a monkey named Darwin has a dream about an approaching asteroid that will wipe out his monkey town if he and his simian friends don't evolve. That's right--monkey town, where monkeys live in houses, drink at bars, and craft shrapnel grenades in monkey armories. But they need more in order to escape impending doom: a giant flyswatter, or maybe a nuclear asteroid shield. Those are just guesses--all you know is that an asteroid is coming, monkey town is in danger, and you must head out into the world with brave monkey mates to collect stuff and bring it back. By collecting everything in the world, you're bound to find a cure for asteroids.
It's like Pokemon, but you're collecting fruit. And wood. Iron Ore, I choose you!
When you leave your village, you run around in a hub area with four different exits, three of which are blocked by obstacles. So you run through the open tunnel into a jungle area, and you see a green field containing four different fruits lying on the ground next to a piece of wood, raw iron ore, a red star, and a yellow star. You also discover that three monkey friends have come to help with the scavenging.
As you move, the monkeys follow you, so you and your gang do what's natural and head for some fruit. You discover you can either eat or carry it. Eating, by the way, restores health. So you elect to carry it. When you do this, a "0/1" pops up to tell you that it takes one monkey to carry the fruit. So, one of your three monkeys picks it up. Next, you and the troop mosey over to the yellow star. Yellow stars, you discover, grant more monkeys, so suddenly you have four monkey friends. The red star, on the other hand, restores lost monkeys. Finally, you check out the raw iron ore just sitting there, and discover that it can only be carried by three monkeys. You have three free monkeys ready and willing, so you tell them to grab it.
Now that your monkeys are all holding things, you return to town, where you are greeted by a score screen that adds the point totals of things you have brought back, and converts them into experience that goes toward your village's next level. That's right, your village has "levels," and every time you bring back new stuff, you help it level up. As it gains levels, your town also gains buildings. Most of these can be ignored; the ones that can't include the bar (get more monkeys), the mess hall (heal monkeys), and the store (purchase power-ups).
