I’ve had EA Games’ latest blockbuster computer game, SPORE, for about 3 weeks. Couldn’t play for most of last week though, because we were away in Bangalore for a shopping/break trip, and I don’t have the game installed on my VAIO laptop (not that it would run anyway).
So…time for the usual follow-up review.
I have to admit, I’ve gotten way more gameplay from Spore than I have with most other games I’ve purchased in the last several years. In fact, the last game I played to completion (repeatedly) was “Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic” for XBox (loved it…but the follow-up sequel? meh.)
I’ve also played Spore to the ostensible ‘end’ of the Space phase. Had myself a smallish stellar empire of a few dozen systems, dealt with crises and wars, fought my way to the center of the galaxy, etc. That said though, it’s a noted feature that the Space part of the game is also the biggest, with literally hundreds and hundreds of stars. I’m not exaggerating. Spore is also open-ended, in that you can keep on playing, doing whatever you like. Terraform worlds, reshape planets, grow your empire, go exploring, forge mighty alliances, go to war — whatever. You can be a ruthless capitalist, a fierce warrior, or a gentle diplomat, and more. You can be good, neutral, or evil, or anything in between. There are no real limits or strict categories on how you have to behave.
However, if you do take your little cellular creature and grow it a particular way through the creature, tribal, and civilization phases, each of the previous phases determines your characteristics later on. If you’re a friendly, social critter, then in space, aliens will tend to be favorable towards you. Be aggressive and militaristic, and you’ll have bonuses and abilities in that direction — and the others will tend not to trust or like you.
In addition to the five phases of a given game, there are also highly extensive tools for creating your own creatures, buildings, vehicles (land, sea, and air), and starships. I am totally, completely, utterly without artistic skills. I’m serious: I suck at art. Always have, always will. But the tools for designing things in Spore are amazing. You just assemble parts, stretching and adjusting, and finally ‘paint’ your creation with a large palette of colors and textures. There is also an ample selection of parts styles, so you can indulge your whims. (For example, I literally created a ‘Stack ‘O Pancakes’ as one of my starship designs. I also put together a rather passable and highly detailed rendition of Serenity, from Firefly.) The click-and-drag controls also have a built snap-to and symmetry functions, but I have to admit I wish sometimes there were easier ways to fine-tune. Sometimes I just can’t quite get a part to go where I want it.
Even better, the creatures, buildings, vehicles and ships I encounter are not only my own creations and those included in the ‘base package’, this is also an online game — where everyone can share, and where your own game keeps downloading content from the Spore servers (this is optional). Last I checked, there were over 30 million items available, nearly all of which were created by fellow players.
As for the gameplay itself…well, I’ve played through on Easy and Normal difficulty settings. Still, the early phases seem to go by too quickly. All you need to do to graduate from Cell stage is eat enough food and collect enough parts. Creature stage, food is incidental — there you collect parts and interact with other critters (either socialize or exterminate them). Tribe stage — collect food to grow, and interact with other tribes (either win them over socially, or exterminate them). Civ stage — collect ‘spice’ for money, and interact with other cities through religion, trade, or conquest, until you’ve conquered, converted, or bought up the entire planet. What I mean is that once you know what you’re doing, it’s not hard to get through the 1st four phases in a couple hours at most; only the Space stage is open-ended and big enough to require many hours of play to advance to the end-game scenarios.
In a positive note, however, very shortly after finishing my 1st game (well, abandoning it), I found myself wondering, “Okay, I did an Ecologist, now I wonder what it’d be like to be 100% ‘green.’” Ran that up a ways, then I decided to try out a predator-type. Before I even took that much into Creature phase, I decided to try an omnivore trader. And so on. Then when I got a little bored with that, I switched over to creating new designs. Ships, buildings, and so on.
Anyway… the ‘cons’ are that I wish the early stages were richer and longer. Also, in the Space phase, there are entirely too many crises that require personal intervention, which is nigh impossible to do when you’re literally halfway across the galaxy, deep in enemy Grox territory. I note also there are some definite ‘holes’ in the game, too, where I’m pretty sure they pulled features — for example, noses and ears are purely decorative and give no particular benefits.
The ‘pros’ are the wide range of gameplay, and the simple fun of raising a tiny cell to eventually become a starfaring species. Despite the relative persnicketyness of the design tools, they’re still amazingly flexible and encouraging for personal creativity. Plus, there is definite replayability value here.
