Spore

Most people expect a single prospectus from a review, but in the case of Spore, I’ve decided to tread a different path. Several in my group of geeks, a generally cool crowd, jumped on board the Spore bandwagon and discussion soon broke. I’ve culled their thoughts, my own and my dear wife’s (not quoted, just in spirit) to bring you the following.

Montessori B.: “At least from the hour or so that I played around with it so far. It’s pretty and fun- it’s pretty fun! But so far not the be all, end all of gaming.”

The Poker Face: “I think it’s a good game, but so far it falls pretty short of the hype.”

Will Wright is one of those game developers whose name emits an almost pop-star glow from the printed page. His latest brain-child has towed a string of hype behind it longer than the diameter of the LHC. Told you we were geeks. Talk of the revolutionary evolutionary title started gaining momentum at a behind-closed-doors presentation at E3 2006. Since then a lot of excitement has built up. Unfortunately, few things ever live up to their hype. That’s not to say the game doesn’t hold a players attention well or that it won’t make gobs of money, but two years’ worth of expectations is rough to meet up with.

The game breaks down like this: Players begin life as a not-quite single cell creature and simply try to survive the rough and tumble world of the primordial ooze. Eat your way to the top and sprout legs on land. Eat your way, again, to the top to become a tribal species. Continue evolving into a civilized and sentient race to eventually begin searching the stars and making contact with other lifeforms in the great wide unknown of the galaxy. Of course, anyone who’s ever played the Sims knows it’s not that simple.

Montessori B.: “Though I must say the procedural character generation technology is pretty impressive. I’d like to see that start showing up in other games.”

Character creation is arguably Spore’s strongest and most intriguing part of the game, though according to EA, the limited character creation software released prior to the full game is considered a toolset. Whether it be the decision to add another set of arms to your species, add a laser cannon to your seafaring spice collector or to change the color of a warring planet’s sky to yellow, the variety of genetic configurations and terrain modifiers stand out head and shoulders above any other game’s character creation tools. Sadly similar to most games though, it makes very little difference to the creature’s/ship’s/planet’s survival or adaptability, but I think it’s safe to assume that more complexity in that arena would alienate many players and take the game into a realm unfamiliar to fans of the Sims games.

Poker Face: “Cell Stage – Neat Idea, but pretty limited. Over so fast that it felt automatic.

Creature stage – Neat Idea again, but gameplay just wasn’t very special. A lot like a randomly generated and very MMO. If you are the sort to spend a light year in the creature creator, you might see some depth here, but other than that – nah.

Tribal stage – Neat, but still very limited. It has the core elements of a good RTS game, but it is still like a very small version of one. Very little variation on possible strategies. Too linear.

Civ stage – In my opinion, a total screw up. Just a s*****y version of a game like Sid Meier’s Civilization or one of the Total War games. Battles are frustrating and repetetive, interaction with other nations has very few variables, and progression is slow. Also, once you figure out the money system, there seems to be very little chance of losing.

I’ve just started on the Galactic stage. I wonder if it will be the saving grace of the game.”

Right on the mark for me, and the Galactic stage is more time consuming, more frustrating and outshines the other stages combined. The frustration isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because it comes more from challenge than disappointment, programming glitches notwithstanding. Exploring new planets, warring with other species or simply establishing trade routes, the Galactic stage is the meat of the software that will keep players coming back. Being that the alien races you’ll come across are ultimately boundless in variety with downloadable creations from the user community already playing, the game will never produce the same experience twice. Well, not really anyway. The missions and empty threats will always read the same, but the creatures will look different.

A lot of players will find the stages leading up to the space exploration a little frivolous and a drag to have to go through before getting to the more interesting parts of the game. Couple that with the controversial DRM security issues and TODAY’s resolution to multiple profiles per game issue and you get a title with a few solid reasons to avoid it. However, the pluses outweigh the negatives, particularly because Spore is the type of game you can play straight for a week, leave it alone for a month, and come back with it being just as fresh and casually fun as it was the first day you installed it.