Spore: revolutionary title or over hyped collection of mini games?
By Dave Parrack
Spore is the latest game from Will Wright, the legend that brought us Sim City and The Sims, the latter of which is by far the biggest PC gaming franchise ever. But is Spore the revolutionary game some people are suggesting, or merely just an over hyped collection of ill-fitting mini games?
Spore has been in development for at least three years and probably a lot more. It is the brainchild of Will Wright, a games developer of genius proportions, and his company, Maxis has been tinkering away at making the game for so long that it has seen many release delays. But it’s finally arrived, having already been released in Australia, Europe, and Japan, and on its way to the US on Monday September 7th.
Spore is a game with a big concept at its core: the player gives life to a species and then helps it evolve from being a primordial soup-dwelling creature to a space-travelling empire builder. It’s no surprise to learnt that the game’s working title was Sim Everything.
Putting players in control of the success or failure of a whole race of creatures would be a mind-blowingly impossible task to even fathom, let alone bring to fruition, but Maxis have managed it by dividing the game down in to five sections: Cell, Creature, Tribal, Civilization, and Space.
All of these sections play very differently, with them being described as Pac-Man, Diablo, Populous, Civilization, and Elite in that order. But this means that each section is essentially a stripped-down version of an existing game, and not as good individually as their inspirations are.
The game has been getting very good reviews, with most rating it as brilliant but not perfect. In fact, many are suggesting that the concept and the experience of playing Spore beat the actual gameplay hands down.
The first four sections of the game are quite short and fleeting, with the fifth and final effort to take over the universe the only real open-ended part of the experience. The customisation options are huge, and have already been given a very public airing by the release of the Spore Creature Creator back in June which saw over 2.6 million different species brought to life.
Spore is at least as revolutionary as The Sims was when it first entered the public domain, and is a game that everyone should play at least once. However, despite Maxis efforts to make the ultimate God game with us as the overseer, Spore is just a collection of mini games at the end of the day. It just so happens that by combining them together, we end up with a PC game that will enlighten, enrich, and entertain everyone who plays it.
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Tips N4G
September 7th, 2008
Over hyped.
Each stage is pretty much the same, except the cell and space stages.
Its way too simple and the space age is just a bunch of goto a and scan/fetch.
Its fun for a while and designing your won stuff is very cool, but there is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much wasted potential its sad.
September 8th, 2008
Spore, aka the easiest and shortest game to come out in the last 5 years.
Seriously, it’s overhyped to say the least. The cell stage is very novel and actually really enjoyable, and the creature stage is too - because at these points, you’re still evolving your creature - which is the best part of the game. Everything goes to hell after that.
The tribal stage is hideously repetitive, and neither the masks nor the armour take into account that your creature might not be best suited to wearing it - try putting the best combat mask on a creature with pincers for a mouth and you’ll see what I mean. The designers actually decided to give me an AWARD for completing tribal in less than an hour. Because it’s really a good thing, completing a fifth of the game in less than an hour.
Can’t be bothered to write about the rest; it’s barely worth mentioning anyway.
Don’t buy this game unless you plan to be dissapointed/feel like wasting $100 (AUD) for 5-10 hours of gameplay.
September 8th, 2008
You’re way too easy on Spore. It’s a dog turd coated heavily with gold paint. Repetitive doesn’t cover it.