Spore - the game

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Well I've been playing this game for a few days and I'm still not sure what to think of it. It is kind of fun to evolve a critter and all that but when you get to the space age it just seems like a jumble running around from planet to planet and then running back to homeworld in the middle of that so that you can defend it from attackers.

 

There is an hour long show on National Geographic Channel about Spore & the science behind it. The show is called "how to build a better being"

 

Actually, I'm finding that the more I play this game the more engrossed I am becoming in it all. It is really kind of fascinating trying to build an alien empire.

 

Huge let down

I had been looking forwards to Spore for a very long time. I'd not bothered with the creature creator, although I've seen a few screenshots from it. I was more concerned with the gameplay - which sadly is non-existant.

To describe it in the best way I can think of... imagine the interesting flash games that you might have played. Simple controls, simple game, with little difficulty that you'll play through once and forget about. That's what Spore is.

Start off by holding down the left mouse button and your little swimmer dude will swim around and eat either red bits of green bits. Eat enough and you can add new parts on. The location of the parts makes a little bit of difference, but not a great deal. Eat enough parts and you get to add legs and go to the next stage. There's no incentive not to die, if you die you just re-spawn (heh!) and continue, nothing lost.

The next stage you run around dancing and singing to other creatures, or killing them. Do enough of that and you get to add another dude the same as you to a pack. Eventually you'll have 3 in the pack and then that mini-game is over.

The next mini-game is the tribal stage... which again is repetitive, and easy, collect the resources, attack the enemies in a very cut down RTS game. Boring as the other mini-games. Do enough of that and you can go to the civilisation stage.

That stage you design your own buildings and ships and the clothes your creature wears. The only thing that has an impact is the ship, and you get to decide what %age of health/speed/economy or health/speed/attack etc the ship gets. Anything else is 100% cosmetic. Note that I am not saying it makes little difference and may as well be cosmetic. It really is cosmetic. As an example of a game we all know, think of the start of Neverwinter Nights or Oblivion. You get to decide what your character looks like, and it has no affect on gameplay. Spore is like that.

Despite that fact I paid a fair chunk for the game I've not even bothered playing the space stage. The game sucks.

You carry two things forward from each stage.

1) How your creature looks - which has very little effect on gameplay. Any effect it does have you can change anyway.

2) An evolutionary trait. This is laughable. For example in the first stage it's either herbivore, carnivore or omnivore. Then later stages follow the same theme. It's either war, peace or a mix. This is the biggest let down of the game.

So here's a list of problems with the game to try to help explain.

- What you do in each stage has little or no impact on the next stage. Your creatures appearance is 100% decided by you, and the creature does not evolve.

- Body part selection is a huge con.
*It doesn't matter where you put an item. It still does the same thing.
*You're either playing as a carnivore or a herbivore, which means you'll just max out the stats of your creature, with, for example, feet that are the best that look similar to all the other feet.
*Body parts have attributes - for example Strike and a number from level 1 to level 5. A part that gives Strike level 2, combined with a part that gives Strike level 3 equals a total strike ability of 3. In other words it's just the highest item that does it. Combined with the fact that extra legs or arms do nothing for you because you can't then go for specialisation in a particular thing, since it's very easy and everybody will do it, just go for a single body part that gives Strike Level 5. Every creature will look different, but they'll all essentially be the same.

-You can't do "well" or "badly" in this game. When you move to the next stage it is not possible to do so with any advantage or disadvantage. Your creature is exactly as powerful or weak as the stage allows. So the only "challenge" is to make it to the next stage - which you can't fail at - there is no challenge to make it to the next stage and do it well

-There is NO CHALLENGE in the game at all. You cannot do well or badly. I know I've said that already. But it's crucial. I'm sure many of us here have played a game over again with the intention of having a better game overall. Doing all of the subquests etc. That doesn't happen in Spore.

- Darwin would turn in his grave if he saw this. I was hoping for a game where my creature would develop based on my actions, and I'd be trying to steer it in a particular direction, but struggling with every action I take having other consequences. Not so. You just throw the body parts on and the creature is done. Nothing matters from the previous stage other than the wart/peace/both choice.

I've played the game for around 2 hours, and I'll never play it again. A complete and total waste of money. It's essentially a collection of weak mini-games with zero challenge, compounded with a system of dressing up a creature. It's a dressing up toy.

It's bad.

 

Well, actually the evolutionary traits have a HUGE role in the space stage.

Too bad the space stage is made so horribly pretty much nobody wants to play it unmodded. You don't play a galactic god, you play a galactic janitor. Always cleaning up other people's messes - the more allies you have, the more mess.

 

Most boring game ever. My brother raved about it for months, he gets it on release day (ignoring my advice not to bother with it) and finishes it on the same day. Then there is the moment of "ok now what?" He finds out that he has spent $80 on a game that has NO re-playability even though there is an unlimited amount of creatures you can create. All the while I'm looking over his shoulder saying "I told you so"

Really, it's a novelty game. Good for a laugh but not to play over and over.

 

Well I have to say that the space age was the most interesting level of this game but I agree will a lot of the stuff that has been said about it.

What is the point of this game? Fly here and there, find collections of things that you don't have room to store, fill planets with plants and animals so that you can make more spice for money. Spend money on weapons to kill the endless raiders and colony destroyers. Wheeew FUN! (that was sarcasm)

AND THEN there is the aspect of only being to install the game from your disk 3 times! So if I get bored fast of this thing I still don't really want to uninstall it even if it is wasting space because I know that I'll only have 2 more installs left. So why did I pay money for this game when the company seems to be punishing the people who actually buy games?