Geez, Eddie. Where's the love? The love of crafting complete,descriptive, coherent sentences, that is. Maybe you should take abreak and come back when you've recharged a bit.
That's what I'm sayin' Eddie! For someone who is so against thenumeric rating system, what gives? You should have just posted theirend summary, or maybe some highlights.
...Would you guys like me to post a
review of the review?
I'm taking online college courses this semester, so I post from school. You'll all survive if I can't take 45 minutes a-piece to mastercraft my posts, I promise.
...If it makes you feel better though, here's the review:
September 4, 2008 - There'sa strong case to be made that Maxis excels at making software toysrather than games. And there's a not so insignificant difference there,because a toy is something that you tinker with, whereas a game issomething with a narrative, goals, or a way to win. That may be whyMaxis titles have so much appeal. SimCity lets you indulge your innermayor. Meanwhile, The Sims is the ultimate virtual dollhouse, lettingyou create your dream house and, by extension, your dream family. Butnow we come to
Spore,the most ambitious Maxis product to date, and one that's as much as agame as it is a toy. Sure, you can tinker with Spore, but there's alsoa game here, one that involves the long struggle of life as it evolvesand advances from a tiny cellular organism to intergalactic spacetravel. In fact, Spore is essentially five distinct games woventogether. And here, Maxis demonstrates a weakness, as a number of thesegames come off as lightweight or limited. However, Spore is a primeexample of something that is much more than the sum of its many parts.
I like to think of Spore as astrobiology in a box. Astrobiology is thefield of science dedicated to thinking about what life on other planetsmight look like. To do that, it has to draw upon a wide range ofscientific fields. Astronomy helps ascertain what sort of galacticconditions are needed to find a planet that will support life.Chemistry helps figure out where that life might have come from, whilebiology helps explain how it might evolve. Even societal studies, suchas civics, might explain how advanced life might organize. Like classicMaxis games such as SimCity and SimEarth, Spore tackles complexsubjects and makes them relatable to the player in an engaging way.Basically, Will Wright is the science teacher you wish you had inschool.
The easiest way to look at Spore is take it apart stage by stage. So wekick off with the Cell Stage. Spore begins with a comet crashing to aplanet's surface, seeding it with bacteria that evolve to become tinycellular organisms, and you are one of them. This is an old fashioned,top-down arcade game, but one with bright, eye-catching graphics. Youswim about the primordial oceans, eating as a carnivore, herbivore, orominvore. Eating gives you DNA points that you can use to evolve yourcreature in the cell editor. There are also six different "parts" thatyou can discover, and these parts can give you different abilities.Water jets let you squirt faster through the water, fins let youmaneuver better, spikes give you armor against predators, and so on.
Life in the primitive oceans.There'ssomething to be said about life in the ooze; it's easy, you swim aroundtrying to eat but not be eaten. It's saying something of the game'sdesign that even these tiny creatures are capable of conveying so muchexpression, particularly in their eyes. You see them panic and fleewhen chased, or a slight gleam when they see something they want toeat. Even the little chirps and noises they utter are grin inducing.Alas, all good things must come to an end, because as you eat andevolve, your creature becomes larger and larger until you finally fillup the evolution meter at the bottom of the screen, meaning that you'reready to sprout legs and move on to the next stage of Spore.Unfortunately, I found myself wanting to stay a bit longer in the oozeto evolve even further. There are bigger, meaner creatures to be found,and it'd be great if you could evolve to take them down.
Let's detour to
Spore'suser-created content for a moment. When you encounter another creature,vehicle, or building in spore, click on it and it's added to thebuilt-in Sporepedia catalog. The Sporepedia is an incredible resource,since it keeps track of not only the content that you encounter in yourcurrent game, but it lets you access an entire universe of contentcreated by Maxis and Spore players from around the world. Just witnessthe wild success of the Spore Creature Creator, one of the editors inthe game that was released separately earlier this year. By molding andflexing the many different parts, users from around the world createdmore than three million creatures with an astonishing amount ofvariety. And it's very impressive how well it works. No matter howbizarre the creature, you still get a sense of emotions from them, fromsad, to happy, to scared, to angry. They animate properly, and theymove like you imagine they should. It's just an incredible technicalaccomplishment.
Consider that Spore features more than a dozen editors that let youcreate buildings, land vehicles, naval vessels, aircraft, andspacecraft. If you love creating things, then Spore is going to providean incredible amount of joy. I, on the other hand, suck at makingthings. While I had fun creating my mosquito-like humanoid creatures, Ilack the patience and the skill to really go wild. Some users can takethe creature editor and make Viking longboats with oars. I'm nowherenear that good, so I accessed the built-in Sporepedia to selectbuildings and vehicles others made that I liked. Since you can accessthe Sporepedia at any moment in the game, it's easy to do. I could thentweak their color patterns and import them into my game. And, for themost part, I had the pick of mainly Maxis-made content since we'll needweeks and months for Spore users create millions of pieces of content.
You're going to do a lot of singing or fighting.Nowonto Creature Stage, which is the "action" stage of Spore. You're nowon land but you're still evolving. However, you're also learning how tointeract with your own species and others. These interactions caneither be friendly or hostile, and they generally consist of doing asocial minigame or getting in a fight. However, you end repeating thesame social interaction or attacks dozens of times, and it's a verysimple system so it feels a bit like a chore after a while. And youhave to do it, because allying with or exterminating other creaturesgives you points that you can use toward evolving, as well as valuableparts that you can evolve your creature with.
The Tribal Stage plays out like a real-time strategy game, albeit abasic one. There's only one resource that your tribe members gather(food), and that's used to support a larger population as well asconstruct buildings that offer various upgrades. Like in CreatureStage, there are only two options: be nice with neighboring tribes andally with them or crush them. To be nice, you have to serenade them;this time by playing one of four instruments when the tribal membersrequest it. The war route means outfitting your tribe with weapons likestone axes that let you take down the opposition easier. Each tribe youeliminate adds a totem head to the totem poll; once there are fiveheads on the poll, you've done enough to advance to Civilization Stage.There's not a lot of challenge here for an experienced RTS gamer, andit doesn't take long to get through it at all. It doesn't help thatthis stage doesn't allow you to create anything in an editor, thoughyou can outfit your creatures with accessories that can boost theirsocial or combat abilities.
You can be designing creatures, buildings, spacecraft, and more.Nextis Civilization Stage, which feels a bit like a scaled-up version ofthe Tribal Stage. This time you're struggling for domination of anentire planet, and the key is to capture cities through force,conversion, or buying them. You start with a single city and a singleland unit, and you capture spice nodes to generate revenue that's usedto purchase more units and upgrade cities with defenses and differentbuilding types. Housing boosts population, which supports a largermilitary; factories generate revenue but also cause unhappiness; andentertainment complexes boost happiness. Capture a city, and you canhave it specialize in military units, religious units, or economicunits. However, all you pretty much have to do is crank out units andswamp the enemy; the AI will send units your way, but not enough tomount a major push. Any real-time strategy vet won't be too hardpressed here.
And then there's Space Stage, which is by far the largest stage inthe game, and the stage that is the widest open in terms of gameplay.Space is, as crazy as it sounds, a single-player massively multiplayergame. You can start flying around the galaxy, visiting a crazy numberof stars and planets, some of which are barren but others supportinglife in different stages. You can establish colonies on other worlds,extending the size of your empire. You can terraform planets to supportlife, or mold them like a giant piece of clay. You can get missions topursue from neighboring empires. You can get into space battles, or youcan crush a primitive species. You can abduct creatures from one planetand transplant them to another. In other words, you can basically playas a god, and that's always a nice rush. The space stage is the deepestpart of
Spore, which makes sense considering that it's also longer than all the other stages combined.
The entire campaign makes for a dizzying trip through millions of yearsof evolution. Thankfully, once you play through the game you can starton a new planet at any stage that you wish, so if you liked the SpaceStage, just go ahead and start there. What you will miss is thetimeline of your creature's evolution, as well as the ability to moldand shape your creature through the decisions that you make. Whetheryou choose a peaceful or a warlike path, the game rewards you withspecial abilities that you can use. Playing through the game does giveyou a sense of working your way through the ages. I got a thrillwatching my little Poker creatures (named for their primitive,mosquito-like snout) crush their opposition and launch into the starsafter a long struggle out of the muck.
The timeline charts your progress.It'sworth noting just how easy it is to play Spore. Save for using thekeyboard to type in the names of the things that you build in the manyeditors or searching for content in the Sporepedia, you can play almostthe entirety of Spore just using the mouse. It's an incrediblyaccessible game to pick up and play, and the hefty manual that comes inthe box as well as the helpful hints will get even a novice up andrunning quickly.
Like all Maxis games, Spore is infused with charm. The colors in thegame are vibrant and warm, and even the most sinister monster ends uplooking a bit cute thanks to the art design. The game ran smoothly onmy admittedly high-end system, and it was rock-solid stable, nevercrashing. I can't even think of a single bug. Meanwhile, humor and witare deeply embedded in Maxis' DNA, and it shows. I stumbled upon twotribe members having a Sims-style discussion, with thought bubbles overtheir heads and icons representing what they were talking about. Theyseemed intent on discussing the universe and god, and in this case, godis apparently Will Wright's head. Another hilarious and surreal momentcame during the Creature Stage, when in the midst of doing the friendlydance a UFO appeared overhead and began kidnapping the panickedcreatures below with its abduction beam. The sounds and music are alsoclassic Maxis. Every chirp and warble that your creatures make seemsauthentic, and the dialogue sounds like alien versions of the Simlishthat we've come to love. The music seems minimalist at times. Whencombat kicks in, the drums pound and get your blood pressure up. Yet atother times, the music takes a back seat to the sounds of yourcreatures' feet pounding on fresh grass and other sounds of nature.
The Sporepedia lets you access an entire galaxy of content.Closing Comments
I think that Maxis has made an impressive product that does so manyincredible things. Spore will serve as an introduction to gaming formany; it's clear that many nontraditional gamers will check it out. Assuch, this feels sort of like a sampler plate to gaming, introducingnewcomers to the different types of gameplay out there. But muchmore than that, Spore will make you think about science, and whenwas the last time you could say that about a game? It'll inspire peopleto learn more about the universe and imagine what's possible outthere. Spore also pushes the idea of user-generated content toincredible new heights; this is a game where users will make the vastmajority of things that you encounter, and this creation and sharing isdone seamlessly.
Yet, while Spore is an amazing product, it's just not quite an amazinggame. I can't help but feel that Spore is ambitious and memorable, butI also admit that, save for the cool Space Stage, there's not a lot ofdepth here. Rookie gamers are going to feel at home here, but veterangamers may feel like they need more. Still, Spore proves to be one ofthe most unique products in recent memory, one that reaches for thestars and ends up giving us a universe in a box.
(For other opinions of Spore, make sure to check out
GameSpy's review,
IGN UK's review, and
IGN Australia's review. And be sure tocheck out some
exclusive clips from the companion TVspecial.)
9.5
Presentation The nearly 100-page manual is full of everything you need to know and more; the Sporepedia is an excellent in-game content browser; and the entire interface shows a lot of thought went into it. 9.5
Graphics Spore abstracts life with warm, colorful graphics. The fact that you can create an almost unlimited range of creatures and they all animate and move logically and emotionally is amazing. 8.5
Sound While these are aliens, you can understand them thanks to their chirps and grunts. The music is minimalist, but that serves to underscore its effectiveness when it does come into play. 8.0
Gameplay Spore is a wonderful, dizzying trip through evolution. It's definitely an entertaining and creative endeavor, but it lacks the gameplay depth that experienced gamers expect. 8.5
Lasting Appeal If you like creating and sharing things, Spore is going to keep you busy for quite a while. However, if you like playing games, Spore doesn't seem to have the longevity of something like The Sims. 8.8
Great
OVERALL (out of 10 / not an average)
<message edited by Eddie_the_Hated on Sep 05, 2008 02:52>