Internet Apocalypse

By now I'm sure that anyone stumbling across this blog has already heard all about Spore and been exposed to at least some of the surrounding Hype about this game. Yes. The media storm surrounding the game as it built up to its release billed it to be one of the most innovative and original games ever made.

The famous video of Will Wright "um" using the creature creator when it was in its earlier stages was amazing and there is no doubt that the design of the creator and the technology behind it is absolutely astounding and revolutionary.

Spore received mixed reviews upon release; a recent Amazon.com "glitch" meant that a thread of unfavourable reviews was somehow "lost" from the Spore product page, although after some questioning, the reviews were restored. The biggest controversy to overshadow the game was its stringent DRM (digital rights management) restrictions - which restricted users from installing the game on more than 3 machines and only allowed customers to create a single account capable of receiving the user generated content and adding a users own creations to the collective. EA have since announced that they will be relaxing the rules slightly, allowing the game to be installed on up to 5 machines. This issue is still a point of contention between developer and end user, but it's also a complex one and maybe a topic for another blog.

As Spore is cut up into five distinct sections, which means this review is really 5 mini reviews in one massive block of intimidating text. Sorry about that.

Phase 1: Tidal Pool Phase

This part of the game is awesome. You start as a small amoeba-like creature and have to swim through a primordial soup of other microbes, eating other animals or plant matter to grow in size. Once you have grown, you can munch on the creatures that have been eating you. You are offered the chance to upgrade your organism, giving it different mouths, weapons and methods of propulsion. This part of the game is very addictive, looks great and its great fun. My only real criticism would be that it is too easy and it is over too quickly.

Phase 2: Creature Phase

This looks like World of Warcraft or some similar MMO. You run around with your creature in third person, grinding computer controlled creatures in order to get you experience bar to the top level. You have some skills on a Warcraft-style action bar at the bottom of the screen that vary in degrees of uselessness. There are a few basic quests which give you extra XP, all in all - it is extremely easy and gets boring fast. You are offered the carnivorous "kill and eat everything" route or the herbivorous "eat vegetables and make friends with everything" route. I chose the former as the latter is for girls.

Phase 3: Tribal Phase

This feels like a Settlers game and turns the camera view into a birds-eye view of the map. You are now controlling multiple copies of your creatures, competing against other creatures in a battle to dominate the landscape. You tell your creatures to hunt, fish, attack rival tribes or befriend them. There is no customisation in this phase and i felt myself rushing through it. There is no substance to this phase and the usually classic RTS features it should have don't exist (for example ctr+1 grouping of units, selecting unit type on double click or selecting all units on screen). In short - play a Civ or Settlers game and you will have a much better time than wasting an hour on this part. The Civ Revolutions demo that I got FOR FREE on Xbox live lasted longer than this, was more fun and looked more graphically polished.

Phase 4: Civilisation Phase

This phase is much better than the last two as you get to use the creator tool again, this time to construct your buildings, tanks, navy and air force. I would compare this phase to a command and conquer or dawn of war title but, yet again, not nearly as good.

The phase itself, again, only lasts a very short time and there is even an "I win" button that you unlock after defeating half of the enemies on the map, making the entire thing completely pointless. The vehicles do look really good but you are restricted in how many you can make, the enemies are very easy to defeat and hardly attack at all, even the "aggressive" ones. Also, this phase suffers the same lack of RTS functionality that the last phase did. Very disappointing. It takes roughly three and a half hours of game time to get to the end of this stage without rushing and this is the penultimate phase of the game.

Phase 5: Space Phase

The Space Phase is the proverbial carrot on the end of the stick which kept me playing through three and a half hours of brightly coloured disappointment.

The phase begins with the creator window again. This time you get to create a spaceship. Once you have created one, you are taken through the tutorials which teach you to master trade, diplomacy, terra-forming and changing the planets you have populated by introducing plants and animals.

This phase looks beautiful and the galaxy you have to explore is HUGE. You zip around in your ship and perform various quests in order to gain currency to improve your existing planets, expanding your empire. Think Master of Orion or Freelancer as a basis for comparison on this stage. My main criticism for this phase is that your massive galactic empire only supports one ship to defend its empire... YOU. If you expand your empire to more than 3 or 4 planets, you will soon find yourself zipping back and forth from planet to planet to defend them, without getting anything done. This is a huge game play design flaw in the phase in my opinion.

The best part about this game is, without doubt, the creature creator. Creating the buildings, creatures and vehicles is really good fun and seeing them come to life is great. I really hope the creature creator is implemented in future games. The game play elements are very poor. It's extremely easy, I doubt younger players would have a difficult time completing it at all and once you have completed it in carnivore and herbivore "modes" there isn't enough there to warrant a third run. The game genres it traverses are already dominated by far superior titles that are specialised in doing that genre WELL. While it has some great ideas I don't think it manages to pull them off to the standard people were expecting. A victim of its own hype, Spore is a jack of all trades, master of none.