Quickie Video Game Review: Spore

Will Wright, the creator of The Sims franchise, had everyone waiting with bated breath for his latest creation. It was several years in the making and everyone thought this game was going to completely revolutionize gaming in general. Though perhaps what garnered this game the most attention was, of course, what has now been dubbed Spornography. But more on that later...

Just as The Sims was a life simulator, Spore is an evolution simulator. The game starts you off as a one-celled organism. You can choose to be a carnivore or a herbivore, though I recommend going the carnivore route because it's much more fun to eat things rather than to be eaten. After completing this stage, you evolve into a land-dwelling creature. During this stage, your creature evolves by either forming alliances with other species or eliminating them. Following that is the tribal stage. The tribal stage is a real-time strategy game, much like Starcraft or the original Warcraft, though far simpler. You either make every other tribe like you, or you simply go to war with them and take them down one by one. The civilization stage follows this, where you build an industrial civilization with cities and an economy. Last, and what is perhaps the bulk of the game, is the space age stage. Your creature has at last discovered the power of space flight, and you guide your species off into the universe to interact with other races on other planets. You can trade items, form alliances, go to war, and colonize other planets.

Whoa... So it's like five games in one?

That is the best way to describe Spore. It's almost like five short games that are loosely strung together. This is what disappointed me the most about the entire game: your actions in the earlier stages don't have much impact on your creatures once they enter the next. I was hoping that the decisions made earlier in the game would have far more impact later on than they do. In fact, if you really want to, you can change your creature from a monstrous warlord into a peace-loving trader just by turning a new leaf once the next stage begins.

So tell me more about... Spornography?

Perhaps the most revolutionary thing about this game is the Creature Creator. This part of the game was actually released last summer in order to drum up anticipation for the game's full release. It is incredibly versatile, allowing for an infinite number of creatures to be created by users.

This, of course, lead to a flood of genitalia-shaped creatures frolicking about on YouTube videos. Trust me, they were far more elaborate than either Will Wright or anyone else would have imagined, too.

In the full game, you can not only create your own creatures, but you can also create buildings, vehicles, space ships, clothing, and more. It's this aspect of the game that makes it the most fun. The actual game play is pretty mediocre, but unleashing ones' creativity to produce strange monsters and wacky machines is fairly satisfying.

Okay, so get to the point... Thumbs up or thumbs down?

Thumbs sideways. I like it, but I don't think it's as great as we'd all hoped. That being said, it's got a lot of potential if Mr. Wright releases some good expansions for it.

Overall Recommendation: If you're not sure if you're ready to buy it yet, I recommend downloading the creature creator (the full version is only $10) for now and waiting to see if the expansions enhance the game play itself.