BY: LINKHASAFAN


Released: September 7th, 2008
Console: PC, PS3, Wii, Xbox360



Spore, only very recently released. I've highly anticipated this game, 3 years to be exact. If you watched the early trailers, you could tell that this game was going to be quite adult-like and had animals natural behavior in it. It also began with another stage, a stage where you have evolved quite complexly, but you haven't evolved legs yet. In other words, you were just a plain water creature. I will split this review into 10 parts, the 5 stages and then the general that would take place in a normal review.

A quick overview:
Have you ever gone to a restaurant and ordered an appetizer that has a couple pieces of some of the meals. You try all of the different foods and you choose what you want, but the problem is you don’t get every meal; you only get a couple bites of it, and you choose only one. You then whimper as your minimum wage salary can’t pay for another meal and you can’t afford any calories yourself. That’s what Spore is like; it's simple, but great. You only get bites of each of the different genres of games, and it seems like you're forced to choose one, and only one. This is a good game for anyone, but doesn’t please hard-core gamers as much as they would like.

Cell:
You crash land on a planet. You have crashed from meteor and you are now a brand new single celled just rearing to go. It seems like this is genre of game for well, different type of games. This isn't like an action/adventure game, but you can't consider Pac-Man a genre can you. It's pretty much like deciding you like Boom Blox as your favorite genre; it isn't a genre, that’s what the cell stage is…

Not much of a story, but still. This is probably the most flawless part of the game, considering what it's trying to do. This is also though, the simplest part of the game. It pretty much works like this, you eat either plants or meat depending on of you chose of being a herbivore or carnivore. I must say though, this game can really tell your personality, from simple carnivore, omnivore (we’ll talk about this later), or herbivore to how you design your creature really tells what type of person you are. Anyways as you eat you grow, and those weird looking in the creatures of your background become your competition. It’s very simple yet very complicated at the same time. You can change your look also, you hit a mate call, then you find one of your fellow species, they kiss and you lay an egg. You then customize the creature, whether that be adding no parts you found by killing other creatures or in meteor shards, or you can change the color. It all starts off simple for later, choosing parts can come into play…hard.

It's pretty much a way to introduce you to the world; it'll take about 20 minutes to blow off. But that’s obviously a problem, as your cell slowly begins to take form, you get used to the controls and actually find yourself enjoying the stage. But right after you find yourself enjoying it, it ends and you have readjust. For some people it's a good thing, for most other people it’s a bad thing. You don't have to leave that stage, but you feel obligated as the pop up to hit the little button and grow legs comes up every minute, plus the fact you can’t grow anymore! It's just too short, it's like a friend you have to have play date with because your mothers met each other at the store and they need a reason to hang out. After you get there you realize he has awesome video games and then you don't want to leave, but your forced to since you complained too much.
9/10

Creature:
This is one of my favorite parts of the game. You just grew legs, and are ready for a whole new world. You call up the rest of your species and walk onto a whole new world. It plays like a simple action/adventure RPG, or a very simple MMORPG, because every 5 steps, there’s another creature. It’s quite fun, and probably the longest lasting part, besides obviously the space stage. This is where picking parts is very crucial!

It works like this; you can either befriend or attack fellow creatures. Some are weaker then you and some are stronger then you. You must impress them by copying their actions (you have two different types of actions, combat, and friendly), which are always friendly. They start off easy; just hit the singing button once and they befriend you. But every action has 5 different types. The next is better then the other. As you progress you’ll find bones to search will hold pieces to add to your creature. You’ll get better parts to add which will make your actions better. Besides befriending creatures, you can fight them. And if you kill too many (and you must kill if you are a carnivore if you want to eat) they’ll become extinct. Your choices are also crucial here.

As you travel along you’ll migrate to another place that is surrounded by larger, more fearsome creatures. You might run into epic creatures, these creatures are huge. This is one of my favorite parts; it’s like Jurassic park all over again! You hear the ground shaking, then the creature comes, everyone’s running away for their lives, you then hide in trees or something, and as you set the camera on them, you see the light glimmering on them as they walk off. It gives you a little adrenaline. You’ll also find other stronger creature, but they aren’t too strong, just almost impossible for you to beat. You can befriend these creatures though, and you can them add them to your pack.

Let me explain a pack quick, a pack is way for allied creatures to join you on your journey as your brain grows bigger you can add more creatures to your pack. That’s why having big creatures like the ones mentioned above are good to ally, they’ll help you in fights and also help you befriend other allies. Now I got to explain something else, you know how you became bigger when you ate food in the cell stage, yeah well that’s happening again, but this time gaining DNA (the currency which is spent to buy parts to add to your creature) will make your brain grow bigger, which will make you slightly bigger then before, which will contribute to your HP. It’ll be done in about 2-4 hours, quite good compared to the cell. It’s a good time length, doesn’t leave too early and doesn’t over stay it’s welcome.
8/10



You and your home boys in your pack


Tribe:
You just realized how to make fire. You then realize you can do a lot more! You gather a group of your species and you make a tribe. This plays like a simple RTS, quite simple this won’t be long.

You start off with three members, a chief and two other members who follow your every will. Food is the currency here, and you’ll need a lot of it. You should begin grabbing food and after like 2 minutes, another tribe moves in. You can either befriend this tribe or destroy it in war. The only way to get past this stage is to interact with all the other tribes, with either of the choices above. Now there are some epic creatures from before, but now you can take them down, and if you’re a carnivore, that’s a lot of food. But anyways, for 10 food you can make a baby (just gets thrown out of your tribe hut lol) and obviously, you have more power.

As you befriend or kill other tribes you will gain their knowledge in weapons, way of hunting, and instruments (the key to allying)! Very simple and fast, it’ll only take about an hour. Not very fun and doesn’t deliver all of the milk you ordered. I personally would slap Will Wright in the back of the head like I would to my milk man if he did that.
9/10

Civilization:
You grow a little bigger; you soon realize you can have world domination! Everything you need at your fingertips, you soon realize, “Hey, I think we can make something big, like a…city or something, durr,” and so you build a city. Now this part plays like an advanced RTS or a simple Civilization. This is probably my favorite part of the whole game. This is where the game shines.

First off, the big thing here is Spice sites (which is treated like oil). You see, you can win this stage 3 different ways, and they are completely different. The first is obviously, military like. You take your tanks, ships, and planes (I’ll explain this in a minute) and destroy the enemy cities. This is the fastest way and probably the easiest way; it’s also the most fun. But it only lasts for about an hour (which is bad). Then there’s the economic way, this time you own many spice sites which will make more people want to make a trade route with you, you can then buy off their village if you have a large enough income, this is sort of fun but at the same point longer which will take about 1 and a half to 2 and a half hours to beat. And the last is religiously; to tell you the truth I haven’t played this one yet.

Now about the tanks, ships, and planes. Guess what your back to a lot of creating again. You have design a town hall, a tank, a plane, a ship, a house model, a factory model, and an entertainment center model. You decide where to put houses, which allow you to have more transportation, put entertainment centers, which make your people happy, and factories, which make your people sad, but gives you a larger income. Where you place certain building affect each other. If you connect a factory next a house and an entertainment center, the sadness and happiness caused by each other cancel them out, but you still get a large income.
This part delivers in length and it delivers with extra milk. This is pretty much an upgraded version of the Tribal stage, only with better….everything! It pretty depends on which way you take that will decide how long it takes to beat this stage. This is like getting a tested Wii with a VC game already packaged with it.
10/10


Simple picture of the Civ stage


Space:
You soon realize that there’s more then just this world, there’s other! You soon advance and make a space shuttle to travel to other solar systems and take galatic domination! It’s time for you to shine and meet the outside world. This has no genre. This is pretty much just a time waster.

This isn’t worth too much of an explanation. But let me say it like this, it was all hype. Personally I thought this was going to be amazing…it was at one point, the size. This is possible one or the largest open world ever. But that’s the problem…IT’S HUGE!!!!! The problem is during quests (coming up) you’ll find yourself lost as you have to travel from solar system to solar system, looking for the one that holds the planet that takes a minute to complete the objective, then run back to the world that gave you the task and do it all over again! You just find yourself lost looking for a solar system that was lost in the 50 solar systems shown in every camera angle. Now talking about solar systems this leads to another problem, you can only move so much, which means you’ll spend a lot of time just clicking solar system to solar system is a terrible pain, it’s like a maze.

The Spore creators say there’s a storyline and an ending to the game, but only the hard core gamers will find it…No one’s found it so far (that I know of) and I doubt I ever will. The only reason I still play the space stage is so I find the story to it. The quests are repetitive and nothing else is worth mentioning, it just sucks, it had great ideas, amazing size, and amazing online. But here’s the problems with them in order, it’s too shallow, it’s too big and you can’t track yourself, and.… there’s nothing wrong with this part the online is great. If you download any creatures, they’ll appear throughout every part of the game (besides the cell) and that’s amazing considering the size of the database!
7/10


Now do you understand what I'm talking about getting lost


Music:
Ugh, this is a really weak spot. There’s only like 10 tracks in the whole game. One for each stage, it’s the same music practically all the time in a stage. The only part that’s good is making a national anthem for your city, it has large customization, but you can find anything like it on the Internet. Though I must say the music is quite catchy. Plus I feel generous.
7/10

Story:
There is none, but that’s a good and bad thing. The good, you get to shape your own story; I personally think they’re trying to make you make a story for yourself. And unless you’re a dumb moron who doesn’t have single imagination cell in your body, this is a bad thing. Of course though, there is a story line (who would’ve guessed!?)! But apparently only the most hard-core gamers will find it. So I probably won’t find it, but of course as we know about EA and The Sims don’t really mix with stories, but that’s part of the awesomeness of The Sims, it is your story! Since they were too lazy to make a story or at least one that anyone can find, it’s just awesome, can’t really say I can give it a ranking, but since I’m too lazy to make another category I’ll just give it a 8 and call it even.
8/10

Customization:
Do I have to say anything about the customization limits of this game youre dumb. But for the idiots out there, THERE ISN’T! This game has customization everywhere! The first thing that should pop to everyone’s mind when someone says “Spore” should be, the video game that made customization in The Sims 2 look like nothing… This game is so awesome you can probably look up any video game creature/beast and find it! It’s just that sweet!
100/10 (I wish I could but that score) Just kidding, 10/10.


Someone making a weird spore


Online:
Again this should be a simple answer. I’ll put it so easy yo’ grandma can understand…Sorry grandma.
1. You create a creature
2. You name the creature
3. If you want to be cool make it after a animal like a liger or video game enemy or something
4. Post it on the Sporedia and let people download it
So simple and easy a caveman could do it. Look it’s so simple yet so advanced. This already has millions of creatures! How do you keep up with that! And I’m not sure if I should include this in this area but, if you take a video of your creation while in creature test mode, you can upload it directly to Youtube, just enter your username and password, and poof! There goes your awesome liger. Also the creatures you download will appear throughout your game.
10/10

Replay ability:
This is where this game shines the most. It’s like The Sims, once you’re captured, you’re stuck in there forever. There’s no escape, you’ll be making cells again and again and again! There is no end! And with expansion packs already planned by the end of the year, there’s no end! See ya later I got to play Spore; I just downloaded a Lavos creature!
10/10

Stuff I want to see in future expansion packs:
1. More parts…Shut up, I mean I know there’s already like 100 parts for a creature, but imagine what else you’ll be to create with 1000 parts!?
2. Deeper depth in the game. Some of the stages are shallow…Like standing in a puddle after it rains shallow.
3. I was hoping for somehow PVP…but we all know that’s never going to happen so I plan on dropping that idea…like a bomb…and stuff
4. BETTER SPACE STAGE!!!! Come on Will Wright, you got the last name of Phoenix Wright, who is awesome, you’re awesome, and the space staged looks awesome, just make it awesome!

I don’t know what else? 2 out of 4 of these make this game not as good as I wished. As Will Wright said in an interview, “We were very focused, if anything, on making a game for more casual players. “Spore” has more depth than, let’s say, “The Sims” did. But we looked at the Metacritic scores for “Sims 2″, which was around 90, and something like “Half-Life“, which was 97, and we decided — quite a while back — that we would rather have the Metacritic and sales of “Sims 2.” I have two questions to that quote. Wasn’t this game praised by most online reviewers, and secondly what about Mario. Anyone can pick up a Mario game and most Mario games aren’t hard core! And the reviews are still around 97%!

Overall this is a defenite buy for anyone with a PC and a extra $50. With no hard core games coming out for a while, this is the game to get right now. Buy it, I did, besides a few flaws, this game is a defenite game of the year nominee. I know Rock Band 2 just came out, and besides that game, don’t expect anything for a while. And trust me, you’ll be spending your time in Spore till then. Another fact that they plan releasing…something Spore related on the Wii, it’s just another thing to anticipate!

Overall(rounding)
9/10: Grrrrrrreat!

SPORE channel(youtube)
IGN rated: 8.8