‘Spore’ is an ambitious ‘god-game’ from the creator of the
famous ‘The Sims’ series, Will Wright.
On paper, the premise of ‘Spore’ sounds exciting; the player takes a
race of single-celled organisms, swimming around in a primordial soup, right
through the evolutionary chain, up to galactic conquest. It sounds like an impressive concept for a
game, but in practise, ‘Spore’ falls short of its expectations. ‘Spore’ deals
with very serious, ‘real’ issues, like; war, conquest, colonisation, expansion etc.
But juxtaposes this by presenting them in a light-hearted manner, with wacky, cartoonish
creatures, intended for children and teenagers.
The player starts by creating what their race of monsters will
look like. ‘Create a Creature’ is a big part of the attraction of ‘Spore’. The tools available to the player are
overwhelming, and the sheer amount of manipulation is astonishing and very
simple to utilize. In fact Create a
Creature’ was given out by the makers as a ‘free-to-download’ feature. Once the
player has constructed a monster, their creation begins as a tiny, microscopic
organism in a sea. This is known as the ‘cell stage’. The player controls one
organism, with the goal to grow bigger, whilst avoiding the larger, predatory
creatures that populate the sea.
Once you reach a certain size, the game moves onto to the
second stage, the ‘Creature Stage’. Here, your little beast moves onto land for
the first time, and goes about basic animal instincts, i.e. eating, breeding,
running away from predators etc.
The third stage acts as a very basic sort of RTS game. This
stage is known as the ‘Tribal’ stage. With the player now controlling a small
tribe of the same creatures, who wield rudimentary tools and weapons. You can
either befriend the other tribes that inhabit the world, and greet them with
either peace or war.
The next stage is the ‘Civilization’ stage. This is were you
are in charge of multiple cities, and can engage in larger scale warfare, with
tanks and planes. Again, the powerful and easy-to-learn creation tools of Spore
come into they’re own here. The player can customise their vehicles and
buildings to match the aesthetics of their race. The focus in the
‘Civilization’ stage is global domination.
Once the player has conquered/ unified their own planet,
they progress onto the game’s last stage; the ‘Space’ stage. Once again, the
player has the opportunity to create their own kind of object; a spacecraft,
with which to explore the galaxy. The gameplay shifts to colonising and
terraforming other worlds for your species. To counter-balance the monumental
task of running a galactic empire, ‘Spore’ concentrates the player’s actions
onto a single ship, rather than try to look at the whole galaxy. You can zoom
around space, discovering new, intelligent life, and then interact with it.
This could either be peace, diplomacy, trade, or conversely, it could be the global
extermination of an alien species. The point is that the game leaves the decision
up to you.
‘Spore’ is very ambitious, in its attempt to create a game,
which encompasses the whole evolutionary chain. I admire ‘Spore’ for it’s
original concept, it’s aspiration and it’s marvellous customisation tools. However,
I do feel that each of the individual stages of ‘Spore’ seem rather watered
down, and a bit weak. The only exception to this is the final ‘Space’ stage. I
thought there was enough to do in this final phase to foster a wholesome,
game-playing experience, but unfortunately this was the only case. Taken
together, the separate stages of ‘Spore’ work well, although it feels
impossible to escape the simple nature of each stage individually.
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| 'Spore's impressive 'create-a-creature' tool |
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