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Sunday 14 September 2008
Alright when I first saw the advert for Spore, I thought it looked like a little kids game of Black and White and didn't really want to play it (mainly cause I have a Vendetta against EA for not making Dungeon Keeper 3, if you look at my post a couple of months ago). Anyway the other night I have a few friends up for a bit of a laugh some films etc and one of them brought me a version of Spore they had downloaded and cracked, means I can't play online but what you gunna do eh?? Anyway after he installs and then after all the others go to sleep I give it a razz.
Spore, you start as a single cell amoeba floating around in the sea eating smaller amoeba, if any of you have played feeding frenzy you will like this bit, but you eventually evolve, kill and civilise yourself up to the space age, this is split into the Cell stage, Creature stage, Tribal Stage, Civilisation Stage and Space Stage and because I'm a looser with nothing else to do on a Sunday Morning I'm going to review all of them.
Before I start on all the ups and downs of this game, I would like to say, I was glued to the screen from the beginning of the Cell Stage until a little bit of the way through the Space Stage (mainly because I fell asleep on my keyboard and piloting a ship was by then far to much for my bloodshot eyes at 5 in the morning), so no matter what I say against it, it is still a really fun casual game to play.
Anyway now I said that:
THE CELL STAGE
At the beginning should you choose to do the "Cell Stage," (because you can start anywhere in the evolutionary chain (which if you ask me destroys the Challenge of the game if your Lazy, but meh), you are asked a variety of Questions to begin your life as a cell and I suddenly felt like I was 9 and playing Digimon world 1 again, these questions included, are you herbivore or Carnivore (Carnivore =P), what theme would you like (there is nothing to choose from . . . .), Difficulty level (Normal), Name of your planet (something you think is funny).
After finishing answering all of the questions the game feels it needs to ask you, you are treated to cinematic of a meteor, presumably containing you crash landing into some water, thus the Stories of G-Wizz on the planet of Folkestone began.
I think the UI is good, mainly cause it reminded me of my wow interface, this interface is maintained through the whole game, but does have things added on and taken away but I found it flowed nicely.
I found the cell stage annoying and I don't know whether I wasn't doing it properly or whether it is just bad, I found all the bigger cells were nasty to me, whether or not they ate meat, my cell would not move that quickly and turning was near impossible, about 1/4 of the way through the Cell stage you grow to an extent where you can call a mate and "evolve," so I did this and a love infused Cell bigger than me came up to me and I made naughty and farted out an egg which she then proceeded to . . . . well I don't know what she did.
This took me to the character edit screen, though I added different fins with the hope of at least turning faster, it was like armour in age of Conan, didn't look very good, did nothing and cost money.
What I really liked was the customisation, there is enough of it to keep you entertained, but not so much you got bored doing each eyelash, especially bad for me because if things aren't symmetrical I will freak, but it is clear EA were thinking of me and made it so everything is symmetrical, whether you like it or not. But you can make your character (especially in the creature stage) look as wacky or odd as you want, i know it's kind of childish but this is not the kind of game that is intended to be played at all seriously.
Eventually after much swearing and being eaten by bigger cells I was offered the option to grow legs and get out of the sea . . . .
THE CREATURE STAGE
After climbing out the beach onto ground you are given another chance to customise, then sent in search of other beings, so that you may befriend or behead them.
The way you do this is simple . . . .
All you have to do if you want to befriend them is click the green button, go up to them shout at them and copy the commands they do the commands are: Sing, Dance (it's hilarious), Pose and Charm, you aquire these by putting parts on your creature and the better the part the higher level the skill say for example, feet and dance and the higher the level the easier it is to impress the creature, i liked this though it was a pain getting rank 3 pose to impress some cow people. You have to win over about 3-5 of the same species and then you can heal at their nest and get members of them in your pack.
Fighting you press the red Button select a target then spam 1-4 on the keyboard until they are dead, skills for combat work the same as social skills, if you kill any 5 of a species they become extinct, but all the leftover ones start spinning around glowing and acend into the heavens, did they have some desperate mental link with the others meaning if they died then they to would also die.
Basically every time you befriend of Kill another creature you get bits on your experience bar, you can change your appearance as much as you want, you get new pieces you can fit to yourself by finding them on the floor or killing/ befriending enemy creatures. If i tell the truth this is my favourite part of the game, probs because it's the closed to an RPG this thing gets bar the space Stage.
I loved customisation and i have made a variety of wacky and odd creatures as there is a creature creator on the main menu and your creations will appear randomly on worlds along with all Maxis other things.
With the Creature stage I had a genius way of telling whether another species was going to live or die, this was if they are cute they live, ugly they die. It worked out quite well 6 species and myself lived another 20 were killed.
In order to unlock everything on the creature stage so as to fully customise you creature, you need to befriend/ kill everything and find all the bones lying around on the floor, this got a bit tedious being that I could have moved on to the next stage after doing about a quarter of this, but i persevered and eventually wound up getting everything and moved on.
THE TRIBAL STAGE
Ok now this is the point in the game where it went from being a basic almost RPG kind of gameplay into a very Basic RTS which to me I thought was a brave move, though not a very good one in my opinion, I said the creature stage was my favourite and then being forced to change my style of playing entirely . . . well I wasn't very happy, alright the objective was the same, either make friends with other tribes or kill them.
They kept the same interface, a very wise move as I was not about to learn the whole game again (though the game felt it still needed to give me a camera tutorial anyway) aside from you now had different Units, they are Spearmen (up close killing people), Spearmen (Ranged killing people), Shaman (Healy person) and farmer (domestic person). Don't get me wrong I did enjoy the tribal stage, it's just I felt doing basic breakdowns of gaming genres may be good for kids and casual gamers, but it's not so good for people who play intensivly, though it is still a great load of fun.
Rather than your usual RTS where you expand, you are centralised to one camp, from this camp you buy weapons or instruments (they kill or win over other tribes), you also create babies, though I was slightly alarmed when I did this and an egg came bouncing out the tent like it was a conveyor belt for some mass production army. Basically all the units start off the same and you must send them to the buildings you buy with food to equip them with spears, staffs or spears.
THE CIVILISED STAGE
Now it was at this point in the game I think Maxis went a little loopy, they keep the RTS gameplayish, but from here on out you don't really control your creation anymore, instead you design a town hall, Tanks, Planes and boats and start trying to control the world, i was a little freaked when my head dragon man told me i was going to either buy other cities or burn them down, also how did you jump from using primitive magic up to tanks in one go, anyway who am i to pick holes it's not like I get to criticise, oh wait yes i do ^^.
Alright you can now dress your creatures in nicer clothes, but they are now tiny dancing around with fireworks in your cities doing nothing but partying by the looks of it, which i did not tell them they could do, so there is really no point in dressing them up.
Design for all the buildings and tanks planes etc is nowhere near as fun as it was in the creature stage, tho i just spent most of my time being a nerd and making star destroyers =), which leads me on swiftly to the final stage . . .
THE SPACE STAGE
It was about 10 minutes into the space stage I got bored, mainly because i looked at the galaxy and thought , this is huge no way, but i kind of got the general gist, now you have nothing to do with your creatures, no more fighting, you spend the rest of the time exploring, abducting animals from other planets and taking them to people, then again i havn't got very far so i could be completely wrong.
All in all Spore is in no way a game to be played seriously, it is a fun casual game, there is not a huge amount of depth to it, but i really did enjoy playing it, i'm hoping that when i summon up the courage to have a go at the space age that i am wrong about it and ther is more to it than probing odd creatures.
Either way it is the most fun i have had in ages and i do reccommend it i give it a 7.5.
Anyway i'm really looking foreward to reviewing force unleashed on the Wii at the end of this week, random dave will be doing it on the 360, but until then i'm going to go and make some bizzare creatures.
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