SPORE: Was it worth the wait?

In a word.

YES.


Now the real question is this: "does it live up to the hype?". Yes, and no. When I first heard of this game I was not savvy enough on the games creator, Will Wright, to know what he had done in the past yet I still was excited by the whole "Sim everything" aspect of the title. Once I knew that this was the man behind Simcity (one of my all time favorite games on the SNES) I was even more crazy for SPORE. The promise of making a race from microorganism to all conquering space baron was to much to ignore. So the wait began. SPORE was announced over two years ago. Two years. BAH! EA, the games publisher, kept tricking out tid bits of information over the months, a 2-5 minute video here, a screen shot there. It was enough to make poor ol' Sodoom go insane. EA even released about 3-4 months ago the "SPORE creature creator". It was a NOT FREE demo of the games much lauded creature editor. I downloaded it, legally i might add, played it for a nice time. Made a bunch of creatures. I loved it. The bad thing was that instead of easing my appetite it whetted it ten fold. Then the day came.


Sweet SPORE on my hard drive. Ready to go.


Before I even start with the review. Yes I'm one of the assholes that Torrented SPORE. Get over it. Ahem now then.

The title screen is very much the same as the creature creator. Except that in the full SPORE game there are a few planets to chose from. Your starting level if you may. I picked a blueish planet with blood red seas. Its such a beautiful place. On to the start of the game. In case you don't know the game order is like this 1. Cell 2. Creature 3. Tribal
4. Civilization, and finally 5. Space.



I then made my cell dude pretty simple.Just a tee nee tiny KILLING MACHINE. Isn't he lovely?Out of all the eras I must say that the cell phase is the most stylized, it has gorgeous "looking through a micro scope" feel. Its all blurry in the background, you see small particles flying about your organism. In the deep back ground you see large creatures who are more evolved than yourself. Its quite breath taking. This is also the simplest phase. All you do is eat, or be eaten.After you evolved the early semblance of a brain its time to head to land.




On the horizon the darkness came.


Your first task is to grow a pair, or one, of legs. Of course you don't have to, but come on how many predators do you know without legs? On land jerk! Geez. Anyways, I added simple legs to my lil dude. Killed a bunch of others races. Its not like I was going to share Sodoom Prime with these filthy creatures. The killing did have meaning though. In your creature edit menu there are "parts" you can put on your creature. At first its pretty bare there. Only a few things to chose from, but as you find these skeleton things or kill off other creature you earn more, and more parts for your creation. As you gather more, and more parts your brain start getting more advanced as well as your size, and HP.


So I made my guy a little more scary.

And after a bit more murders on planet Sodoom Prime:

And more dead...

Just a little more...

And FINALLY:

Finally my evolution is done.

Tribal is were the heart is.


One thing that I have to warn you is this: "Once you get the option to leave the creature phase YOU CANT EDIT HIS LOOKS ANYMORE" I did not know this, and left on my first game to the tribal phase with a total ****tard of a creature thinking I could edit indefinitely. You can't. Its no big deal tho. As long as you know. Your welcome. In the tribal phase it starts with your race discovering fire. Then the game pulls you away from your race both figuratively and physically. As I mentioned before now you can't edit your creatures bodys, but now you can edit what he wears, more on that later. Also the camera pans away from your tribe. You can zoom in if you wish though. The gameplay now is centered on hunting a gathering, and improving your tools. If your a carnivour as I was you kill, and collect animal flesh for nourishment as well as currency. If you need to build a new structure, or make a new baby/tribe member it would cost X amount of meat. Simple. You have to conqour the other tribes by force or..."or" is there any other way, but by pure brute force? Fine. I'll tell you. If you a tree hugging hippe you can literally win the others over by singing. Yeah thats sooo awesome >_>. Back on target. As you win over the other tribes you get new tech for your tribe. Each tribe has two items to get, such as: fishing hooks, spears for long range attacks, healers, Etc. That's it. The combat is pretty simple target bad guy. Click on what attack to use. Rinse repeat. Don't get me wrong though. I Enjoyed the hunter, gatherer aspect of this phase a lot. Back to the editing. As I mentioned before you can edit what your tribe wears. Each article of cloths gives bonuses to attack, HP, social skill (ppffftt), or gathering skills.



After you murder, kill, and rape...ahem I mean take over the land. Your tribes starts to want to expand. If you had been like me, and destroying everything, and everyone they get the urge to discover atomic power AKA The BOMB.


These huts are too small for our all consuming power.


The first order of business is to design a city hall:




Then a home for your people:





A place to work for there overlord Sodoom:




Lastly a place to relax, and watch some gladiators fight to the death:



The Civ phase is just barely more complex than the other parts. Only because it adds 3 unit types at your control. All of which you have to make with the vehicle editor. Yes! It also has a vehicle editor. Sweet. You need to make a land vehicle:





Then a Sea vehicle:



Lastly a flying vessal of some sort(the first frames of the gif are mess up, sorry):



The goal is almost the same, as a matter of fact it is the same, as the tribal era. Only difference is that instead of taking over the land on which you live you are taking over the entire world. That's it. Its a race for space. You can do the tree hugger way, and offer money, bribes if you will, to the other nations to join you. You can make trade routes, and be an overall nice individual,or..........BLOW THEM SKY HIGH!!!! Guess what route I took? Yup. I ruled with a iron fist. YOU OBEY THE FIST! After you pwn everyone you get to design an interstellar ship:



At this point the game really opens up. This part at first is oh so very intimidating. Its huge. I'm taking John Holmes big. I would say this is my favorite, and at the same time worst part of the game. I'll elaborate. Good new first. When Mr. Wright said you can explore he meant it. There are systems, galaxies, moons to explore. A ton of space faring races to interact with. Its like this is SimSTARTREK. Its nuts. You can terraform the uninhabitable planets afterwars you can plant various forms of vegetation from your own planet, or other if you wish. You can "plant" creatrues from your catalog on said terraformed planet. You scan planets for valuables like rare ores, ancient artifacts, money. Catalog new races from random planets. Beam some of those creatures if you wish to "study" them, so many things.


The Bad thing.

The game forces me to play like a good boy. That really makes no sense what so ever. The main argument people say is that my race is late to the interstella party. Fine. In the real world it makes sense that the last race to space would be behind in tech, skill, size, Etc. But **** that, this is a game. Games are supposed to be fun. If that was the case then the muscle mass of my creature would make no sense given thier small mouth, they would have to be eatting all day to live. Thats not what the game is about. Its about making a race going out to space, and kicking all kinds of butt. This is a small gripe, right? Its the one flaw in this game. I think its an enormous mistake though. I should play the game as I wish. If I like to blow things to kingdom come, I should be able to. I like the space area. I really do. I just hate to have to use cheats to win, since I will not play nice with the other freaks in space, and cheating the only way to play the Sodoom way. You know: "kill 'em all let God sort them out". Well this is all I got. I only played the space for about 2-3 hours. If I change my feeling on this I would write it it here. I'll say this though. The space era problem forces me to take away 1.5 points from my score, if I were to score it. As it stands I give it a 7.5 out of 10.

Here is a closer look at my race:




~Sodoom