DigitalBattle.com

For a game as ambitious and vast as Spore, there are two words that can describe it: simple and overwhelming. At times it is simply overwhelming, and is also consistently overwhelmingly simple.

While those two words do an adequate job of describing Spore, they obviously cannot define the experience as a whole. For a comprehensive look at the Spore experience, read the full review after the jump.

Spore is about the player creating the story of an entire species, from beginning to end each phase that the species goes through it broken into its own “stage” in the game.

The first stage is the Cell Stage. After watching a short, but amazing, opening cinematic, the player will begin by controlling a little organism inside an ocean. After collecting enough food, while scavenging for parts on the side, the creature will find a mate and lay an egg. Clicking on the egg will open up an editor for the cell where the body can be manipulated and parts can be added to the player’s satisfaction. This process then repeats itself for about half an hour until the player is given the option to move forward to the Creature Stage.

Basically what the Cell Stage is, is an intuitive tutorial for the game. The simplicity and aesthetic make it appealing to play, while it teaches the player about the fundamentals of the entire game. Where as other games will almost always spend a good portion of time tediously explain certain game elements through an unnatural feeling tutorial. Spore lets players discover the entire game mechanics naturally through the cell stage.

The game then flows into the Creature Stage. After attaching limbs to the cell, it becomes a fully 3D creature. The Creature Stage is much like the cell stage, except now players can interact with other creatures, as well as form a pack of their own creatures along with allies that they have made.

The best part about the Creature Stage is how much you can do with the creature, and how directly adding or taking away parts from the creature will affect it. Adding wings will let it glide, adding several wings will let it fly. It is extremely gratifying to see your creature employ these abilities. Also at this point, significant content from the pedia will be loaded onto your game. While running around in my pack of Ridley creature, I bumped into a Big Daddy pack, as well as a humorously made Kirby. I even ran into, or more appropriately ran over, a creature that a friend named after me after they had fiddled around with the Creature Creator. Although Maxis gives players a very large and diverse range of content right from start, it simply is not as fun and novel as interacting with things that the other players have made. Anyone who is not playing with a consistent Internet connection is missing out.

Once the players have formed a big enough pack, they move on to the Tribal Stage. The Tribal Stage focuses less on creation, and is more of a tutorial to the Civilization Stage. The real time strategy elements are weak, and I found that this was my least favorite stage. That said, it is still fun to play, provided you do not expect too much from it. One thing that the Tribal stage offers that the past stages, as well as the Civilization Stage, do not, is the ability to simply observe the world and what is going on in it. Watching other tribes interact, or seeing an Epic creature, which is a creature blown up to Godzilla sizes, step on another tribe is oddly entertaining. Even watching what your own creatures do when you are not interacting with them is a joyful experience. Of course, it is not as joyful as moving to the Civilization Stage.

The Civilization Stage is basically a combination of all the game mechanics that players were taught before. There are numerous vehicle and building editors, with a more focused RTS element. It also subtly gives players an understanding of how things will work during the Space Stage. Once again, the goal is to become the number one civilization, whether through force, which is the quick, easy, and admittedly fun route, or through making allies and socializing. The player also has the ability to make cities at this point, and while the cities themselves are not that varied in design, the content in them is. The players can also design their own anthem from the city designer.

Going with the whole Ridley theme, I decided that the Ridley song was a natural choice for my anthem.

At first this is fun, but after finding a method that suites you, it gets tedious and repetitive. The main problem is that the player has to pay close attention to what is going on, and cannot for the most part, just simply make things and relax. Chances are you will be attacked whether you want to or not, and once you do start a war with another civilization, you are not given a break until it is done.

Finally, after dominating the planet, and creating a space ship, the player will move onto the Space Stage. The Space Stage game play is basically a well-mixed combination of an RTS, and a MMO. If nothing else, purchase the game for this. After doing a few missions and quests to learn the ropes players will be able to do as they please. The clever design in this stage is that players can obtain money to purchase tools for their ship via quests, or they can simply explore and experiment with the overwhelmingly vast galaxy around them, which will also, albeit indirectly, get money for the player. Players will always be able to have an objective in the Space Stage, while equally able to do as they please.

A huge part in the Space Stage is terraforming, or altering planets. terraforming is fun, and the tools are extremely useful as both creative devices, and weapons. While not as direct as the other editors, there are still limitless ways one could terraform different planets. Later on in the game, there is even a tool made available that will allow players to explore the planets with a hologram of their creature, and exploring a planet is as much fun as running around in any other open world game, especially if the player sees a piece of content that couldn’t be viewed from the spacecraft.

If the player does view a piece of content they like, they can scan it to their Sporepedia. The Sporepedia is a database of all the content that has been created, scanned, or viewed, by the player. The content can then be easily accessed by the player, and then viewed in 3D almost instantly. It’s also handy for using to track down planets or creatures, or any other type of content for that matter, which becomes invaluable during some quests.

One problem with the game play is not so much its simplicity, but it’s repetitiveness. When perusing specific objectives in the game, it is similar to a cliché boss battle. Through trial and error, you will find a pattern that works, and then it is simply a matter of executing that pattern, then rinse and repeat. This is a problem in all the stages, and it turns progression into work.

Unlike other Maxis games, Spore features a story. The story is vague, and is heavily influenced by the player, but there is a story. The Story is tracked through the History screen, which always players to view records of essentially every action and choice they made in the game, from the very beginning. More importantly though, Spore also has an end. At least it has an end to the story, which is well worth the work to view.

While the story more or less ends, the game play does not. The genius in Spore’s design is that, as long as the player can be creative, the experience will change enough to be new and exciting. Even if creativity is your strong suit, viewing the numerous, numerous, amount of content from other players is worth it. The most fun part of my space exploration so far was finding a planet run by the Joker. Little experiences like that are what make the repeat value immense.

The gamplay may need work, despite being in development for approximately seven years, but the design and art style is flawless. The user interface works as simply and effectively as is possible, and the gamplay mechanics are extremely intuitive. The art design is also a extraordinary success. Although all of the content is being made by millions of people with uncountable varieties in taste and design, every single piece of content still feels apart of the universe inside the game. No creations ever feel out of place, nor do they feel random, which is nothing short of a miracle when taking into account the massive amount of content that is being used.

In conclusion, Spore is not the best game ever made, and it wont appeal to everyone. What Spore is, however, is an intuitive and unique experience, which could redefine gaming. Not because of its depth, but because it is a tool that can be used for entertainment, learning, or creativity, and it’s delivered in a way that only a game can. Halo could be a movie, Metal Gear Solid could be a book, but the what Spore achieves can only be experienced in a game. And while it might not be as deep as other games this year, the intuitive design and the unique experience that Spore brings, not only make it more than worth the purchase, but should even make it a candidate for Game of the Year.

The Good

- Intuitive approach to user generated content
- Simple and effective design
- Overwhelming amount of creative control
- Unique experiance
- Great amount of replay value

The Bad

- Weak gameplay elements

Final Score: 8.9