Game Spotlight of the Week: Spore

Spore. I don’t even know where to begin on how anxiously many gamers as well as myself have been waiting for this game. I can honestly tell you that this game certainly does not disappoint. For those of you who do not know what Spore is, here is a barebones concept. You begin life on a primitive Earth as the lowest form of life, a cell. From the beginning you have the chance to choose the characteristics of your microscopic organism ranging from what it can eat, to its defenses against predators. As you eat and prey on other animals you eventually grow larger and more intelligent to the point being a sentient being. You eventually evolve enough to progress to land where you can interact with different species and eventually develop relationships and civilizations with them. Of course you can also choose to go to war and force their extinction. Your creature eventually grows and evolves to the point where it becomes intelligent enough to conquer parts, if not all of the galaxy, all while adding to its own bodily structure.

I know that seems like a handful in writing, however the development of your creature is executed perfectly. Essentially you can mate at any time to enter what is called the Creature Creator. This is where the game really shines. You have absolute freedom to create any sort of creature that you can imagine. Everything from bone structure to skin can be customized on your creature. The interface is very simplistic and easy to navigate. Parts and armor are simple dragged from your parts list to any part of your creature. There usually is no wrong way to place an appendage or body accessory although I have come across maybe 1 or 2 graphical glitches with some odd shaped pieces. Many of your body parts will directly influence your attributes such as speed, attack power and social charm. Certain body parts also allow you to learn new actions such as dancing and posing.

Outside of the Creature Creator, your character is set in an open world full of different species. Navigating really depends which stage your creature is at. For example your creature can be controlled with a simple mouse click and the WASD keys in the creature stage while in the tribal stage your character and his troops have to be assigned a designation in an RTS type fashion. Your main objective in this game is to be either the hunter or the hunted. More times than not, other creatures will opt to attack you rather than become allies. The few creatures that do look to ally with you are usually weak and serve as shields while combating other species. However after a certain point, you can arrange your creature to be so absolutely powerful that nothing can defeat it.

Graphically Spore isn’t the most stunning game you have ever seen and this is with good reason. The developers of Spore opted for more of a cartoonish look, therefore realism wouldn’t be a factor. Spore has reasonably low system requirements so any slightly modern PC should be able to run it smoothly. Spore runs on both Windows PCs and Macs.

I do have only a few gripes about the game. The first would be its Digital Rights Media Protection. While DRM is usually not a problem, Spore is strict to the point where you can’t even create two different installs on two different accounts on the same computer. The second would be the lack of online interaction. Although Spore does allow you to share creatures between friends, I honestly wished I could have seen an online open world.

Those who have been anxiously waiting for Spore, certainly will not be disappointed. Those who have never heard of it before will also get quite a kick out of the game. EA and Maxis certainly give a fresh gaming experience with this game. If you are looking for a quick taste of Spore for free, you can download the free Creature Creator demo at: http://eu.spore.com/whatisspore/creaturecreator.cfm