Welcome back, my beautiful freaks, to the Assassin's Den! Today, I'm reviewing Spore, a 2008 multi-genre game, though its best described as a "god game". A god game is an artificial life game that casts the player in the position of controlling the game on a large scale, as an entity with divine/supernatural powers, as a great leader, or with no specified character (as in in the case of this game), and places them in charge of a game setting containing autonomous characters to guard and influence.
Now, I remember, back in 2006, this game was touted in the game magazines as all about the creation, and that fact is all over the game. You're always building or modifying things to your liking. That is what the game is all about; from the moment you load into the game to the final part of the game, you are constantly creating something.
This game has 5 main parts; cell stage, creature stage, tribal stage, civilization stage and space stage. The cell stage has you swimming around in the primordial ooze in a 2d plane, eating plants, meat, or both depending on your mouth parts, and picking up other cell parts to aid in your survival until you can move on to the next stage. It is this stage where you select the kinds of food you're going to be eating in the next two stages, and determines what kind of mouth parts you open up once you get your first upgrade, and what special skill you're going to have in the next stage.
It is the creature stage where the game really opens up. It is the first 3d stage, and has you running around the valley picking up parts for your creature and either making friends with or hunting down the other creatures to earn dna points to spend on your creature. The creature stage continues the precedent of the previous stage and determines the skill you have for the next stage.
However, the creature stage is the stage where you are truly creating; the creature creator was released as a demo, and you can create just about anything. You can make dragons, dinosaurs, Pokémon, characters from Homestar Runner, and yes, even penis creatures. (I only mention penis creatures because they were so prolific in the early ears, and you still find people making them on youtube from time to time.) The spore creature creator is that dynamic.
The tribal stage isn't about creation, and is more of a real time strategy game, where you take the creature you made in the creature stage and built them into a thriving tribe. You gather resources to build tribe members, and purchase weapons and instruments to either ally with or conquer the other tribes in your valley. Or you can do a mix of both, and gain a different skill for the next stage.
The civilization stage, however, brings creation back full force. Here you build a city hall, the head of your government, a house, a factory, an entertainment building, a land vehicle, a sea vehicle, and an air vehicle. And with these vehicles that you use to take on the focus of this stage; conquer the world through religious, economic or military means, although only the economic style is really any different.
You see, the religious and military are basically the same; build your forces and then go attack a city. The only real thing that is different is the animation for these two; the military destroys buildings, while the religious creates a big holographic member of your species who preaches to the city until it converts. However, the economic has you building trade routes and buying cities. This one depends on making the other nations happy so you can actually create the trade route. You gain your initial capital by capturing spice geysers and making happy, profitable cities. (This aspect goes across all play styles, btw. It is just more prevalent in the economic stage.)
Once you finish the civilization, you enter, what I feel, is the most boring stage; the space stage. You do your final act of creation and build your space ship and then head off into the stars to explore, build trade routes, colonize other worlds and make your way into the galactic core. This is more exploration based, and, while it's cool to interact with alien empires and terraform planets to build colonies for your empire, I find the mandate to explore DULL.
Which is why I picked up the galactic adventures expansion. Released in 2009, this once again gives you control of your creature and has you playing adventures created by players and Maxis where you beam down to a planet and going through a story that, depending on depending on the effort put into it, is fun. However, you've still got to hunt down other empires to be able to pick up these adventures, and unless you download adventures from other players, you won't have a lot of them. But galactic adventures gives me something to look forward to when I'm flying around the galaxy hunting for other empires and ways to make money.
The final goal of this game is to get to the galactic core and find the staff of life, which allows you to instantly terraform a planet to your liking. You are also told that you can find Earth in one of the spiral arms at this point as well, so look forward to it.
Now, would I advise you to get this? Absolutely, if you're into the creation process. Once you've unlocked all aspects of the game, you can spend DAYS creating cells, creatures, buildings, vehicles starships for the stages. And if you've downloaded the galactic adventures expansion, you can build adventures too!
I picked this up on steam for 40 dollars American; 20 for the main game, and 20 for the galactic adventures. The 20 dollars that the main game is was worth the price, but I think that the galactic adventures should not have cost as much as the main game. It was worth it to me because of how boring I find the space stage boring, but it was still overpriced. However, if you enjoy exploration games, then you may not want galactic adventures. I would say pick up the core game for 20 dollars, and then decide once you've gotten to the space stage whether you want galactic adventures. However, if you aren't into games where the main focus is creation, you should pass on this game.
Until next time, stay beautiful freaks!
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