Darwinism this ain't.
"Spore," a game by Will Wright (the guy who brought you "The Sims"), tasks players with the challenge of taking a single-celled creature and guiding its evolution into a race of space-faring organisms.
To do this, players guide their creature through five stages: the cell and creature stages, which focus on shaping the creature; the tribal and civilization stages, where the fully evolved creature begins to dominate the planet; and the space stage, where the creature takes to the stars in search of other intelligent life forms to interact with.
"Spore" starts out as a fun game with an addictively simple, yet rewardingly complex customization system. But it quickly devolves into a mediocre civilization management and real-time strategy game.
The game begins with a bang as a meteorite crashes into the seas of a planet, releasing a tiny organism into the puddle of Eden. The tidal pool, where players start, is like a tutorial, introducing the basic controls and ideas for the game.
From there, players make their first choice: carnivore or herbivore? Like an invertebrate growing a spine, the decision is the backbone for the evolutionary path of the creature throughout the rest of the game.
In both the cell and creature stages, consumption of food gives players DNA, which can be used like currency to add a wide variety of body parts and growths to their critter. In turn, this evolution helps the creature eat more food and unlock more complex appendages.
Within these phases, creature customization, the centerpiece of "Spore," offers players nearly limitless options. This is evident in the world's diverse population of critters, comprised of equal parts pre-set creatures from developer Maxis and those created by other users, transplanted to your creature's universe via the internet.
Hours of entertainment can be gleaned from coming up with bizarre and curious creatures, but the golden hours of "Spore" quickly give way to the Tribal Stage, when evolution stops and sentience begins.
From the beginning of the Tribal era, "Spore" quickly loses the magic that made the first two stages so wondrous. Customization is transferred to structures and vehicles during the civilization stage, but the upsides of customization in the latter stages are overshadowed by the shallow management and real-time strategy elements added to the mix.
During the civilization stage, players get to design four buildings (city hall, houses, entertainment and factories) and four vehicles (land, sea, air and space). Once again, the depth and freedom of the creation menu offers an open canvas, and it was easy to make my own version of a Star Destroyer to rain death upon those who would oppose my imperialistic designs.
There is also diplomacy. Interacting with other cultures peacefully is an option but only for those who chose the path of peace - the herbivores. For a carnivore, even trying to interact is frustrating to the point that spears and missiles will inevitably fly for lack of other choices.
For players who chose the way of pain, combat is as simple as picking a weapon (or vehicle) and clicking a target. The game doesn't allow for much strategy, and there isn't much required. Simply having more units almost guarantees victory.
If that doesn't sound simple enough, there is an option for carnivores-turned-militants to use an ICBM, literally the "Win Button." Click it, watch everyone else blow up and go onward to the final frontier.
Space offers players a lot of options, but in the end there are too many foisted upon the player without enough explanation. The two hours I spent in that stage yielded a confused colonization project, an epic failure at terraforming and what might have been a trading route with another species.
Having only one space ship to control complicated things meant flying from planet to planet attempting to accomplish missions. A quicker way of traversing the cosmos, or the ability to build a fleet, would have made the void feel less empty.
Plus, with an aggressive neighbor attacking with half a dozen ships every ten minutes, it becomes exceedingly difficult to get anything significant done between flying my solo ship to the combat zone, dying, respawning and repeating.
Two hours into the space adventure, I threw in the towel and started a new creature out of sheer frustration. I stepped back to a simpler time when creating a hideous abomination of nature was my only objective.
And I saw that it was good.
wadelarson@dailynebraskan.com
Be the first to comment on this article!