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SPORE review

Spore. Made by the creator of The Sims. This game was supposed to be fantastic, but when I played it, I had quite a different opinion.

I’ll split up.

Who: EA.
What: A game where you lead a species from a cellular level to an intergalactic level.
When: All time periods in which life existed.
Where: Across millions of galaxies.
Why: Because it’s a genre’ never explored before.

I’ll split my review in to a few separate parts, judging each part on all of the five stages: cellular, animal, tribal, civilization, and galactic. The categories will be freedom, fun, graphics, and a conclusion.


Cellular: The premise of this stage is that you’re a cell. It plays like an arcade game, and you simply go around and try to collect food for
yourself to progress to the next stage.

Freedom: Not too much freedom. It’s like an arcade game.

Fun: Very fun and refreshing. I quite enjoyed this part. You avoid enemies and collect food in a 2-D environment. It’s simple, yet effective.

Graphics: The graphics are great. Everything looks novel and beautiful. Very colorful. This game in general has a distinctive, interesting style of
graphics.

Conclusion: This section, although, short, is quite refreshing, and reminds you that something simple, if well done, can still be a great experience. Just look at the thousands of flash games out there that, although simple, are loads of fun.

Animal: This section is rather boring. It consists of you going around as an animal, and either killing or making friends with other tribes.

Freedom: You have two options: friend or foe. Foe will get you ass raped instantly, so you have to resort to singing and dancing in front of other creatures. Not only is this boring, stupid, and repetitive, but embarrassing. There is an element of being able to create your own creature, which is fun, but quickly becomes boring.

Fun: This section is not fun. I believe I’ve already covered the reasons for that.

Graphics: Graphics are fine, but not great. Nothing really new and inventive.

Conclusion: This section is both boring and terribly done. It scores low in all categories.

Tribal: This section plays a bit like a RTS. You command a small tribe of creatures from the previous stage to make friends with or attack enemies. One side note: it’s impossible on all difficulties save the easiest. Utterly impossible. I fancy myself as a average Starcraft player, able to multitask, prioritize, and strategize well, but I found it to be completely overwhelming. Being attacked by six enemy tribes randomly while trying to give a peace gift to your allies DOES NOT WORK.

Freedom: You’re pretty much railroaded with two choices. Friend or foe. This time, with some extreme strategy, destroying an enemy is actually possible. You’re given a little choice with your tribal garb, but that doesn’t really matter. In general, you have some freedom, but not much.

Fun: This mode is relatively fun. You’re engaged in combat constantly, so trying to fend that off while doing other important tasks such as gathering food, helping allies, and actually making progress in the game.

Graphics: Graphics are… meh. ‘Bout same as the animal section.

Conclusion: This section is… meh. It’s not great, but it’s not terrible. I found it mildly enjoyable.

Civilization: In civilization, you command multiple cities of your species that you established in the animal phase. There are three goals: to collect “spice” from mines, to take over cities through economic means, and destroy enemy cities.

Freedom: You’re limited to competing the three goals mentioned above. You can have some fun creating buildings, ships, airplanes, and cars, but other than that, you’re not given too much freedom.

Fun: This part of the game is pretty fun, but lasts a very short amount of time. I enjoyed commanding my cities and making the dozens of various buildings and vehicles mentioned above.

Graphics: Graphics are pretty good in this part of the game. It’s the first part that you actually get a large overview of a large perspective of the planet that you inhabit.

Conclusion: This mode is enjoyable, but short.

Galactic: This phase is where you command a space ship through the universe as we know it. You can see millions of user created species, interact with enemies and allies, and slowly build up your abilities, allowing you do more and more things.

Freedom: This is the most free stage of the game. You’re given an entire universe to explore, and intergalactic race to manage, enemies to crush with proton missiles.

Fun: This mode is pretty fun. It gets overwhelming quickly if you try to attack enemies, as you’ll be managing dozens of enemy attacks on your planets. It’s frustrating, as you have to do countless dumb errands.

Graphics: The graphics are absolutely amazing in this part. You explore vast galaxies, solar systems, and planets, with beautiful landscapes.

Conclusion: This mode is plenty of fun. It’s huge, too. You go from barely being able to destroy a single enemy to having powers to destroy entire worlds. I enjoyed this mode plenty.

Final say: 87%. It has its problems, but it’s a good game very inventive.