Like all addictions Spore will leave you with a shallow feeling in the end

by Sebastian Stefanov

Fun factor: Boring

Worth to: Buy

It might not be everyone’s cup of tea but if you get hooked the game will keep you glued to the screen until you’re fed up of designing hairless Muppets

There should be a notice on the box cover of Maxis’ new hit warning people of its addictive nature. To say the game has a high level of replayability is an understatement. As soon as your little critter crawls out of the primordial ooze you will already think of what wondrous creatures future games will evolve. But replayability alone isn’t enough to make Spore the hit many were expecting. The game has some major shortcomings, mainly in the superficial gameplay.

The much-acclaimed creature creation process, despite being a big part of the game, is not the meat of Spore. The true substance comes once you have evolved your little angels from their cell form and set out into the vastness of space. Unfortunately, once there, despite being surrounded by hundreds of other alien species and innumerable planets to explore, you realize space is rather empty. Spore is a beast of a game with a big heart, but even though some parts are fun, this animal is a vagabond. Still, Spore will have many glued to their screen for hours and days. If you get hooked work productivity will drop, relationships will sour, beards will need to be shaved and a pile of chores will have to be done once you are finished playing this title, which won’t be for a while. Spore, though not perfect, is entertaining… if you can digest all the cuteness and narrowly fixed gameplay.

Spore potpourri

The game is actually a collection of five sub-games: the Cell Phase, Creature Phase, Tribal Phase, Civilization Phase and Space Phase. Each one is different but all retain the same basic element that growth and cooperation is the key to survival. The first two phases shape your creature’s look. The next three determine your class: Military, Economic or Religious. How you play unlocks traits specific to each class but in the end you can always play however you want.

Friendship and happiness abound. By the looks of the creatures you get the impression Maxis modeled the game after Jim Henson’s joyful sock-puppets. And though Spore does have a “Sesame Street” feel (many creatures even sound like Elmo) it is made for grown ups. Your colorful darlings can raze rival cities and wipe out entire races out of existence if you want them to. Having said that, one thing critics might hold against Spore is its confused nature. It doesn’t know what to make of itself. The game goes from Action (Cell Phase) to an MMO-looking thing (Creature Phase) to a Simulator (Civilization and Space Phase). Sadly each phase is a watered down version of its genre. It’s a big Muppet Show carousel.

The game starts with a meteor hitting a primordial planet. In its seam it brings spores that initiate life in the planet’s oceans. Your little adventure begins with a humble menu that asks you to create an even more humble-looking single-celled organism. You are now in the Cell Phase. For now all you can do is select the length and girth of the creature’s body, position of the eyes, its color, texture and whether it’s a carnivore of herbivore – a rather important choice because it will affect future gameplay. Once that is done it’s off to the pool to frolic with the rest of the germs!

The Cell Phase plays like a PopCap game where the goal is to eat and avoid being eaten. It’s all very cutesy. Your little worm wiggles about with eyes bulging, making little Muppet sounds. As you eat you get DNA points that let you buy parts in the evolution menu. You can bring up the menu at any time by finding a mate. To do so, you sing your little heart out until you find the lady or man (the game is rather ambiguous about it) of your dreams. Five seconds later the deed is done (no, you don’t see anything), your creature lays an egg and the menu pops up. If you managed to find new body parts while exploring the pond you can add them to your organism at the cost of some DNA points. Things like squiggly flippers, jet propulsion organs and means to defend yourself are all you can add for now. The concept is simple but highly addictive.

As you grow, so does the world around you. Players literally get to see more of their surroundings. The camera zooms out each time you bulk up. You begin to see plant life forming as well as more complex microorganisms, some as big as SUVs, until you fill up an evolution bar at the bottom of the screen and finally step out of the great pond.

The end of the microbe era presents a nifty summary screen that shows which decisions players took as an organism - imagine your typical biology textbook with pictures showing an ameba and arrows sequentially pointing at… things bigger than an ameba. The summary is mostly informative and esthetic but it also gives players a gratifying feeling of accomplishment, and lets them know what direction they are taking. Decisions you take now will affect certain aspects of the game later on and this summary lets players know if they are headed in a carnivorous/violent direction or on a herbivorous/gentle path. Nothing is sealed in stone, though. Players can create violent herbivores if they please, as was the case with my vegetarian, six-limbed, warmongering ducks. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Aww, how cute, Elmo is eating Bigbird...

So here we are in the Creature Phase. You are again presented with the evolution menu, but this time you can add more complex features like legs, arms, horns, feathers, and various “sacks”. The evolution engine also lets you rotate your creature to give you a better view of its shape. Most parts serve a purpose (yes, even the “sacks”). Properly designed legs will give your creature speed, horns give you combat skills and body parts like feathers, hands and antennas can increase your overall health or give you Charm, Posing, Dancing and Impress abilities, which are needed to interact with other species. It is here we realize Spore is more than just about eating and reproducing (Maxis created a game with more depth than the real world). Our little monster is part of an ecosystem, albeit a very simplistic one.

The evolution menu aside you are presented with a somewhat austere world filled with cartoonish plants, fruits and other species. Some creatures are docile, others aggressive, but ultimately players decide what kind of relationships they want with their neighbors. Icons above other creatures show their intentions. Players also get to see the world from a free-moving camera perspective, giving them a glimpse of the sky and the imminent final frontier.

If you decide to be a social creature you will have to gain the trust and friendship of animals by charming, posing, dancing or impressing them using each respective skill from a menu. All this is done through a kind of mini-game that requires the player to execute the same moves as the creature they are facing. Befriending a set number of creatures in a nest makes them your allies, allowing players to form small groups composed of various species. You may also choose to simply… eat everybody. With the right tools you can succeed in the aforementioned goals and gain DNA points, which are again bartered for new body parts during the evolution menu. As in the Cell Phase the menu is brought up by finding a mate.

The common instinct would be to go carnivore and eat everybody but the game seems to be designed around herbivores. Befriending animals gives more DNA points than eating them and opens up more opportunities, like trade routes and alliances in later stages. Regardless, the game lets players do both if they want to.

New body parts are unlocked by either finding them lying around in animal carcasses or by befriending or eating animals that have them. Parts that offer skills or attributes have various levels of effectiveness (from 1 to 5). Players can have a total of four social skills and four combat skills. There are no limitations between carnivores and herbivores. Either one can add any part to their creature, and consequently their skill. Furthermore, body parts with movement abilities can increase your creature’s speed and allow them to jump and glide. Note to Maxis: when you nerf a game, make sure you remove all evidence. Having said that, the jumping and gliding abilities are completely useless. The bleak terrain does not justify having them around. Either Maxis intended to make the Creature Phase more elaborate and stopped short or some elements were removed to make the game simpler.

Once your evolution bar is filled up, you have one last chance to evolve your creation before entering the Tribal Phase. By now you should have evolved enough to look like something worthy of sentient life. If not, too bad; you will be permanently stuck with a monstrosity, as was the case with my spider-vegan-duck-warriors. For better or worst this part of the game has a very MMO feel. The landscape is minimalist and action is executed by pressing icons that refill with time.

The whole creature evolution process is somewhat disappointing at the end of the Creature Phase because we are never really presented with body parts that can produce convincing sentient creatures. By the time we are ready to enter the Tribal Phase we still don’t have decent ears, noses or other cool facial details, like those Bajoran nose ridges, Klingon walnut foreheads or HAIR. Hair people, where’s the bloody hair!? You have the same old primitive parts, like sacks… Sure, you “can” put them on your creature’s head and shrink them to the size of nostrils, but the lack of details forces players to cheat the evolution process. In the end most tribal and consequently space-age creatures (you can’t change your appearance past this point) will look like animals taken from Nikelodeon or the Disney channel.

On to the Tribal Phase…

Tremble before my masked hairless monkey-bird spearmen

The Tribal Phase improves camera functions and adds a few twists. First, you have a Chieftain commanding your tribe. Second, your tribesmen now sound and behave differently. Squeals and chirps have given way to grunts and primitive gibberish. Third, you can dress your characters in the latest tribal fashion wear. Spiffy masks, smashing shoulder pads, dashing breastplates, tunics, lavish loin cloths, earrings and poofy hats are all there for you to adorn. Apparel doesn’t always fit your creature, and truth be told it often makes your creation look worse, but it can be placed in a convincing way… most of the time... Ok, that part sucks. But the whole dressing process lets players customize which stats they want to focus on (health, socialization or combat) because like in the Creature Phase you are surrounded by rival critters, some with really big sticks. The goal here is to either conquer them or become allies. Once all rival tribes have been dealt with (and there aren’t that many) you move on to the next phase.

A resource management element creeps in to make things more interesting. You can add villagers to your rowdy gang by clicking on the main hut. Each new villager requires a certain amount of food to create. You can also add structures to your village that produce spears for combat or tools to impress nearby tribes. Allying or conquering neighbors increases the maximum amount of villagers and opens up new structures. It’s a simple by-the-numbers formula, though a bit too controlled for a game that takes pride in flexibility. It is clear this phase is but a steppingstone - a kind of comical intermission - for what is to come.

The Tribal Phase begins to show the effects of your choices. Carnivorous tribesmen can lay traps for their enemies and herbivores (I guess “vegetarians” at this point) can set off fireworks to impress rival groups. Attention was also given to the town-folk who clearly have a new zest for life. Players even get to see glimpses of actual ingenuity from them as sign bubbles appear over their heads. From socks to telescopes, your savages are already thinking of the next phase, as will you - this one is kind of boring.

Fortunately, the Tribal Phase is short. Once you have taken care of the handful of villages, it’s on to the Civilization Phase!


Let’s make cities, tanks, nukes… and pies?

The Civilization Phase is greeted with a rather comical cutscene showing the intensions of your creatures. How you played in previous phases affects your civilization’s class, which can be Military, Economic or Religious. The good old evolution menu is back but this time players are asked to create a City Hall. Body parts are replaced with blocks, windows, doors, roofs and other structure parts. Impressive buildings are possible if you have time to spare. Much like in the Cell and Creature phases you can stretch and rotate parts in the menu.

Now it’s time to do what all great nations do: spread. Your first task is to create ground vehicles. If your actions were aggressive in previous phases, the parts available for your vehicles will be military in nature (canons, guns, rockets) or milder if you focused on making friends and alliances.

The simplistic resource management system is back. Now players need to control geysers to accumulate spice (money). However, other nations also want the spice. And since “the spice must flow” your creatures must once again put on their NWO hats to take control of the world, which can be accomplished by destroying rival cities (if your race is military), buying them (if your race is economic in nature) or by brainwashing them into submission by spouting large propaganda holograms at their doorstep (if your civilization is religious). All this is done with three types of vehicles: ground, sea and air. The profitability of cities helps achieve these goals since they produce the vehicles.

Clicking on your town hall lets you shape and plant three building types: Houses, Entertainment Centers and Factories. There really isn’t much strategy to placing buildings. Houses increase the maximum amount of vehicles, factories increase how much money geysers generate and entertainment centers distract inhabitants from having too many factories. The goal is to mindlessly fill up the ten or so building slots. As rival nations fall or become allies, more features open up in the town hall. Eventually cities can mount gun turrets and manufacture boats and planes, which are not available at first.

Like in the Tribal Phase, this stage feels rushed – as if it wants to hurry to the next level. Cities are extremely simple and only produce three types of vehicles. What mainly sets vehicles apart are esthetics as well as “health”, “speed” and “attack” attributes determined by the parts selected during the creation process. Turrets and each city’s overall look cannot be manipulated.


And so the game begins

Space Phase starts by creating a space ship. Space ships benefit from all the parts used in previous vehicles (tanks, boats and planes) as well some new ones. Various hulls and engines are available. Omitting tank, boat and plane parts in exchange for more space parts would have been appreciated, though. You can still design a decent variety of vehicles.

After a brief tutorial players are finally given their captain’s license and it’s off to the vastness of the universe. Scrolling the mouse wheel makes the ship increase or decrease in altitude. Space has two views: the solar system view and galaxy view. Galaxy view allows travel between solar systems as far as engines can take you (delimited by a circle around the ship). Once players have picked a solar system they can enter it by scrolling the mouse wheel down. The solar system view lets you travel between planets. Planet orbits leave a colored streak informing players of their hospitability.

Your first task is to create a colony on a new planet. Fortunately, players start with a free colony package. To create a city on a new planet simply enter a planet’s atmosphere, click on the colony icon in the menu and throw the package in a desired location. In seconds a new city is created. Like in the Civilization Phase you can click on the city hall to add buildings, but before you can do that the planet’s T-Score has to be improved. There are four T-Scores: T0 (barren), T1, T2 and T3 (the best). To improve the score players must alter the planet’s atmosphere then transplant vegetation and animals from other worlds. The process takes some organization. Pants and animals from T2 or T3 worlds will not survive on T1 planets unless you modify the atmosphere with items like atmosphere generators. T-Scores are simply there to limit the size of cities. Planets with low T-Scores can’t have developed cities. Once a world is stabilized and includes a colony, it will generate spice. The more colonies and structures a planet has the more spice it produces.

Spice is the main trading item. As you meet new alien species new opportunities arise. Again, you can create wars, trade routes and alliances with your neighbors. And like previous phases, alliances can only be made if relations are positive. Relations with other alien races are improved by either giving them money or performing various missions. Missions can range from destroying rivals aliens, to controlling virus outbreaks on other worlds. Alien planets are also good places to buy new ship tools and various items to help terraform worlds.

There are countless solar systems and alien races to discover. It is clear Maxis put all their efforts into this part of the game. Things can become a bit overwhelming at some point, though. Spreading too thin triggers various problems, however fixing them is optional. Things like pirate raids, ecosystem collapses and wars will pop up every now and then. But in the end, Space is all about planting colonies on new planets and developing simplistic relationships with alien empires. Much like SimCity, there is no defined end to the game. You simply keep growing and cause trouble when you get bored.

Optional tasks are available. Players can find artifacts on innumerable planets, discover wormholes, create crop circles, reshape animals as well as planets, and can speed up the evolution process of creatures on other worlds. There is also the constantly omnipresent goal of “reaching the center of the universe”.

Whether you a military, religious or economic empire, space is all about trading spice. It’s a flagrant shame that everything leads up to this simplistic economy. The “carrot” after all the creature tinkering in previous stages is a special feature or two depending on your proficiency, but the final outcome is players running errands between planets hauling spice, more spice and nothing but spice… and the occasional artifact. The game should have had more items in the economy. The 1986 game, Starflight (also an EA game), had a much more intricate space exploration system than Spore, and that was 22 years ago. Players could find various minerals (some common, others rare), as well as plants, insects, animal life and alien technology on numerous planets. Each item could fetch a price. Spore only has “spice”, so it could definitely use more depth.

Summary

Spore is a good game but as it stands it looks like it only wants to be a space game that lets you design your creature’s look and ship. The creature evolution process is fun, as is building vehicles and structures. Unfortunately, the world in which your creatures, vehicles and structures play in is rather shallow. For a first iteration Spore offers enough to keep us busy for a while but some major changes are in order. It has its moments; you just end up wanting more! What it offers is four mini-games and an open-ended yet repetitive space game. It’s very addictive but that addiction quickly fizzles out once you get tired of creating Muppets and start wanting more substance.