Spore (PC)
My god, it's full of stars.
9/9/2008 6:50 PM | 17 Comments | Page 2 of 3
What's Hot: The Earth's molten core; Alien death rays; Mammalian blood
What's Not: Comets; The cruelty of nature; The soundless vacuum of space
From humble beginnings.
And that's when we get to the bit of
Spore that borders on revolutionary. See, before blast off, the game is really just gearing up. It's a bike with the training wheels on. That's the reason why you may be hearing many traditional gamers grousing that
Spore ain't as deep as they'd like it be. It takes shallow to know shallow, right? Games like
Sid Meier's Civilization, and nearly everything with the Maxis name on the back, aren't so much about what you play as they are about
how you play. The games present a system, however shallow or complex, that gives the gamer the freedom and the power to test the boundaries of their world, to muck about. Here, we're doing it knee-deep in primordial ooze.
So, sure, the buildup to the final frontier blazes by like the opening scroll of "Star Wars." It does on your first play at least. But who plays a game like this just once? Calling
Spore shallow is like bitching that a box of LEGOs is just a bunch of colored blocks. No, McFly, there's an entire universe in there if you've got the creativity and imagination to make it.
Set phasers to fun!
Here's where
Spore continues the game design revolution that
The Sims kicked off. Maybe Will Wright knew, but there's hardly an honest soul on the planet who would claim to have predicted the sheer amount of user-created content that would erupt from
The Sims -- all the custom skins and furniture, the bizarre music videos and machinima. The game sparked imaginations like few other pop culture products.
Spore leverages that creativity to populate a galaxy, to create the zillions of life-forms, fleets of spaceships and cities' worth of buildings to fill in all the blanks for light years in every direction. The design document alone for such a game would take a Blizzard-sized army to write. And already the
Spore community has cooked up millions of creepy-crawlies to skitter and slink across myriad alien worlds.
Spore's big contribution is the way it totally and finally nukes the line between when we play games and when we don't. You're playing
Spore when you're futzing around with the Creature Creator. You're playing
Spore when you're at work, browsing the Sporepedia. Who knows? With future expansions you may soon be playing
Spore when filing your taxes.
But we can't all be Pablo Picasso. Society needs accountants and telephone sanitizers just as much as it needs artists. And those regular Joes need something to do, even when they're fiddling around in
Spore. I'd argue that the game's final act -- the part where you become the captain of your own starship -- offers an eternity of diversion. In a real way it's the game no Star Trek game has ever managed to be. The "Space Stage" is all about seeking out new life and new civilizations. Once you've shaken a couple of alien hands there's no end to the galactic fires that need putting out -- UFO attacks and eco-disasters are aplenty, especially if you're playing at more difficult settings. And the galaxy is a big, big place, with tons of secrets, treasures and dangers to discover. Ferenghi types can find simple pleasure in the interplanetary spice trade, buying low and selling exorbitantly. With the right bankroll, enemies can be bought, or at the very least crushed by money-grubbing allies.
