Spore Review
Finally, you will be prompted to build a spaceship, which you can design completely to your own tastes, the same way you could with your creature. The same creativity is possible for all other structures and vehicles, but if you’re not in the mood to come up with something cool you can always pick a creation from sporepedia. Once you’re accustomed to your spaceship you’re ready to conquer the universe, but it’s just another phase that feels like a RTS without any depth to it. There is more to it than in previous stages, but Spore doesn’t even come close to a real space RTS. In the Space phase it’s no longer about earning DNA or growing a bigger brain, it’s about earning badges. Badges can be earned by accomplishing all kind of feats, and the more badges you have, the higher your rank becomes. With higher rank come new privileges and you gain access to new weapons and spaceship engines for example. It basically comes down to this; planets produce resources, and planets have three tiers, the better the tier, the more they can produce. You can improve the tier of a planet by adding an atmosphere and some flora and fauna. Produced resources have to be picked up, and sold elsewhere. You’re not the only space-faring species though, there are other species roaming the universe which you can annihilate or befriend. Befriending other species can be done by setting up a trade route with them. If the trade route remains intact long enough the species owning the star system might offer you an opportunity to buy it from them. Conquering the universe has never been so easy, were it not for the fact that there are 500.000 planets. Ouch.
Not only are all those phases just not cutting it, there’s also no story of significance in Spore, so besides the gameplay that’s lacking there’s nothing else to keep you going. So maybe you want to try out that bomb called Planetbuster, but then again, even blowing up complete worlds gets old fast. The goal is to defeat the Grox, a race that has been traveling through space for eons, or befriend them of course. The problem with doing that is that you have to get to the middle of the universe, and the closer to the middle you get, the less distance you can travel with your spaceship. This makes for a pretty repetitive and boring phase where you are basically repeating the same thing over and over again. That’s why Spore fails at being a game. There’s no challenge and there’s no story, so except for some badges there’s not much reason to continue playing. That would be completely true if it weren’t for the creature creator. Perhaps you will find it fun to explore new planets and look at its wildlife – personally, that too got old pretty fast. It probably has something to do with the audience EA is targeting with Spore. So what kind of audience would that be? Well, the biggest audience they can possibly get, so they can make the most profit. Their audience is the casual gamer audience: moms, dads and their children. You know it’s true by just looking at the graphics, everything has a happy vibe to it, ranging from the colors to all the cuddly looking creatures made by Maxis. The sound, which is actually pretty good, with distinct kinds of animal sounds for each creature, also feels a little bit too happy for my liking. Last but not least there is the difficulty level, which is so easy, it’s just not made for real gamers.
This brings me to only one conclusion, if you’re a casual gamer that likes to tinker around, Spore could be the next best thing to happen for you, after The Sims. If you’re looking for more of a challenge, and already had your fun with the Spore Creature creator (which can be downloaded for free) then you might be best off just skipping this overhyped game. It is such a shame really, because this game had a lot more potential.
-by Marc Rademaker
ABT Gaming Editor
ED’s note: Make sure you are Spore’s target audience
