The most creatively diverse game since “The Sims” series
Those who are still recovering from their middle school addiction to “The Sims” have to fight obsessing over a new video game called “Spore.”
Electronic Arts released “Spore” on Sunday for Windows, Mac and Nintendo DS. Created by Maxis, the same team who developed “The Sims,” the highly anticipated real-time strategy/life simulation game is a great way to waste anywhere between a few hours to a week.
The entertaining draw of the game is not fighting or competing with other species. The majority of time is spent creatively, because the player has to design a number of effects throughout the five stages of the game.
During the first two stages, the creature itself requires designing. In the second two stages the creation is focuses on the villages and buildings. In the fifth and final stage, the game goes back to a single subject based game during which you design and upgrade controllable spaceships.
The player starts out as a small life form in its cell phase in a massive tide pool on a newly forming planet. As the player eats smaller beings it grows and as it attacks other species, new evolutions for the player’s creature are available. These earnable additions allow the creature to become faster, cause more damage, increase health points or even open up new abilities such as being able to sprint.
This type of play continues through the creature phase as the cell grows legs and moves onto land. Eventually this grows boring and repetitive but during the creature phase the player also has the option to try and impress other species by dancing, singing, charming or posing for them.
Doing this or hunting and extinguishing other species offers the player DNA points to use on his or her creature.
The next phase is the tribal phase in which your species fights other species for control of the planet. This phase is where the real-time strategy comes into play. The tribe builds more of the species to hunt and fight other species as a group instead of as an individual creature or small pack. The player also upgrades the tribe’s camp with buildings, which allows the player to fish or use weapons in combat. This part of the game, along with the next stage, has nothing to do with the first two stages besides the look of the creature and starting planet.
After the player’s species dominates its planet, the civilization phase starts. In this stage one must compete with one’s own species for control of the planet. This stage is also repetitive and must of the fun is based on designing new vehicles.
The final phase is the space phase, where the player controls a single spaceship as it travels between solar systems expanding the species’ empire and meeting new alien species. Also, while the player explores the galaxy he or she “terraforms,” and colonizes planets in other solar systems. It then becomes possible to befriend new aliens or start interstellar wars to show the species’ dominance.
This game is very fun to play and does change throughout the game to avoid becoming too repetitive. However, with every change previous work becomes less important and for the most part meaningless to current objectives.
Players can start the game at any stage of the game by choosing a random species and civilization.
The only downside to this game is the level of computer sophistication that is needed for its graphics. Though a very moderately equipped three-year-old laptop can handle the game, some parts of the game, such as cinematic sequences, can get choppy.
Also, the game takes a decent amount of time to load between planets and solar systems in the final most graphically complex stage.
For those who are using an old computer, make sure to have plenty of time and patience- they will both be needed.
Contact Campus Press Staff Writer Andrew Nute at Nute@colorado.edu.
