The Eyes Of A Spectator

With Spore, that is.

Here we go, here is the review for the game Spore of 2008, there are other Spores, but none of them have any level of hype as this one.

Now, as all of my reviews, there will be spoilers, but in actuality, there really isn't much to spoil. The mission modes are nothing to deep into a story, in fact, there practically is no story, you make it your own. Now, there's a not-so-big story to the game itself, so I'll write about that right now, as I've been following the game from the very start.

Spore's idea was created in around 2003-2004 that we know of, probably way before that in my opinion. It was based off of a couple other games, which I won't name, because I'll go into another frenzy with my knowledge. So after the idea was created, which was considered insane, because it's really really hard to program something like that, it would take decades for me to do something like that. So he presented the idea, and it took off with the help of a great team. In 2005, they demo'd the game at E3, and people went crazy for it, and it had titles on youtube, such as "SPORE: Possibly the greatest game ever!?", which was roughly a 30 minute clip including all levels that have been released today. After a while, they put out a release date for early 2006, which moved to late 2006, and then late 2007, and early 2008, and finally late 2008. It drove people like me crazy, because we couldn't wait to get our hands on it. Then they demo'd the game at Leipzig, and E3, NASA, and other conventions. Demo after demo, the game seemed to change more and more over the years. The graphical interface kept changing, the way the gameplay seemed to change, but nevertheless the idea stayed the same, and more was added constantly. Spore was officially released in Australia on 9/4/08, and 9/6/08 in the US and 9/5/08 in the UK. EA hit a milestone with Spore, as it was the very first game released by them to have compatibility for both Mac's and Window's computers at the same time. This made me happy.

Review for "Spore".

What It Is.
Spore is really a milestone in the gaming industry, but it's not really seen like that from the general audience. Spore enables you to quite literally design everything you want, everything! You can design animals, buildings, aircraft, vehicles, spaceships, and even planets, Terra-forming them to whatever you want them to be, to make lava-flowing planets, to dry and ice-cold planets. You can create a peaceful creature, or create Mario, and creatures from Half Life 2, which is a little difficult, but you can do it. Essentially, Spore is everything you want it to be, because you can configure what you want. And sharing your creatures with others isn't so bad either.

How It Works.
This is the big deal of the game. It uses a very hard to program technique called procedural generation. This enables the CPU, not the graphical card, to create miscellaneous data on the fly. That is what makes the game tick. Anything that you create, be it creatures, planets, vehicles, are all very very small files, around under 30 kilobytes, depending on what it is. So lets say you make 5000 creatures, those 5000 creatures are actually very small, and add up to a total of only around 150. I really doubt you'll make that many creatures, but you can download that many passively. Now the procedural generation makes it so that whatever you make, anyway you make it, there is a way that the computer can take what you made, and bring it to life. Lets say you make a creature with 2 legs. When you do that, it knows that it's going to walk like a human, so it just walks along, if you add 2 more legs, the legs start acting like a cheetah's and are synchronized. If you really think about it, it's amazing how it works.

My Experience.
My experience with it was just amazing. It was like watching a little kid at a birthday party running around and having fun, except I had no physical activity with it. I will admit that I got a copy of Spore, before it even came out in the US, and I was very very happy with it. Now, I've been waiting for this game to come out for 4 years, so you can imagine what it was like, starting it for the first time. After it came out officially in the US, I ran to my local gamestop as soon as possible and I ran over to the cashier, and here's what the conversation went like:
"Do you guys have Spore?"
"Spore? Uh, I think so."
"Great! It came out today, I hope you guys still have a copy"
"You were the first one to ask, what is it?"
"Wow, uh, well, it's like a Sim Everything"
"Sounds cool, I'll try it out"
I was flabbergasted at that. I live in New York, and got it from Queens, and it was 4 PM, on release day, and I was the first one to ask for a copy. That aggravated me, but then I went online, and had seen that thousands had bought it, and were registered online, so I got happy again. I was also surprised that the guy didn't know what this game was. I went around asking people after that, and I started realizing how many people didn't know about this game. So I started talking to people about it, and they looked into it, and really liked it. The game almost took over my life for 2 days. The day I got it, I played it all night long, until around 4 AM, and then went to sleep, woke up 2 hours later, and started up at it again. I've been crazy about the game ever since, and I still am. That's why it's taken me a while to post this up.

The Good.
Great simple gameplay. Some would count the simplicity level as a bad, but in my case, simple is great, it makes for a game that's understandable for all ages, and is fun to play, and you know what your doing. Simply said, the editor for everything in the game, is just mind boggling. Now I know why it took them 4 years to develop the damn game. It's so intricate on a programming level. The size of the game is mind-boggling as well. The graphics, would also generally be put into the bad category, but seeing as how this game forcefully made it graphics bad so it could reach more people, was a great move. My mother's old 4 year computer could run it on lowest settings. And the game does look incredibly beautiful with settings at maximum, with a good resolution. Lots of good here. One more thing, the gameplay is very hard to tire. There's always something to do, and you can do it with a friend. The audio aspect of the game is amazing too, it really gets your attention. Every time you click somewhere there's an ambient affect, that goes in perfect sync with the background music, it really lures you in. Passively downloads other creatures, planets, vehicles from other people, really neat to see interesting creatures roaming around.

The Bad.
The simplicity. And the graphics. Now, let me get this clear first, I'm not against these, but I'm only putting them down, because most people hate these things about games. This game is not targeted for adults, it's for everyone, and you can tell just by looking at the damn cover of the game. I'm not going to say that not having a multiplayer capability is bad, because it obviously wasn't made for that reason, it was meant to be a single player game, and they went beyond that, making it a very unique experience.

My Future Expectations.
Now, this is coming from Maxis, who made 8 expansions for Sims, and even more for Sims 2, as well as expansion packs for the Sim City games. There will no doubt be a Spore expansion pack. Which we will probably spend boatloads of money on, which noone wants, but I'll probably do it anyway. I don't really know what to expect from an expansion, if there will be one, because there's already so much, that I can't think of much more for them to put into the game. It's already a top-notch game, and has so much. Maybe a pure multiplayer capability?

My rating for this game.
I give this amazingly addicting, un-tiring game a near perfect score of 9.5. Yes it was that good, but maybe only because I'm a fan of the game. They set the goal to make a good game, and they made it. A few imperfections are in every game, so there really never is a perfect game, although maybe I could be wrong.