Spore

I was never a fan of The Sims and never had the patience to sit down and plan the piping structure of an entire city in Sim City, so until now Will Wright's games have never come into my circle of gaming. But Spore was on my list of contenders for the prestigious (User) Game of the Year award and although it definitely isn't the winner it is still a fantastically entertaining game. Out-Wright (Euck! Tastes like bad pun..) you get the feeling that this is not a gamers game. Its all dumbed down simple controls, with quirky often cute visuals and half-baked attempts at gamers favourite genres of gaming. But if you go into Spore looking for a hardcore gamers game, then you never got the idea of the game in the first place. The first thing I noticed upon booting it up on my less-than-average PC (Yet another sign this isn't a hardcore gamers game), was that LittleBigPlanet's catchy Play Create Share phrase was splattered all over the opening menu and it is there for  a reason. This game is about community, creativity and fun and it bursting with 2 out of 3 - and as we all know, that ain't bad. The creation tools are flawless - you can make ANYTHING you want at the click of button and it is literally that simple. I want some arms! Drag. Drop. Arms. Simple, intuitive, fun. You will find no reviewer complaining about the creation side of the game, brilliant.

The game itself is broken down into 5 clear 'stages' of evolution. You start as a Cell, evolved to a Creature, form a Tribe which goes on to be a Civilisation before building a Spaceship and enter the final and 'meat' of the game in outer space. The Cell stage is redundant really - there is an Achievement to go through it in 8 minutes that barely even challenges you. The best thing about the Cell Stage is the visuals. As you grow you see huge creatures swimming beneath you, horrible slimey bubbles on the surface and the water going from Ooze to lovely, blue sea water.

Next is the Creature stage which is a lot of fun and one of the better parts of the game. You wander around making friends or killing enemies by entertaining or attacking other creatures respectively. To entertain you have to fill up a bar by following another creatures moves, such as dancing or posing along with them. This is a simple dynamic, but entertaining enough. I have found that the ladies particularly like this part of the game. It may not be many peoples favourite part, but I particularly enjoyed the dumbed down WOW interface and the challenge of killing an epic creature appeared to me as a hardcore gamer. When an achievement popped up after I had defeated the giant purple monster, I felt a sense of....well, achievement knowing that I had completed one of the harder tasks in the game.

The Tribal stage is sees you take control of a whole host of you creatures, form a village and go and attack or entertain other villages to make enemies or friends. This is one half of the RTS part of the game. The goal here is to dominate the map. This stage is the longest stage so far and certain small challenges present themselves, but they are only casual gamers challengers. It's much too easy to complete, which can be dissapointing because there isn't that much customisation in this section - in fact this section has the least of the 'designer' aspect of the game.

The Civilisation stage is actually shorter than the Tribal stage and bears way too much resemblance to it. The upside is you get to design all your own buildings and vehicles, which is way awesome. At this point you stop battling other creatures and battle rivaling factions of your own race in a bid to control the entire planet. A cool system throughout the game is the evolutionary line. The choices you make and the way you play the game affect what kind of a Civilisation you are. If you are agressive, you will be military. If you are social, you will be religious. And if you are a little bit of both, then you will be economic. Each comes with its own special powers, which is fun but also makes this section of the game redundant. About halfway through this section, after taking over six cities you can choose the opt-out button, as I like to call it. Instead of forcing you to take over every city, depending on your previous choices you will be offered some kind of prolific weapon that means you take over the entire planet instantly. This is really frustrating because it completely removes the idea behind this chapter - there is no struggle for domination. I personally found this 'a bit daft'. Whats the point of designing a game and then encouraging people not to play it.

The final, biggest and by far the most fun part of the game is the Space section of the game. This part of the game is MASSIVE. You can fly around the entire Universe, although obviously not right off of the bat. You need to advance by collect badges and you earn them by doing missions, forming alliances, finding treasure and organising trading routes amongst other things. This is the section of the game that puts the others into perspective. There is so, so, so much to do and you will easy wile away into the wee hours trying to sell Spice (Thats the currency in this part of Spore) for the highest price so that you can upgrade your cargo hold or weapons. Eventually you learn to terraform planets which is awesome fun. It is so much fun going back to pre-space stage planets and seeing everything in perspective - that used to be you. Infact, if you're lucky you will see a spaceship in the Tribal or Creature stage of the game coming to do one the same thing you will find yourself doing later on in the game. It is too difficult to put the scale of this part of the game into perspective. Listing all of the things you can do would be a lenghty enough process thus describing them all is too difficult of a job.

So that is the game, but the community part of Spore is where the game really comes into its own. Everything that everyone makes is uploaded to central sever and automatically shared between everybody who owns the game. You will see every kind of creature, space ship, land vehicle and building you can imagine and it will more that often put a smile on your face. And lets be frank - how can you not smile to yourself when you are wandering around in the Creature stage and you bump into a extremely lumpy looking fan's labour of love Homer Simpson in a hula skirt and start dancing around to make friends. How can you not smile when you choose the Starship Enterprise as your spaceship and the first colony you make contact with comes flying out in a TIE-Fighter to great you. This is what Spore is about - people having fun and bringing culture and imagination into the game. I have seen everything from giant Mario buildings to Red Dwarf's Starbug and all you have to do is open the Sporepedia (Even in game) and search for what you are looking for, download it and it might just randomly pop up when you make contact with the next colony you meet. Fantastic. With a buddy feature built in and the ability to make Sporecasts (Lists of your favourite designs that people can subscribe too) and hundreds of achievements there is more than enough to do, so bored is one thing you will never be in Spore.

Spore has its faults, but they are way too minor to stop you from playing this game for hours at a time. Certain sections don't hold up as much as you might like and many people have taken issue with the fact you can only have one account or the copy protection system that ships with the game - but these are not 'game' issues, they are users qualms. If you are looking for a hardcore game, with challenging, intracative gameplay then Spore really isn't for you. But if you are a creative person with a sense of humour that enjoys exploring, designing and communicating then you should definitley consider buying this game. Spore is nothing but fun and you will spend hours of your life completing challenges, building creatures and vehicles. The scale of the galaxy is about as realistic as you are likely to see anytime soon and you have the oppourtunity to build, create and design all of it because its all yours and that is what Spore is all about.

Dan