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First impressions of ‘Spore’
It would be impossible to pass judgment on Will Wright’s “Spore” in only the two nights I’ve been playing the game (the game hits U.S. stores on Sunday; we just received an early review copy on Wednesday).
Influenced at its core by “Powers of 10,” a 1977 short film about the relative scale of the universe, “Spore” seeks to be both infinitely expansive and as intimate of the living spaces of the bestselling PC game of all time, “The Sims.”
The game’s interface is slick, intuitive and polished to a high degree, no surprise given the many years it’s been in development and Wright’s reputation for great game design. But based on the first three stages of the game I played through, the game is slighter than I expected, though it’s brilliant on a technical level.
After choosing a planet to create life, players are thrown into the primordial ooze in what is in essence a high-def, gorgeously rendered version of “Pac-Man.” As your cellular creation grows, you can add parts when you mate with like creatures until you evolve enough to go on land.
Sounds great, but it took me less than an hour to get to the second stage.
The second phase, in which you’ve built a nest and walk the land seeking to hunt or befriend other species, is gorgeously rendered, but also short: a few hours was all it took to get to the tribal level, a take on classic real-time strategy games like “Warcraft” and “Civilization.”
Blazing through the stages is not the point, though: these stages are really sandboxes for players to exercise their creativity by building strange, unique creatures and sharing them with others. In this, “Spore” really shines. The first mass-market video game to embrace social networking on such a grand scale, “Spore” allows players to share anything they create with other players or to download other people’s species. The mechanism for this, available at every stage of the game, is beautifully realized. Accessing the “Sporepedia,” thousands of creations are instantly rendered on screen, laid out like individual playing cards. Players can also create screenshots, animated avatars and “Sporecasts” to further the contents of their universe.
The real star of the show, however, is the game’s fascinating “Creature Creator” which was previously released as a $10 stand-alone tool. With it, you can add mouths, limbs, spitting pods and all manner of biological errata to your creature. The tool renders changes and skin patters in real-time. Players can test drive their creatures, seeing them show an incredible range of expressions and actions. It’s a brilliant achievement and lots of fun to play with, but I wonder if hardcore gamers will find it has much staying power once the initial thrill is gone.
Does “Spore” get deeper in its gameplay as it goes? It’s too early in the gameplay to tell. But it does a lovely job recreating some of its antecedents from the history of video games while putting its own imaginative spin on sandbox gaming.
We’ll be following up with a full review of the game as we play through the remaining stages, “Civilization” and “Space.” Stay tuned.
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