Spore - An LGR Retrospective Review

Spo .

Spo never changes .

This most promising and infamous of fallas creation kits was developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts in 2008 for Windows and Macintosh P CS .

However , it's no secret that SPO is considered by many to be one of the biggest letdowns in gaming in the past 10 years .

But was it really that bad for starters ?

Spo was hyped to Helen back by the publisher , the press , the fans , the developers and even the late Robin Williams , I'm putting together a creature that pretty much Darwin go .

Hey , I'm not taking acid ever again .

Pre release .

Hype was off the charts as a result .

And I know personally it was the first game I ever preordered if for no other reason than to get this fancy Schmancy galactic collectors edition .

But also I was super psyched because it was a new game from Will Wright .

Yes , that Will Wright , the legendary game designer behind Sim City and the Sims .

And when he started teasing the concept of Spo back in 2005 , it was nothing short of revolutionary .

At the time , the game was often dubbed Sim everything in reference to previous max's Sim games .

And due to its unbelievable scope , you'd begin as a microscopic organism evolve into an aquatic fish like animal , leave the water as a walking or flying creature gain sentience , start a tribe found a civilization , then finally head off into space .

The key to this was a never before seen procedural generation algorithm combined with an advanced physics engine which could build a completely unique game for you every time you played , it was billed as the ultimate exploration of the concept of evolution , allowing players to manipulate life at every level .

Such a way that put maxis previous God games to shame , not only that but Spors Universe was online letting you interact with other players creations automatically .

They even released a paid for demo called the creature creator before launch which lets you play with the editor of the same name , increasing the hype even further .

Unfortunately , by the time its September 2008 launch date came to pass .

Spore was quickly becoming the butt of jokes .

A huge variety of things were gone , including the bloody creature battles , the underwater stage , the ability to fly the physics engine , the emphasis on real science and biology and the advanced skele model for procedurally generating creatures .

Instead spo was a game that looked and played more like a cartoonish parody of what was so proudly shown off before making it unfeasible for use in educational institutions and disappointing for gamers who were looking forward to a deep sandbox simulation .

Not only that , but it launched with an aggressive D R M scheme that influenced thousands of one star reviews online and even class action lawsuits against the publisher over the ordeal .

Although Spor still sold several million units , it gained the dubious honor of being the most Pirated game ever according to several sources .

And its lead designer will Wright ended up leaving Maxis shortly after its launch .

In fact , he not only left Maxis but left the big budget AAA gaming industry entirely .

And as sad as that is for gamers like me that worship him , I can't say I blame the guy .

But despite all the backlash sport didn't exactly fail .

Which is fascinating to me , it got a parts pack , an expansion pack and as of August 2015 , it's still online with thousands of people uploading creations daily and posting in the official forums .

So what is it about sport that has people still buying and playing it to this day ?

Well , let's take a look spor begins in a rather grandiose fashion with several spiraling logos followed by a spiral galaxy filling the screen with much a plum the galaxy then settles in place to reveal a menu of sorts , bringing attention to several planets scattered among its galactic arms choosing and naming one of these planets will determine where you start your game with more planets being generated as you play .

If you've already played before then you can jump right into any of the stages .

But when you're starting out , you begin with the cell stage .

A short cut scene plays showing a meteor getting violently acquainted with your planet revealing that life began here via the concept of panspermia .

Once life finds a way you take control of a randomly generated single celled organism , much like the early teasers showed off .

The goal is to evolve this primitive little thing over many generations into something that will one day become a space faring species .

But for the time being , you play kind of a mix of the games of flow and pac man , since you're a cell that exists only to eat or be eaten , if you chose to be a carnivore , you eat other creatures .

And if you're an herbivore , you eat the little green plants .

Oh And you can also reproduce .

But that can only happen if you have enough DNA points , which is the scientifically proven way evolution works .

Don't you know , there are a handful of parts to choose from at first with each of them giving or taking away a certain set of abilities for your cell .

Each of them cost a certain number of DNA points .

So you can't just place everything on your cell to create some super beast from the get go and playing the cell stage allows you to earn more DNA points as well as more parts that can be found by killing other cells or discovering meteor pieces in a deeply factual example of the intricacies of genetics .

You just mate again any time to customize your cell .

However , you please don't like being a carnivore anymore .

Be an herbivore .

Don't like either one of those .

Be an Omnivore .

Eventually you'll have eaten enough things to get big and sprout legs before crawling onto land for the first time .

This brings you to the creature stage .

The goal of this stage is to gain sentience .

But as they say , the road to intelligence is paved with getting jiggy with it again , just pure biological facts here .

Uh And yeah , as cool as this part looked in the preview footage , it turns out to just be a string of Simon says and scavenger hunts , you have a nest which acts as a home base but there's evolving to do .

So guess what ?

Go find some DNA points and creature parts or else you may as well just go back to the ocean to get killed by a sea monster , finding parts and earning DNA points can be done in one of two ways .

First , you can earn the trust of other species by interacting with them socially .

And this is the Simon says portion in which you mimic their actions in order to fill the meter at the top of the screen .

If you have the stats to match theirs and impress enough of their kind , they'll become an ally giving you some parts and points and that helps you grow a brain .

I guess the other way to grab parts and points is to just kill them in a decidedly G rated fashion .

This functions similar to a fantasy M M O and that you just press a few hot keys , wait for them to cool down , then press them again until somebody's numbers run out .

And that helps you grow a brain , I guess , head back to your nest and get it on with the nearest androgynous member of your kind .

And you're taken to the creature creator personally .

This is one of the single most enjoyable parts of the game .

And this is where most of the creative stuff happens .

It's here that you can create giant walking dogs but also a massive variety of animals both recognizable and terrifying , even though it's a bit dumbed down compared to what they showed before launch .

And there's no way to add things like fur or functional wings .

I am impressed to this day by what the creator is capable of .

It's like a combination of modeling clay and Mr Potato head .

You just click and drag the body in all directions , then mess with part placement and see what happens .

It will then procedurally animate your abomination resulting in a creation that is uniquely yours .

Every time paint it tweak it make it hop around like it's on meth .

It's brilliant .

And once you're done making something terrible , it'll upload to the sped automatically as , as long as you're signed in adding to the tens of millions of other player creations , these will then populate your galaxy at random if you so desire .

And it's a pretty clever way of expanding the game's content without the developers having to do a thing .

And what you do in creature creator also affects how you'll play the creature stage itself .

Since every part has a set of statistics tied to it .

This also means that if you want to maximize your creatures efficiency , most of the parts are objectively worse than others resulting in needlessly stifled creativity .

And this is where the game first begins to falter for me because it's like you can't decide if it wants to be a creative sandbox , an educational tool or a kid friendly game .

On the one hand , you are given a huge amount of freedom to create anything using the tools provided .

But on the other hand , most of the parts are a bad choice .

If you want to make the best creature to progress in the game , then it tries to educate by touching on the concept of genetics , evolution , social structures , food chains and biological timelines only to negate all of that by introducing trophy video game mechanics and arguably advocating intelligent design .

I mean , nothing changes gradually or by chance it's you purposely creating all these things to suit your own tastes with the explicit goal of sentience .

I think it'd be really neat if you had the option to just simulate millions of years and see what happens based on your creatures , initial traits and environmental pressures .

But nope , you just wander around collecting sparkly bone piles and shaking what your mama gave you .

I won't deny .

It's initially fun to explore your planet .

Especially when you stumble across something like an epic creature created by fellow sport players or a UFO shows up only to shamelessly abduct your friends .

But all this is a shallow pool of party tricks rather than a deep ocean of meaningful content .

Once you've murdered or boogied your way to the top and gained a sentient brain , you get a cut scene showing your creature reenacting the famous scene from 2001 a space Odyssey with tools .

Now at your disposal , you move on to the tribal stage and this one takes on the form of the world's dumbest real time strategy game where the goal is to destroy or ally with the A I controlled creatures .

This is accomplished by either killing everything intelligent in sight or dancing and playing music for them via another Simon says game and sensing a pattern here .

It's the same old thing just with a different camera angle and this is easily my least favorite section of the game .

There is a new editor here , but it works exactly the same as the previous one just with less interesting stuff to do .

The idea is to deck out your tribe members with parts that unlock new abilities like being able to do combat , make peace or gather resources more efficiently , unlock new parts and points by taking care of other players , blah , blah , blah .

Other than the repetition , the big problem is that you're the only target by everyone simultaneously , meaning that you're frequently bombarded with enemy units , raids and local wildlife attacks while the rest just go about their merry way while waiting to attack you next .

So it becomes a mad dash of gathering resources , building units and base building just so you can manage to take action before everyone else does .

Not only that but the A I is absolutely brain dead using no form of discernible tactics and not even making use of their chieftain who normally leads the charge in acts of peace or war .

Your allies never help you out in battle or socializing either only existing to sporadically bring over a basket of food .

So just stave off the A I S mindless drones then rush to either play music or murder whenever you can .

Once that pointlessness is over , it's onto the civilization stage .

And as its name implies , it takes inspiration from Sid Meyer's civilization although it plays in real time instead of being turn based and this takes place on a global scale .

But instead of tribes and huts , you have nations with full blown cities and surprise , surprise , kill them or socialize them .

Oh , wait , you can also convert them via religion .

Finally , something new .

Each nation has their own religion and it's up to you to make sure everyone on the planet bows before yours .

Sadly , you can't customize the likeness of your deity , but you can customize your cities and yes , buildings can be created just like creatures which is a very nice touch .

Every city center contains a city hall and then inside the city walls , you can place the other buildings consisting of houses , entertainment and factories , turrets and decorations can also be plopped down .

But you can't customize these .

Each city has its own stats .

And the way you accomplish things at this point is money known as spo bucks , optimizing your city layout to balance population happiness and productivity will result in more income .

And what is this source of income spice naturally ?

The claim as many of the planet's spice geysers as you can defend them and you'll have a steady source of cash to confront your foes .

Each city can provide three types of units , military , religious and economic in either land , sea or air forms .

And yes , this means that you get a slew of new parts and creature tools to make these things .

I love these creators .

It's exactly the kind of thing I always dreamed of having as a kid , you can make cars and trucks and boats and fighter jets and UFO S and freaking Mecs .

This is fantastic and thankfully , you are not pushed to select certain aesthetic parts over others .

Since most of the parts have no stats tied to them .

There are some that will increase strength in one of the three takeover methods but picking the best is not as vital as in previous stages .

This is because all you need to do is just make a lot of them and take whatever you want by force that way , simply overwhelm the other cities with your units and watch them fall like dominoes .

You can also talk to them and do some diplomacy .

But why would you do that when you could send a battle tech army to do the job after you do the same thing you do every night and take over the world .

It's time to move on to the final stage of the game , the space stage .

And as you might expect , you get one more creator which lets you make a space ship , allowing you to bring all sorts of geeky vessel fantasies to life .

Then you're tossed out into space boldly going where no Goram fracking nerf herder has gone before .

Although let me touch on this graph for a minute because it's only at this point that it becomes pretty vital .

After each stage of the game is completed , you're presented with this timeline of how you played .

It's divided into three sections , effectively giving you a good evil and neutral path to follow what you do in the previous stage carries over into the next giving you some bonus abilities to play with that are a direct result of your play style .

These never really mean too much until a space stage where the path you end up on at the end of the civilization stage will affect your disposition in space and provide you with a unique ability .

Everything you do up to that point will determine your species philosophy .

So there's actually a bit of strategy in determining how you end each stage .

You can change your philosophy through missions in space if you really want to though it won't happen until quite a ways in .

But anyway , once you're in space , the game really opens up into something far more complex .

Whether or not this is enjoyable , depends on your preferences , of course .

But I know that I've spent way more time in space than any other portion of the game .

And the goal here is whatever man , you know , just spread your nonfunctional wings and explore the universe .

There is an end game of sorts that has you making your way to the center of the galaxy and getting a delightfully absurd cut scene straight out of a Douglas Adams novel .

But it's not required most of the time .

You'll just be expanding the mite and influence of your own species by planting colonies on other worlds .

And of course , the spice must flow .

So each heavenly body features its own supply of spices and some of them are more rare or in demand depending on where you go .

So inevitably , the game takes on a form reminiscent of games like Elite and mule of which the latter is directly referenced in the Trading Post .

Music .

Speaking of music , holy crap , I can't believe I haven't mentioned it yet , but the music in spo is spectacular .

It's composed primarily by Brian Eno who's famous for his ambient soundscapes which suit the feeling of spore perfectly and like so much of the rest of the game , it too is procedurally generated .

Of course , most of the actual compositions are already prerecorded , but the arrangements of each of them are randomly chosen in many areas and the result is just awesome .

I love good ambient soundtracks .

The space stage in particular is filled with all sorts of awesome music and sound design really just sucking me into this universe and making me feel like I am exploring the final frontier with over 500,000 planets orbiting around 100,000 stars .

There is no shortage of stuff to see and do .

But yeah , I could go on and on about the space stage for ages because this is where the majority of the game's content lies .

You can terraform planets abduct or destroy alien life forms , make meaningful allies and trade routes , wage , interstellar war , seek out and sell rare artifacts on remote planets , discover black holes and other astrological anomalies , earn badges and commendations to level up your spaceship upgrade yourself with God , like destroying powers or just collecting trade spice all day long .

You can even track down earth in the solar system which is eerily void of humanity .

And if you get the galactic adventures expansion pack , you can even beam down to various planet surfaces and walk around , carrying out quests and missions for the local populace .

However , the controls and execution of said missions are clunky at best and I can't say I had much fun at all with this when it came out .

Now , creating these missions was a ton of fun .

And I made a string of complex adventure games style quests to take on .

But it's by no means a necessary expansion unless you just really dislike the rest of the space stage and think that some awkwardly handling adventures will help .

Yes , there are other games that do this kind of space role playing better .

But there's something about the level of creativity that keeps me coming back to spo every so often being able to take control of significant parts of the galaxy as a penis monster .

You evolved from a single celled organism is nothing short of unique .

Even if getting there is a huge chore at times and it is , it's still an experience that I've never had with any other game and people are still buying it because of things like that .

Even with all its glaring issues and D R M riddled weirdness spor never achieved anywhere near the popularity of the Sims like E A had hoped , but it still found a lasting community due to its unique blend of creative elements and split genre game play .

There's no telling how long the online portions will last .

So if you want to give the full experience a go , I would do that sooner rather than later .

But even without the sharing of content , Spore is an undeniably fascinating game .

Now , that doesn't make it a great one but fascinating .

And at this point , still utterly unique .

Although anytime I play it , I still mourn for its what ifs the possibilities of Will Wright's initial concept for the game , the chance of a sim everything that was equal parts fun and scientifically sound .

Perhaps someday this grand concept will be revisited .

And I don't mean in the form of a Diablo clone , but rather as a game much closer to its original vision until then we've got Spo and Spo never changes .

And if you enjoyed this review that went on for way longer than I anticipated , then perhaps you would like to see some of my others which almost never go this long .

But this is a special game .

I have a weird place for it in my heart , even though it's hugely flawed , I just , I get passionate about this stuff .

So if you like that , you're on the right channel , you're on the right channel .

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And as always , I thank you very much for watching .