Spwned? (I know, corny)
Posted by LSama on Sep 9th, 2008 in Video Game Shit | 2 commentsUnless you’ve been living under a rock, if you’re into the gaming world at all, you’re aware that Spore came out on Sunday. As I am a big player of the Sims, I’ve been keeping up with this game for a while. When I first heard about it–nearly 2 years ago, at that–I was fascinated. And why shouldn’t I be? This game boasted some very awesome features, an amazing, revolutionary game play and possibly a new take on simulated games.
On Sunday, I started playing it and boy, was I disappointed. Let’s take it step by step, shall we?
First and foremost is this whole DMR issue that everyone has their panties in a twist over. As of today(five minutes ago, to be exact), there were over one thousand 1-star reviews on Amazon for Spore. Why? Because people are pissed about this DMR.
I’ll dumb it down for those who don’t know what that is: A DMR is a tiny bit of software attached to another bit of software that installs itself in the background when you install the big bit of software. It leeches resources off of your computer, but what it really does? It monitors how many times you install this big bit of software on your machine. For Spore, the limit is 3.
After three installs of Spore on a machine, you have to call EA and basically get a new CD key. That’s the basic gist of it.
So in other words, what’s being said is that I’ve got 3 chances to play this game; After that, I’ve got to call EA up and give them hard proof of where I purchased the game, when, using what method, all so they can give me a key to install a game that I paid over $50 for. If I bought the deluxe special uber edition, $80. In short, you’re not really buying the game. It’s more like you’re renting it–except you’re renting it for fifty dollars. Yea. Right.
Is anyone else surprised that this was already being downloaded and played here in America, before it even came out? That’s right, folks; While they installed a DMR, EA made a critical error in their thinking. The game was released in Australia before it was released in America. It was already on several torrent sites before it even came out on Sunday here in the states. Way to go EA.
With that aside, let’s actually be fair and get into the review of the game, shall we?
Like I said, I was a huge follower of this game. Which is why this is so sad because this game had the possibility to be really, truly impressive. But the reality of the game is nowhere near as good as the fantasy of the game. All of the wonderful things that could have been done were not present, leaving an overall sour taste in my mouth.
Playability: In terms of playing the game straight out of the box, Spore is pretty easy. I would go so far as to say too easy, because I often felt that the tutorial did all of the work for you. It prompted you practically every time something needed to be done, generally making this game far too easy.
Length: The length of a game is a big factor for me–I tend to sink my teeth into a game and continue to play it for hours at a time. The more days I get out of a game, the happier I am. I started playing Spore at noon on Sunday. I was at the last stage by about 7ish, maybe 8 and I wasn’t playing it on easy mode, either. I understand that not everyone is going to tear through the game as quickly as I did, no. Being used to the Sims series, however, which generally has no end, this was pretty disappointing for me.
Spore is broken up into different ‘stages’ of evolution, which seems fair. But the stages are ridiculously repetitive or short. The first stage, the cell stage(which was easily my favorite)seemed to go by in a flash. Which seems really annoying because as you advance through the stage, you can see deeper into the primordial ‘soup’, and you never get to compare to some of the larger creatures you see deeper in! Which frustrated the hell out of me. The Tribal phase, in my opinion, was a huge waste of time because it felt so repetitive. Harvest food, kill your neighbors. There was no depth to it at all, it seemed.
Controls: Oh, the controls. In the Cell stage, they’re downright infuriating. Maybe it’s because you’re swimming around in water, but from the beginning, I was not impressed with the controls. They felt very sluggish and unwieldy. I saw other little cells just zipping around, where I was moving at a snail’s pace, despite what body parts I’d added to help with speed. Further into the game, that never really went away. It felt impossible to catch some prey items, even if I had wings. In the Civilization stage, vehicles moved remarkably slow as well, I thought.
The controls themselves are your typical mouse and/or WASD. I found that using WASD was the best to control your creature, using the mouse to control the camera angle–which is your only option in that regard. While the overall control scheme could have been much worse, I also think it could have been better–but some people may not mind them at all. I admit that I like an absurd amount of control over a game, so maybe that’s just me.
Graphics: The graphics of the game were pretty nice, for what they were. I found that I could turn them up all the way and still run the game without problem. Mind you, they’re graphics for a Will Wright game, so they’re not the graphics of say, comparatively, Crysis, but they’re still nice to look at.
Sound: Like the graphics, the sounds are about what you’d expect. It was interesting, to me, to hear all of the different animal sounds, the work that was put into them, but other than that, the sound is pretty average–nothing spectacular, in my opinion.
AI: The AI of this game? Disappointing. I thought that, seeing as this was Will Wright, I could expect the opposing factions to maybe throw me for a loop here or there, but that never occurred. I think part of the folly here is that in even in as early as the Cell stage, you always knew what was going to attack you. There was never any mystery, any surprise. I never ‘felt’ like a Cell, swimming about blissfully, unaware of what was going to happen. I knew who to run from, who to eat. The same happened in the Creature stage, as well. There was very little guesswork here, where the AI was concerned.
Replay value: I played my copy single player only. I didn’t get into the online thing, and maybe that’s where the game really shines, but I found little to no replay value to it at all. Maybe it’s because by the time I had gotten to the Space Stage(the last stage), I was already bored with the game.
I’m the kind of player that likes to figure things out on my own, you see. I rarely read manuals when I play games; I either figure a game out on my own or I let the in-game tutorial show me. If I can’t figure something out, only then will I rely on the manual. As I’ve mentioned above, Spore’s in-game tutorial really kind of turned me off to the game and this happened a lot in the Space stage. I wanted to do things on my own, but the game forces you to not really have that option.
So by the time I had gotten to the Space Age? I didn’t want to finish it, much less replay it. I had had enough of having the game shoved down my throat. It didn’t feel like you were given that many choices in the actions you took. Sure, you customized the way the creature looked, but even that stopped after the Creature phase. So you have three phases of customizing the way your creature physically appears. In the Tribal phase, you can add little bits of clothing and whatnot. Big woo hoo there. The part of the game that seemed to carry the most interest for a lot of people–creature customization–is cut remarkably short for a species that, according to my span, lived over 10 billion years.
But even as a species, your possibilities of how you interact with the world around you is remarkably simple. You are either herbivore or carnivore. Be nice or be mean. Persuade or take over. I didn’t feel like there would be much else to do a second time around–and I’m not saying that there’s not more to do. It’s just that the game didn’t give me the feeling that there was much else, you see. After playing it start to finish, I didn’t feel like I could go back into it and do things all that differently, because the game didn’t give me the feeling that there were many other options. For a Will Wright game, that’s pretty sad, given all you can do in the Sims 2.
Conclusion: It seems like what could’ve possibly been an awesome game wound up being little more than mediocre. Is it an amazing accomplishment? Absolutely–because the things that could be done with it are still there, still possible. But is it an amazing game? No. Far from it. Short, repetitive stages, combined with a bossy, overbearing tutorial system made this game almost like a chore to play. Once the newness and the novelty of it wore off, I realized I was no longer having fun, per se–but just pushing through it, hoping for a light at the end of the tunnel. I never found one, unfortunately.
A lot of sites have given the game an eight out of ten, and in my opinion, that’s far, far too generous. To me, it ranks more of a six out of ten. I had hoped for so much more out of this game, but the technical issues(DMR), in combination with a very lackluster game, makes me disappointed and sadly unimpressed.
A lot of bling for very little bang. As per usual lately with the games coming out, I’ve found the games being hyped to me are not.even.remotely. like the games released.
All hype, no real game.
I am so sick of crappy half-finished games being shoved down our faces.
You know, the sad thing? As I was playing this game, I could *see* the places where the game *could* have been awesome. The premise, itself, still IS awesome. I just think that the actual payoff of the game was no good. Having that tutorial shoved into my face, over and over, during the Space Stage? AUGH.
[...] And what did you turn into? A five hour marginally kind-of-cute waste of time. It was like ice cream instead of sex. Sweet, filling, but not exactly what I had been expecting. A friend of mine over at rulihe.com pretty much summed up Spore in her review of the game. [...]