Spore- Creature Stage Review

Alright, Creature yeah! Out of the tidepool (Wait a minute didn't we miss something? Oh, right water), and onto land. During the loading, we get to see some of the creatures we may encounter during our time on land. While some find this a nice feature, I usually end up looking away as I find it spoils the experience.

You start out in a nest with a few other members of your creation around you. In this section of the game, much of what you do are based around goals- and these goals are pretty simple really. Find food, explore your surroundings and meet other creatures, and have sex. How you meet those goals is up to you. You are not restricted to those goals, you can go anywhere in the game world and do what you like within the limitations of the game, which makes for a nice sandbox. However the further you stray from your nest, you will find the tougher the creatures get and the easier it is to end up as someone else's lunch.

Food. Depending on your "mouth" you will want to eat either meat or fruit (or both if you have a omnivore mouth, or even two or more mouths of different types). If you eat meat, you will need to kill other creatures to gain it. If you eat fruit, there is plenty lieing around for you to pick up. Just be sure not to eat the type you are not meant to, your creature wont like it. Unless you find it funny of course.
If you are a carnivore, like mine is for the purpose of this review, then hunting is the name of the game. Sounds fun, and therefore it is a shame the combat is so very poor. One on One, at the start of the game, it is simply down to the number of hitpoints the fighters have, and what level bite you have. And it is always one on one until you start gaining the ability to add other creatures to your pack, and you can walk right into the middle of another creatures nest, start attacking one of them, and the others won't budge. They all look at you rather oddly as if to say "how rude!". Once you get to the stage of multiple creature battles, it gets a bit more interesting and frustrating at the same time. The A.I is decent at combat, but options are always limited, which makes combat a button pressing slash and hack with no strategic options at all, just jump in and push 1,2,3 and 4 really fast and hope you win. You must also select a new creature with your mouse each time a enemy dies, making it hard for quick on the spot targeting during a bout as more often then not you will select a friendly creature and spend 20 seconds trying to poison your best friend.

If your after fruit, your likely a social creature. This is carried though the game, if you eat meat, you kill everyone, if you eat fruit, you hold veggie BBQ's for all. There is a middle balance, this can be hard to achieve, as you always tend to pick up parts relating to what your doing, start as a carnivore, and want to be a omnivore or a herbivore? You will spend a while hunting around and trying to make friends with creatures rather badly, as all you seem to be able to pick up is carnivore parts.

Talking of social, it is a tad more interesting then the fighting. You must respond to what the creature your trying to impress wants: if they sing, you sing. If they dance, you dance. Don't do what they want and they won't like it, don't do what they want well enough (have decent enough parts to impress them inotherwords) and they will ignore you. This makes it tough, but its a enjoyable challenge for once. And if you manage to impress a great creature such a epic (larger, more powerful versions of normal creatures), you can add them to your pack and enjoy a large DNA (once again the currency in creature stage) bonus. If not, you might want to stay away.

In creature, you get to see the first of the special powers that get granted to you for completing the last stage. As a carnivore, I get a "Raging Roar", which I can use to scare all enemy creatures around me.

So, sex. Mating in Spore always leads to the creator, and mating is the same as cell, press the mating call button when you are at you nest, then click on someone who wants to mate with you (Once again, wishing that it was this easy in real life). You then have a short movie (which is thankfully skippable, you get sick of it its the same thing every time) in which lay a egg, and go into the editor.

The creature editor was released before the main game, and its pretty much the same. A enhanced, 3d version of the cell editor, it's main letdown in the placing of parts. You can place them where ever you like, but it doesn't matter where. Want a spike in the middle of your belly under your creation where it can do no damage at all? No problem, and it you will still do the same amount of extra damage as before.

This does however allow you to create whatever look you wish, without "gimping" your creation. But another issue is that parts go up in levels: if you add 10 spikes of the same grade only one will have the effect, and if you add 10 spikes of one grade and 1 spike of a higher grade it is the single spike that will take effect and the other spikes may well be worthless. This feels poorly designed, as a creature covered in spikes for example losing to a creature with one, slightly sharper spike feels wrong.

Once again you can paint your creation, and the painting is very nice, with all sorts of premade designs, and the ability to create you own. I cannot see anyone not being able to find the look they want by just spending a few minutes customising your creatures looks.

Once you have finished up in the editor, you go back into the main game, and hatch a new creature to control out of a egg. All your other creatures in the nest have magically transformed themselves into your new design. Once you have hatched you "need" to go though "training" to learn any extra skills from new parts you may have added in the editor. This is .... rubbish to say the least. You know, I noticed I added a spitting weapon in the editor, my memory is longer then that of a goldfish. Thankfully skippable with the esc button, a stupid awful replacement to the fun looking "child mode" we was offered in video previews before release.

After completeing training, your new creation skips the rest of its childhood and transforms in a flash of cool looking lights (I can just see the reasoning now: Lets add in child mode for a expansion and distract the fact that we removed it from the main game by covering it over with flashly lights! They will love that! Everyone will be so amazed noone will noticed the difference!). You are now once again in charge of your adult creation.

That's pretty much creature. As you kill/make friends you gain DNA points which is what allows you to buy more parts and get more brain power. There are a couple of distractions thrown into the mix, like migrating nests (none of choosing where your nest is placed anymore etc either), possibility of flying- which is fun, but only useful for traveling. Once you have enough brain power you advance to tribal. One of your creatures decides it a good idea to invent fire, and after hitting himself on the head (Oh dear) he gets the hang of it. he transforms into your new Chieftain, and it seems inventing fire also gave him the idea of using tools and building huts. So say goodbye to nests and having sex, its time to unite under one tribe and build and invent.

Creature as a whole feels...very poor. It is clearly cut down so much it suffers badly. It is the second worst stage, and that's a shame because what was promised made it seem the most fun. At best a mild distraction from the aim of the game as a whole, at worst something you will be trying to rush though to get to the next section of the game.

AHHHHHH

A council.

Splits into 2: the council and a housing association.

Housing is what you pay the rent to. council funds housing benfit.

You start working at the age of 18, so the council reduce your housing benfit, but dont tell the housing people until 2 months later.

Housing people happly charge you very little money. You call them up and check that this is correct!

You are told that yes this is fine.

Council send housing peeps a very small about of benfit.

A letter lands on your mat from the housing people demanding £700 quid.

housing and council wont talk to eachother due to the data protection act.

You know you dont have the the money to pay months of "rent" all at once, so try and agree a settlement.

All agreed, payment over 1 year. Phew.

Next week letter lands on mat demanding £1400.

I BLOODY HATE DAMN GOVERMENT DEPTS WHO ARE TOTALLY USELESS RETARDS. WHOEVER CAME UP WITH THIS IDEA NEEDS TO BE SHOT!

Spore- Cell Stage Review

Woopie do da, Spore (Maxis, published by EA Games) finally arrived in the UK, and my letterbox, on Friday the 5th September.

Its about freaking time, we have waited for this one for ages. This is meant to be the biggie, the one that pushes Call of Duty 4 off the 2008 awesome 1 spot place in my head.

Hmm.

Shame it took a while to actually work. Seems Maxis was taken aback by the upkeep (I guess the flood of interest and the non-stop attention didn't quite sink in) and their servers crumpled with the sheer amount of people registering. Which caused this:

Just Fantastic. 3 days later, when I could finally log in (No offence Maxis, but your offline creatures are awful), and get started, the game got interesting.

You start off in Cell Stage, where you must guide your micro-creation out of the sludge and onto dry land. It should be noted at this point there was meant to be a water stage, but was cut. I smell the hand rubbing of EA Execs who will be publishing it as no2. of 400 expansion packs. Sigh.

As a cell, depending on if you want to hunt and eat other creatures, or be peaceful and eat plants, you must go out there and find the right food. When you have enough food, you can go into the cell editor, and adjust your creature. But to do this you also need "parts". In cell, these drop from dead creatures, and you must swim over and capture them.

Once you have captured a part, eaten enough food to earn "DNA point" (currency in cell stage), you can call for a mate. At once one appears, and you can swim over and mate. If only it was that easy in real life.......

Once your creature lays a egg (its always your creature. Are you always the female or is your species duel-sex? ) you enter the creator.

Here you can have some fantastic fun changing your creature, and painting the creature to what you want to have. Its fantastically interesting in just how different you can may your creations. You really start to care about what happens to them.

Once your finished, you name your creation and head back out into the world. Now the process is repeated, until you have eaten enough to gain a "brain" and make the process onto land.

Now your head back into the creator for the final time in cell and now its all shiny and 3d! You make the changes you need, you can now adjust your creations body, remove the now unnecessary tidepool items and add legs!


Before you leave the water, you are shown the timeline for your creation. In my case, my murderous actions have given me a Carnivore status, which means I get a special "Raging Roar" ability in the next stage, Creature. The time line itself is a fantastic thing, allowing a at a glance view at all of your actions throughout the entire game. ALL GAMES NEED THIS.

The skull is where it all went a bit wrong, and it shows me eating, and murdering, poor creatures (and eating them. Is this the first game where you can discover a species, hunt, and eat them, and your result is thinking, awwww, cute)

All in all, the Cell stage...well its simple what Spore should be. A awesome start of the game- a shame its the best stage. Great fun to play, and theres a version out of the cell stage for the IPhone- if you don't want to buy spore buy that, well worth it.

Next up, creature.

Hmm....First?

Ahh, ive started blogging. I feel I should say something interesting...um...im writing a spore review? 5 parts....cell/creature/tribe/civ/space and overview.

Also, I am surprised I actually have started a blog. Many people have before me, and Im ment to be into this kind of "stuff".

Right.

Well.

See you later then

Not that anyones reading this but whatever ;)