Bit-tech has done a hands on review of spore since their release date announcement of early September. Here is the review.



Spore: Hands-on Preview

Platforms: PC, Nintendo DS, Mobile, Mac
Publisher: Electronic Arts

Spore. Games don’t come any more ambitious than Spore and although the premise of the now in-famously delayed game and magnum opus of Will Wright is fairly simple, the actual realization of that concept has proven incredibly difficult.

The idea behind Spore is this; you are God, the Alpha, Omega and Almighty. You are omniscient, omnipresent and capable of creating a rock so big you can’t possibly lift it. Then you can lift it. You’re God and that type of feat is your bread and butter.

Specifically, you are the God of a particular species that you will design, craft, sculpt and guide through from primordial ooze to inevitable extinction.

You start off small, designing a single cell and guiding it through the cesspool in which all life must begin. As time passes you use evolution as the tool by which you will shape the destiny of your creature for better or worse. A mouth here, a leg there, and a twist to the torso – you slowly create the creature you want. You can do that. You are God.


From there, the game expands ever outwards and you will move from guiding a single cell or creature to encouraging a small tribe, then a city. In the climax to this universe in a box you’ll be aiding your civilization in spreading to other stars and planets.

Such game concepts are truly the things of dreams – open, sandbox worlds with almost limitless possibilities and completely open setting. The game says to you; “Here are the tools, now do as you wish.”

Unfortunately, with such an impossibly complex design even getting the basics of the gameplay right can be a daunting task in and of itself and, even with the full might of Electronic Arts behind him, Will Wright has struggled to get Spore working. The game, which he has reportedly been planning for the last decade at least, has suffered numerous delays. At the start of this year we gave it an honorable mention as a game which we thought would definitely turn out to be vapourware.

Now though, it looks like we may have to admit that we were wrong. Not only has EA confirmed that Spore will be out in time for the holidays, but the game is now in a fully playable state. All that is left to do is polish up a few glitches, test it and load it with content before release.


How do we know that, I hear you ask. Simple; we’ve played it—nearly all of it.

There are five stages or levels to Spore and we’ve played them all on the PC, as well as playing on the DS and Mobile versions of the game – though the latter failed to make as much of an impression, to be frank.

The first level is a basic arcade type game where players guide their single cell about its existence, helping it eat other creatures and grow. When it has grown enough it jumps into the Creature Stage, where players zoom their view out and manage the more complex needs of their creation. Survival skills must be complemented by socialization skills as players enable their creature to build a tribe.

In Tribe stage the game zooms out once more and players are no longer controlling a single alien. In this stage it’s more like The Sims as you monitor the needs of a small tribe as they carve out a niche in the alien landscape. The penultimate stage of the game is the Civilization Stage where it transitions from The Sims into Sim City and you’ll be controlling whole cities in cultures.

The last stage is the Space Stage where you hop off your polluted little rock and find new playgrounds to party in.

Share and share alike

Before we delve deeply into the well of never-ending game play that Spore claims to offer, we should talk about the Pollination System that Spore uses to keep the game full of brand new content at all times. Pollinated content is something that Electronic Arts and Maxis have tried to show off before at Leipzig, but felt that it was misunderstood by journalists and misrepresented to fans.

It also happens to be one of the coolest and most interesting things about the game on both a technical and casual level as it’s the system by which Spore is creating a whole new genre – Massively Online Single player.

Yeah, that seems like a contradiction. Bear with us and let us explain.

Every time a player starts a game in Spore they’re given a new planet. The planet is the same every time and serves as little more than a blank slate for the creatures to play on.

Except, it isn’t always the same and, although the landscape is always basically the same, the types of other animals and vegetation are actually sourced from other Spore players. Their content spills over into your game to keep things fun and perpetually new but, in order to accommodate to casual gamers and those who don’t actually want to play multilayer, those players aren’t actually in control of their content.


EA calls the technology behind this idea a Sporecast and revealed to us how it ties into a huge and previously unseen social network behind Spore.

The best way to describe exactly how Sporecasts work is by example; so imagine that you’ve just booted up the game and named your planet. You’ve gone straight to the second level of the game—the creature phase—and you’re running around like a madman. Now, the basic planet is always the same – you’ll have the same hills, the same continents and so forth. What is different is everything else; animals, vegetation, allies and enemies for your race. These are all taken from the Sporecasts of other players.

This works both ways and as you create new races and aliens they too will be downloaded via the Sporepedia by other players.

Sporepedia is the framework around which all of Spore is built. At its most basic level it’s little more than a catalog of free content and a help-desk through which players can get tips and guides. Delve a little further though and Sporepedia becomes much more and players can start to take advantage of the social networking tools held within.

Each player in the game has a page on the Sporepedia and it’s possible to browse through by using any number of filters and tags to see a specific player. From that page you can send messages to that player, see what Sporecasts they have created and so on and so forth. You can even monitor their popularity and see what achievements they’ve unlocked in the campaign game.


The game will automatically download suitable Sporecasts if you’ve not selected ones and the content is designed so that the community itself can decide what is and isn’t appropriate for players. At any time though players can access the Sporepedia and download either whole Sporecasts, which are composed of many pieces of content, or specific pieces which they like.

So, say for example that I wanted my new world to be heavily Mango-themed. All I would need to do is open the Sporepedia whilst playing, search for Mango Sporecasts and download them. The computer will then litter my universe with Mangoes – or the fruit of my choice. Alternatively, I can decide I want just one specific Mango and place that in my world myself.

The social networking elements in Spore do look truly stunning and already there’s a wealth of content available from the testers and developers – everything from flying toilets to animals that look like letters! Amazingly the whole process is specially compressed too and an entire Sporecase will only weigh in at 8KB, meaning that even the most pathetic of rigs won’t have to worry about space restrictions.

Dear Editor

There’s a lot of things to love in Spore and we’re not even halfway through mentioning a quarter of them, but the thing that most people are interested in seems to be the variety of editors open for players to mess around with. With hilarious demonstrations from the likes of Robin Williams (though the interface in that video is no longer accurate), it’s easy to see why the editors are getting people excited.

However, the editors aren’t as straightforward as they look and it’s not actually as simple as just tossing a few hands onto a blob and putting that in the game. Instead, players are limited in terms of how detailed they can make their creatures and adding new limbs and so forth will cost you in terms of DNA points.

Yeah, I was surprised they weren’t called Sporepoints too – though I think that phrase has got some rather icky undertones when you think about it.

The fact that players have to spend and earn DNA points will be a clunky and unfortunate reality in the eyes of some - namely those who just want to create crazy aliens and leave it at that. The truth is though that the points system is well integrated and is a necessity to prevent players doing anything game-breakingly complex. DNA points are never too hard to come by either and you can earn them by attacking other aliens or by discovering fossils. Either way, it’s not just points up for grabs, but also whole new appendages or types of mouths that you add to your alien.


Still, DNA aside, the Creature Editor can definitely be seen even at this stage as a clear success on the part of EA and Maxis. The creation system is simple and easy to use, utilising simple drop down menus and tabs. At the same time though it’s wonderfully complex and affords gamers tremendous creative freedom.

Creating an alien is easy. When you first enter the editor there’s a basic blob in front of you with a backbone running through it. Click and drag the specific bones and areas you want to play with and force them into the shape you want. After that you can add limbs and the like and alter them in the same way.

My first time in the game I jumped straight in at the start of the game, eager to see as much of the game as I could. If you want to then the game does free you up to skip to certain stages, but doing so will mean that you miss out on all the achievements and rewards. That’s fine though – as one of the producers pointed out to us, casual gamers who like a specific part of the game and want to play that aren’t interested in achievements. Hardcore gamers on the other hand will be interested in that and will be willing to play the game as a whole.

My first creature was a monstrosity and even as it grew up through the cellular phase it was ugly for me to behold – but at the same time I loved it. My beast was shaped like a cartoon greyhound with low back legs, high underbelly and defined ribcage. I covered the underneath in pincers that would afford it more aggressive attacks in true RPG style, gave it jagged spikes on the back legs, Velociraptor claws and a huge tail which ended in a spinning circular saw made of bone.


I had a few points left over at the end, so I dumped some rudimentary wings on its back, coloured it lime green in honour of Mankini Man and that was it. I had named the planet Cardland out of pure lack of imagination, so I named my alien race ‘Cardigan’ and shipped it out. Sure enough, it hatched out of its egg and was promptly eaten by something called a Valeroid. I cursed, stamped and screamed – an hour of hard work bought to waste. Memories of the twisters from Sim City came to mind and I started to wish Will Wright had never been born.

Thankfully, the game was far from over and I was promptly bought back to life. Another Cardigan was hatching nearby, so I assumed control and immediately took to flight. The animation on my freshly created content was perfect and Cardigan II as I had taken to calling him was able to scrabble all over the world in search of food.

It was fascinating and delighting to see that the Creature stage of development had some basic RPG elements to it. Each appendage and addition to your design gives them new advantages and abilities that fit well with the reality. At basic levels this translates to “Have wings, can fly”. At a more involved level though it involves specific uses and I quickly found out that, because I had chosen a mouth that looked good for the race of Cardigans, and not one that was useful then the race was a little limited.

Despite all the spikes, pincers and bonesaws on Cardigan II, he was actually a herbivore because the jaw I’d given him fitted that type of creature. Naturally, I wasn’t going to spend four or five hours playing a vegetarian, so I found a more interesting mouth, saved some DNA points and evolved Cardigan II to something a little meatier.

SimSpore

From the creature phase things start to get a little more or less interesting, depending on your tastes in terms of game genres. If you find detailed simulations to be less interesting than quick arcade action then Spore is going to get progressively less interesting the more you play through it.

Fortunately, the more you play, the more editing there is to do. By the time you reach the Civilisation and Space Stages then there’s plenty more content creation to do to help break up the micromanagement. You’ll get a chance to design vehicles, buildings and later, UFOs.

Designing all these structures is essentially very similar to the Creature Creation stage, except you don’t start out with a torso for a starting point. Instead, it’s down to players to place simple geometric shapes down, tweaking them and adding detail until you get the look you want.

Now, that style of editor may sound simple, but it can be as complex as you want. It’s very much like Lego in that it can be as involved or simple as you want. If you’d rather get down to the nitty gritty of running an entire culture and have your industries ticking over the way you want then all you need do is draw a cube and add a door.


If, on the other hand, you want to do something a little more satisfying then, well, the possibilities really are endless and you can make your designs as crazy as you like. Personally, I always had a thing for Arthurian legend growing up so I made my City Hall resemble my own idea of Camelot.

Unfortunately, I kind of forgot that theme by the time I got round to creating a UFO and my spaceships ended up looking more like rolled up porcupines that had sat down on a jet engine. Watching a big spiky ball take off while surrounded by medieval castles is an odd experience.

By the time I got round to the space stage though, I had other things on my mind than how ludicrous the world my imagination had built was. The Space Stage of the game is arguably the most explicitly driven part of the game and unlike the other stages of the game it has goals which are directly given to the player via the race they have created.


As you fly your UFO around the world expect to have the head of your own Starfleet on the screen telling you what they need you to do – everything from scanning flora to abducting and probing fauna.

Chatting with some of the folks from Maxis, it was hinted at that although Spore doesn’t have an endgame or an overall victory scenario it may in fact have a way to win in some way. EA and Maxis were both closed-lipped on details, but there are definite suggestions of such a thing in the Space Stage where the game starts to feel more goal orientated and less like a playground.

In my opinion, the Space Stage is where the game starts to feel most like a game too and where the graphical style of Spore is most appreciable. The cartoony presentation and bright colours look OK, but not much more when you’re zoomed in on the Creature Stage.

By the time you can see the whole planet though the world is starting to get filled up with cities and buildings of your own design and the look of the game is at its most awesome. The contrast of the white clouds, green land and inky blackness of space in particular looks pretty awesome – especially since it’s filled with flying porcupines.

Initial Thoughts

There’s no question in my mind that Spore is going to be fantastic on pretty much every level and I can already tell that I’m going to be have to be very careful when it’s released. Too much exposure and I can easily see myself getting addicted to the game. In that sense Spore stands to be hugely successful – more so than Guitar Hero or even The Sims.

I find the backstory of Spore fascinating too, not just the up-front gameplay. Electronic Arts gets a lot of stick from the gaming press and from gamers at large and a lot of people hold the uber-publisher with ire – the company is well known for its repeated visits to Sequelville.

At the same time though, Electronic Arts has not only published the likes of The Orange Box and Crysis, but is now set to publish a genre-creating game.

So, EA likes The Sims a bit too much when it comes to expansion packs – that doesn’t have to be a bad thing!

I actually got a chance to speak to some of the marketing people recently and I quizzed them about the future of Spore – pressing on whether we could expect to see a slew of new content on shelves soon after release. The reply was a stark awakening to the brilliant reality of Spore in that I was treated to a kind of “I don’t know” answer and an explanation of how that wouldn’t work with Spore.


You see, in The Sims, new items can’t be easily created and the expansions can consist mainly of new furniture and so forth. In Spore that doesn’t hold true and the future of the game seems to be grounded more in adding new tools to the game through expansions – ways to export and import creatures to Photoshop or Maya 3D. It’s not enough to simply give people a new building or two, because those can always be made by the community.

To me, this attitude perfectly expresses how important Spore will be.

Frankly though, even if the game doesn’t prove to be as redefining as I think it will be, then it’s still shaping up to be a fantastic game and clearly shows how even the most complex of tasks can be accomplished with enough persistence.

Spore does have flaws in some regards and it’s plainly obvious that most players aren’t going to enjoy parts of the game. Personally, while I loved everything from the Creature Stage onwards, I did find the first part of the game—the Cell Stage—to be a little tiresome and pointless. I’ve nothing against simple arcade styled games at all, but there are titles that do that better than Spore.


Spore’s strength though lies in that the game overcomes the personal loves and hates of certain people and frees players up totally. You can do almost anything you want with the tools on offer here and the game is totally open to let players skip to the parts they want. If all you want is the micromanagement and sense of control then Civilisation Stage is there for you from the get-go.

If on the other hand all you need is cuddly animals and something to show off to your friends then you’ll rarely need to stray beyond the creature editor.

Given the mammoth development cycle and the staggering ambition of Spore, there was always a fear that the game would at best become vapourware or at worst be released as a shadow of its intended self. From what we’ve seen of the game though, Spore is shaping up to be the type of game that can truly deliver on its promises. With any luck, all of us will have a universe in a box on the 7th of September and we can't wait.