Spore First Impressions

News from Matt - Thursday, 04 September 2008 @ 1:38am

I've been looking forward to Spore more than pretty much any other game (but Little Big Planet) this year. So when a review copy arrived I grabbed it quicker than Lindsay Lohan getting out of rehab and dashed home to play. I'd forgotten about PC Games. You have to install them, don't you. Man, they take AGES. I mean... people bitch about a few minues for PS3 games to install, on the few that actually do that. It's not like a PC game, though. I knitted a beanie while I was waiting. I had to learn to knit, too. Took some classes, made a few friends... all while waiting for it to install. The game itself is fun. From the intro videos and menus to the actual game, it screams polish. Once ready to start your single/multi cellular organism you are pretty straight away playing. No long intros, no tedium. Playing is simple. Your first choice is herbivore or carnivore. I wanted to opt for a non-predator and have a leisurly play, so I went for a herbivore. What follows then is a relatively simple game. Not unlike Flow in "feel" and gameplay Spore's first stage is really stunningly pretty, very well detailed, bright and bold. It's a lot of fun, growing your creature through ranks of sizes as you eat and eat, engorging yourself. It's strange seeing other versions of you, but cool. UThere's a major difference between the early creature of Spore and Flow, though - Flow is really boring. Spore is not. It's actually surprisingly soon and with mild sadness that you take the first step of your evolution - going onto land. Land is fun. You're an actual "animal" now. You run around, and meet new species, bond with or exterminate them. It's really quite entertaining, again. The controls feel slightly cramped, though. A longer play, this time, then the next stage of your evolution. Tribal culture. It's at this point the Spore train gets detoured into "go fuck yourself" land. The gameplay mechanics and interface which worked well in the first place are scrapped, and replaced with the worst RTS I've ever played. No instructions are given in how to do anything, and it's all entirely arse. For example, I knew I needed maracas, but nothing told me that I needed to take players other than the chieftain to the maraca place and assign them maracas. I just kept getting shown a picture of a club when I tried to talk to other cultures. Then it would tell me to press the button. But without knowing the club was a picture of maracas, and how to assign maracas, and how I needed a group that consisted of at least one person with maracas and the chieftain.... none of that was explained, and it made little or no sense at the time. I literally ended up screaming at the game in frustration. Then it got worse. After making a few friends I came across a group who had been raiding me. So I decided to raid them back. Many people, spears, all a good plan. But then my chieftain vanished. If you haven't played it that doesn't mean much, but you pretty much need your chieftain to do anything. I assumed he'd died, and waited for him to come back. But he never did. I started rebuilding my forces ready for another push. I got people farming, etc. I looked around for him, and couldn't find him. Eventually I did find him, by right clicking on his picture. He was in space. I'm not joking. He was way way up in space, staring out at the vast empty nothing, musin on mortal life. And he was stuck there. I tried to move him, he would not move. I tried to do actions with him, they would not go. Then I started to notice his health dropping. He had not eaten. And he was in space... starving to death. But that was OK. When he died I'd have to wait, but when it respawned he'd be fixed anyway. Very optimistic of me, hey? He respawned in space again. So then quit, and reloaded. SUCCESS! Chieftain is just outside the village. He's visible. Yay! Wait! He's visible... selectable... but still stuck. And starving to death. So that's it for me. My game is locked. My gameplay experiencce is over. There's nothing I can do. I can't move on. I can't continue to play. The game is over. Destroyed by a stupid bug. I guess I'll have to start playing again from scratch and hope the same thing doesn't happen again. I wonder how many people will have this same issue once the game is properly launched?