bit-tech News: Spore - Hands-on Preview

[Chierin]

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 s the micromanagement and sense of control then Civilisation Stage is there for you from the get-go.

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