Sep 18 2008
Spore - A Review and a Lesson to Developers
Spore is the recently released game from game design genius Will Wright. Reviews have been somewhat mixed, ranging from good to great, with a few occasional mediocre reviews. For the most part, I think this is due to excessive hype, and the impossible expectations caused by following The Sims. But make no mistake, Spore is an excellent game. I recently completed a review titled: Spore - A Detailed Review of the latest Will Wright creation. An exerpt:
The open ended gameplay, the enormous variety of options, the opportunities to express one’s creativity through creation or storytelling, and the sheer fun and joy you get from playing Spore are all major reasons this is such an excellent game. The potential for replayability is great, while the potential to keep playing a single game is equally great.
There is a lesson for all POW developers from Spore. Give your players a way to express their creativity and imagination, and you give them unlimited content. Probably the only thing still keeping City of Heroes alive is the amazing character and costume creator. It is a shortsighted shame when a POW fails to give its players tools to create their own content, customize their characters, and customize some part of the world (generally a house, but other options are good as well).
I’ll probably get it. I think we’ve all been looking forward to it for about three years now, so of course some will feel a little let down.
My friend has it and is loving it, although he has a few complaints about the lack of ability to automate things and the necessity of having to manually deal with every single pirate attack.
I’ve met some people who loved it, some who hated it, but none of them played it longer than a few hours. The gameplay is boring and repetitive. There should have been more emphasis on the first 2 phases, which are fun because of the creature creation, it’s just not as much fun to design city halls and tanks.
I have to agree with the spirit of this post, Cambios. If a modern graphical MUD were to build a game world that is as open as Spore, with fantasy elements, and abilities that you spent exp (or some similar advancement currency) on, then I am sure it would be a hit. I just picked up Spore, and after working through the second phase of the game, I immediately realized what great framework Spore is for the type of game that many jaded graphical MUD fans are hoping for. I love how the parts that you unlock are related to how you play the game. I had fun playing with herbivores and omnivores and carnivores. I’m still having fun exploring all of the different trait abilities that are unlocked pending upon your play style.
I sincerely hope that future developers are looking at Spore and seeing the potential. A nicely polished MUD, with that level of customization and PLAY based, not time based, rewards and advancement would be a great thing for gamers.
I could go on and on about the possibilities of MUDs.
-Witchkiller
I wil get my Son to check it out. He is a real Gamer.
I want to play this game, but i have to wait a few more months.
You always get the extremes with games, either they are loved or loathed.
Spore is a step back in game design. It is a toy, a screen saver, but not a game. It is repetitive and does not offer challenges, incentives.
Just check the ratings at amazon.com, amazon.de, amazon.co.uk, … besides people complaining about Securom, too many people just find it boring.
You can take Spore as a design study, but releasing this as a game was a step back from Sim City, Sim Earth and similar games.
I cannot really imagine why your daughter or your wife love the game. I also could not understand why Black and White was praised by some people.
These supposed sandbox games are very restricted and limited, repetitive instead of offering replayability through the sandbox approach. But people call them sandbox games… With a very limited set of instructions at hand, it does not even matter how you play, carnivore or herbivore, this does not really make a difference. Even if you come to the space age, there are games like Galactic Civilizations or Civilization X,Y,Z that offer me more meaningful choices and consequences.
Spore picks up some parts of RT strategy games without ever getting to the complexity and challenge involved. Really, I guess some of you know SIM EARTH and previous Maxis games, they all do better in this regard.
I think you pointed out my problem with Spore. You can do many playful things that are for sure fun. But not if you dissect game mechanics in cold blood while reviewing, not really playing, the game.
I love the combined arms approach in Medieval: Total War (I hope Medieval 2 is more like the old MTW1), the very first Panzer General for DOS/Win95 and the whole civilization series. Rome: Total War and the next Panzer General games toned down the need for that. Cavalry charging in a spear wall and winning was impossible in Medieval, but worked too well in Rome!
Actually I like the freedom of exploration that Spore provides. But I prefer it in a setting like the old Ultima Underworld or Ultima VII/VIII.
So well, then I got Spore. It is neither a strategy game, nor a MMORPG, nor a RPG… probably too innovative and too much for an old and biased gamer.
I always try to understand people, why they like or hate this or that. It is really frustrating that people love “Titanic” so much, and I always think I would rather watch Evil Dead: Army of Darkness again.
But at least now I have some idea why people like Spore and why I did not really get it. Maybe I should give it another chance and be a bit more open-minded, though I doubt it is my kind of game.