Spore is a good game. It consumed my attention for a whole weekend that I very much enjoyed, until I felt I'd exhausted the game's possibilities. It troubles me, therefore, that I'm having trouble expanding on calling it "good". It's reminds me of that type of film which is hugely entertaining for its duration, and utterly forgettable outside it.
You control and develop a creature from its first appearance in the oceans to its dominance over the entire galaxy. The game is split into five stages, each representing a different level of development, and the first four stages are tutorials. Apparently the goal was to make each stage ten times as complex as the last - an arbitrary measure but the notion holds - so that casual game-players could get up to speed. The corollary is that final stage will be greater in scale and complexity than the sum of all that precedes it - and that's the case. The Space stage is almost a different game, and will be the subject of a later post.
This isn't a weakness. The early stages teach you everything you need to play Space. I've talked about good tutorials elsewhere but this is something very different. Where Advance Wars teaches specific mechanics in each lesson and uses these to deliver more abstract concepts, Spore teaches you how to play a complex PC game, that can be compared to Elite, even if you have no knowledge of playing such a game before. Everything, from selecting units by clicking on them, to concentrating on one target at a time, to controlling the map with keyboard controls, is introduced at the right time. I fancy that a player could go from Solitaire through the University of Spore and emerge able to play Starcraft.
The creators are incredible too - but they're creators. You can construct esoteric and individual animals just by dragging, scaling and tweaking parts. Hands clip to arms, that attach in neat mirrored pairs to bodies, that twist and distort manipulating the vertebrae. Entertaining and ridiculous creations sprout forth without effort. This is all a diversion from the game. The creature creator is a toy, but not a game. I suspect that Spore, the game, exists to serve Creature Creator, the toy.
There are equivalent tools for the buildings, vehicles and spaceships you build later in the game but these are less enthralling. It’s less impressive to create and control, say, your own airplane. It’s also unimpressive for the game to animate it: rolling is easy, walking is hard. Asking you to design custom factories is almost a joke – and in Space you’ll be asked to design a new set on every planet you colonise. (There are plenty of default choices, which spare you time if you wish and demonstrate the power of the tools.) It’s a perversity that creating inanimate objects comes later, after you’ve developed an amazing creature.
The stages can be quick, if you know what you’re doing (I completed them in a couple of hours, minus time in the creator), or milked for a very long time (my housemate spent weeks at Creature stage, interacting with every other creature and killing one of the giant creatures that stalks the map). There isn’t much to any of the stages except Space, and there is little consequence from one stage on your abilities on the next. It’s a deceptive game, with each stage an imitation of something else: the creature stage, for example, is like World of Warcraft shorn of everything but kill quests. At times, it almost feels like the game is telling you lies as to the importance of your actions. If the game is committed to the vision it presents, then my decisions as a tribe should affect more than what bonus I receive for my spaceship.
Impressive but empty, Spore feels unfinished and founded on an uncertain idea – one of those “Would This Be Cool” ideas that does not stand up to the scrutiny of execution. It is a flawed effort, but still an achievement I respect.
