Spore is the brainchild of Will Wright and EA. The team over at Maxis has spent a long time developing this genre-crossing title and has tried to polish it into a gem. Spore does many things right, the graphics, the sounds and the interface, but unfortunately does have some drawbacks, like length of play and multiplayer aspects.

Spore is broken up into 5 different portions: Cell phase, Creature phase, Tribal phase, Civilization phase and Space phase. Each phase puts your creature into a different time frame in the evolution of their existence and provides different gaming aspects for you to succeed. Probably the most fun and addictive portions of the game are the first two phases, Cell and Creature, because you are getting used to the game and the interface and really are shaping your creatures.

Cell phase starts you as single celled organism that needs to either eat other cells or plants in order to grow big and strong. Your decision early on to either eat others or vegetables will play out through the game, so choose wisely. I chose to be a fully aggressive meat eating society and was labeled in game as such. In cell phase, the game equates to playing a game of fl0w for the PS3; you swim around and navigate through water to find food and doge enemies. As you get more parts, you can customize your cell and give it offensive parts or parts to make it swim faster or turn better. After you have eaten enough you will then get bigger and bigger until you will sprout legs and join the creature phase.

Creature phase is very fun and addictive as well as here you set the tone for your society by taking to the world on land. Once you sprout legs, you make moral decisions as to what you want to do with neighboring creatures: kill them or befriend them? I chose to demolish every creature that crossed my path and arm my creatures with as much offense as I could possibly find. Once you conquer or make enough friends, you will evolve into the tribal phase where your creatures are now set in their appearance, so make sure that you edited them to your hearts desire until this point. The tribal phase gives your creatures weapons for them to use and tools, which will allow them to do things like fish and hunt better.

The game really slows down after the tribal phase. Once you hit Civilization phase it is pretty much old hat. Civilization phase is an extension of the Tribal phase, really, except now you get a capital and vehicles. The Space phase is the last portion and here the game really becomes open ended by allowing you to explore other planets and again, you make a moral decision to obliterate other planets like Darth Vader using the Death Star or make pals of the other interstellar creatures and hold hands and sing kumbaya. I chose the former.

Spore can be a pretty short game that, if you play straight through, can be completed in approximately 10 hours or so. This is tempered by saying that you can spend hours alone in the creation phases customizing your creature’s limbs, eyes, mouths, etc. In the Cell phase I made my creature change about 4 times before shifting to the Creature phase. Once I was in Creature phase, I must have changed his color and style at least a dozen times until I got them looking like ravenous murderers.

Spore is also limited a bit by the fact that there is no real online gameplay other than getting creatures from other users via the Sporepedia. Spore is for the most part very user friendly by making controls intuitive and the creation of custom creatures, buildings and vehicles very simple. The folks at Maxis did try to add in some replay value by adding in achievements for doing certain things through the game, but these are more of a side note than a main feature.

Spore can be incredibly addictive and really revolves and shines around a player’s imagination.
Bottom line is that Spore is a game that will be embraced by a creative fan that enjoys creating one of a kind work and marvel at their creations. For fans that want a lengthy experience and online head to head play, you will need to look elsewhere. You can think of Spore as The Sims with violence and fully customizable creatures.

Overall: 7 out of 10

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