Spore
Players: 1 Player with online interaction
Age rating: PG

There's a lot of cool games in my collection. If you take a look you'll find Gears of War, Oblivion, Viking: Battle for Asgard, Rainbow Six Las Vegas....but I never thought I'd have such a family-orientated, friendly, fluffy game such as Spore, on it's release day.

There's something about the game that Draws me to it immideately, like when the Sims 2 was released. I completely resent Electronic Arts, and have done since they took over Westwood Studios, but now and again if you search the desert of mundane sport, street racing and movie tie in games that they seem to happy with producing, you'll find something worth spending more than 3 seconds of your attention on. Don't get me wrong, EA have released the odd game which deserved it's fine praise, but the ratio is unfavorable.

Spore is indeed a family orientated game. Within said game you'll find yourself with various options such as choosing a name and diet, before being thrust through space inside a comet and crash landing on a planet of your choice. Once there, it's upto you to swim, breed, eat, and collect DNA and use that to evolve your little critter from far beyond. If you use your mating call and do your little Viva Pinata mating dance, your offspring (which you will now take the helm of) will have added features, chosen by yourself. You can pick tentacles to make you swim faster, poison glands, mouthes, eyes, mandibles, and anything else that you can think of that a disgusting little creature that might live in your bathroom will have.

Obtaining this DNA and evolving is the main concept of the game. You discover new features and breed. If, for example, there's a species that seems to be attacking you, and you want to "off" it for your own survival, you can alter your creature in order to attack back, and live to see another day. Basically it's survival of the fittest, and evolution will help you to survive.

You start off in your pool as a little spore thingie. Now, anyone who's had the pleasure of playing Feeding Frenzie will understand this part from the off. Eat what's smaller than you to grow, and avoid anything bigger. Carnivore or Herbivore (or both), this will help you to survive.

The point of the game is to get on to land and colonise the planet. Eventually when technology allows it, you'll be able to take your growth into outer space, and conquer other planets. There are 5 stages in total from petri-dish to Jean-Luc Picard. The first two of these have you control a single creature. If you die, you simply take control of another, and take control of the evolution where you left off. From the third, you enter the "Tribal" stage where your creatures start to talk and interact, and build little huts to live in and eventually little villages. This turns into more of a RTS game. The customisation options are still almost limitless but there is a greater emphasis on strategy and economics. This still feels very natural to the games already-set path, and even though the game changes considerabley, it still feels like the same journey.

The sound and graphics are typical Maxis. The music will completely remind you of the Sims but dosn't always feel right for the situation. The evolution mode of your creature is very intuative, yet very customisable. It all works wonderfully smoothly and all of the features seem to work hand in hand with each other. Creatures generally look great, even though they often look very samey. The first few creatures look quite different but the main features come via the stats. What they eat, how aggressive they are, and so on. But the colours are very rich, and the backgrounds are very detailed.

Due to the customisation within the game, and the online features allowing you to interact with other people's creations online, I feel this game can kill many of your god given hours. Some people I can see playing into the early hours of the morning. Other people will probably look at this game and say "Oh my god another sims game". I personally see a fresh start but it all depends on the person. If you want a taster, download Creature Creator for free, and see what you feel like. The first stage takes around 30 minutes to complete, where as the second takes a few hours. The length does grow, and unlike the sims, there is kind of an end to the game, but I guess there are lots of ways you can replay the game, given the amount of customisation involved.

If a family game is for you, knock yourself out. If you prefer Ninja Gaiden or Warhawk, then don't give it a second look because you wont be impressed. It's for those that can slow the brain to the level which allows to stop twitching if they don't get a headshot-super combo every 5 seconds.


Ratings
Graphics: B : Very good, colourful graphics. Not very detailed but that's not what the game advertises.
Sounds: D- : Could do with a big rethink. Contemporary music is not for this game
Gameplay: A : Very enjoyable. Not for everyone, but for the people it's made for, it's very very good.
Replayability: C : A replay isn't going to be the same but it's not going to be that much different either. Depends on the players imagination.

Overall score: B+ Cracking game, well needed.

i played this game on my friends DS and it is so bad its, all 2D so like you walk one way and turn around and your monster guy is as thin as paper!!! what is with that they should do something about it.

Handheld versions are always worse than the console versions.

MySims was the same. Amazing Wii game, piss-poor DS game.

DS has too much shovelware on it.