With the arrival of ‘Spore,’ the hype and anticipation can finally end. Let the Sporing begin. Maxis and Electronic Arts have finally decided to put a new version of ‘The Sims’ on hold and move to a more evolved form of gaming.

‘Spore’ is a real-time strategy game that essentially allows players to play God – creeping through the evolutionary stages of life by creating fully editable creatures with the sole purpose of survival.

Likely to become one of the more effective and enjoyable means of procrastination, ‘Spore’ is highly entertaining and will keep gamers yearning for the next phase of the evolutionary cycle. With each phase more elaborate than the last, ‘Spore’s’ overall game play has a wide range of styles to keep you coming back for more.

In the beginning, a meteor crashes into a planet decided by the player, and from within the interstellar rock emerges a basic single cell life form which they control.

The concept is simple: choose herbivore or carnivore, and then find genetic material (a.k.a. food) to evolve and get to land. Once you’ve obtained enough DNA, you’re able to access the creature creator, where many long hours of your day will be spent. If a gamer doesn’t enjoy the game itself, they will probably still waste a number of hours here.

This is where users customize their creatures to look and behave the way they feel fit. From faces to little features just for looks, the attribute possibilities are immense, and will have users transfixed for days. Of course, not all the body parts and add-ons are available right away. In order to get more options, players must attack other creatures or find parts laying around.

Once evolved onto land, creatures can develop limbs and other new features. Again, the sole purpose is to survive by finding food and impressing other members of your race.

As the game progresses, new challenges emerge that promote evolution and again activate the creature creator. This continues until players reach the tribal phase, in which they compete with other creatures from the ‘Sporepedia’ – an online server of creatures from anyone else who owns the game – to create larger more advanced tribes. This phase is where the RTS feel truly emerges.

Eventually, after conquering or allying with a number of other tribes, ‘Spore’ shifts again to a new mode known as the civilization phase. If you’re not already old and gray from spending your entire life customizing your creature, you now get to customize buildings! But this phase is basically like a more advanced tribal phase. However, players can now mine resources and attempt to control land over the rest of the civilizations on the map.

By conquering the entire map in this phase, players evolve to the Space Age. In comparison to the amount of time the player will spend in this evolutionary stage, all of the other phases in ‘Spore’ are basically mini-games. This will have players glued to the computer for hours, jumping from star system to star system, meeting and greeting countless other creatures supplied by millions of fellow gamers from around the world.

How players go about their business and declare their military status is completely up to them. They are free to attack, ally or simply trade with other creatures. Some planets are inhabited; some are free for the taking. But not all can support life, and in such cases you are able to purchase terra-sculpting tools using your ‘Sporebucks’ to alter a planet to support whatever you want.

As the game is playable on a Mac or PC and from a popular developer like Maxis, ‘Spore’ set itself up for a large fan base from the get-go. Even if a gamer somehow defies probability and finishes the game, the replay value of it is incredible.

Enjoy watching your life evolve away.

mlbellez@syr.edu

Published on September 16, 2008 at 12:00 pm