Damn dude, you shit with that ass???

Spore is the type of game you should never turn your back on, for when you do, there will be something much more twisted waiting for you to reveal your face again. Do not make eye contact with a creature’s one eye lest you’ll be sent into the inner shackles of your own mind, imprisoned for an eternity of suffering from your own morbid curiosity. Having owned this game as a kid, I was never able to actually get it installed and therefore the disc was doomed for a life of collecting dust in a storage unit. Today however, I was finally able to raise the question, “What does it truly take to transform from just a lil’ guy into peak performance?”

I want to first give Spore a lot of credit for just being itself. Let your freak flag fly, brother!!!! With the main priority being the evolution of your own species through 5 stages of wildly different gameplay. Starting with the cell, where you’ll have to decide whether you want to eat fruit or tear the heads off of everything you meet moving forward. Me? I’m a peaceful creature. I had suspicions that playing as a carnivore would technically be the easier choice that probably everyone makes, so I veered left. Turns out, I was actually right because playing as an herbivore in the first two stages is asking for your spine to get ripped out. Ow!! Ow!! My beautiful creature has gone extinct before it even has a chance to live. I’m being bullied for eating green leaves!!

But, nevertheless we persevere and hardened creatures grow into monsters. The Creature stage is what separates the boys from the men who still laugh at penis jokes. The Creature stage is where most of the meat of the game lies. As you obtain DNA through befriending or killing your neighbors, you’re tasked with adding on unlockable additions to your creature that will truly mold them into an animal in their own right. Being an herbivore, this stage is still pretty difficult since other creatures seem to really love bum rushing you out of nowhere. But guess what, it’s harder to be oppressed when you’re strapped with an Ankylosaurus mace for a tail. Keep it moving, buddy. My friends and I are breakdancing the house down and you’ll never be up to our speed. Try evolving better next time.

I genuinely love the idea of this stage just from a creative standpoint alone. Although it can feel repetitive after a while, there’s nothing quite like transforming your abomination into something even more cursed. You really do get a decent range of warping the animal’s appendages and body however you want, although bear in mind that messing with the legs will definitely mess with your movement. But, who cares!! It’s funny. Probably the most interesting occurrence though was when I was befriending some random guy and out of nowhere, a spaceship came and abducted him right in front of my eyes. Skill issue tbh, but put a pin in it though. The curtain hasn’t been lifted quite yet. You’ll be spending a pretty decent amount of time as a creature, which is why it’s probably taken over most people’s memories of this game. It’s also definitely the best stage out of the 5, as it’s the only stage that allows you to use the creature creator in-game, the main draw of the whole thing. What’s unfortunate is that you can’t really unlock the best parts, like gliding, until late into the stage so in reality you only get to use the abilities for an incredibly short period of time, unless you forgo evolving when asked.

Personally, I didn’t really mind the Tribal or Civilization stages as much as everyone else. It is, however, disappointing that the act of editing your creature falls to clothes, buildings, and vehicles only from that point onward. Where I think Spore falters the most is how it’s constantly changing genres between life stages and never properly explains any of the gameplay changes. One stage you’ll be in a fully controlled third-person creature romp around and then in the next, now it’s an RTS civilization-esque city builder with conquest mechanics. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing, although I do think it is quite ambitious. I would be lying though if I said that playing through a whole life session didn’t come with recurring confusion. Aside from the basic movement controls, the game never goes any deeper than the surface and just sort of makes you wing it in terms of how to build your tribe or city. Because of this, the Tribal stage was nothing but pure chaos the moment it actually opened up. Eventually, it will come naturally though as the game is piss easy anyways and the strategy portion of each stage is completely doused by just simply giving gifts to every tribe as soon as they appear and decking out your vehicle to extreme levels of weaponry no matter what route you’re playing as. Nonetheless, they’re not terrible stages to play through but they definitely aren’t challenging enough to be super memorable either.

I was actually cruising real good in my playthrough until I hit the brick wall that is the Space stage and that is where I think the game takes a nosedive for me. Here you’ve pretty much hit the apex of all life and it turns out that being on top is rather… boring. Again, the playstyle shifts into what feels like a business tycoon set in the Mass Effect universe and while the tutorial is longer, I still found myself seriously lost with all the new shit the game just throws at you in the final inning. It’s still really funny to stumble upon a worse looking creature than the last, but traveling from planet to planet and trading spice for badges or items to purify the atmosphere is dull enough to put the game down before you even hit the halfway mark of the progress bar. It doesn’t help that there is also an extremely eerie lack of music and ambiance for a game that was made by Maxis, often leaving you with nothing but pure silence a lot of the time. With that I decided we probably saw what we could and put it to rest, but I was genuinely curious if playing as a carnivore offered up a challenge or noticeable differences to any of the game’s stages.

Nope, in fact it’s actually way easier since eating everything you run into is 500 million times more convenient than playing the prey avoiding all the danger. Who woulda thunk? What I did learn though was that the game saves every creation you’ve ever made and will slip them into any new playthroughs you create, which I found quite endearing. I got to murder the shit out of my previous creature in the Tribal stage, which made me realize that the space abduction I saw before was supposed to be a placeholder for myself since, at the time, I hadn’t built my own spaceship yet. It turns out that I was the bad guy, which is actually.. a really fucking cool idea. Not to mention, the Civilization stage just tosses in these kaiju freaks of nature that don’t really do anything other than throw a wrench in your plans sometimes. I love them so much though because they’re usually ugly as sin and shoot massive fucking fireballs, one shotting everything they touch. It’s these things here that make Spore really special despite its flaws and it’s really unfortunate to see that we still haven’t seen anything quite like it ever since. I did however get to the Space stage again and immediately fell off for the second time though. It was crazy for me to read that there were apparently supposed to be several more stages that were scrapped and I honestly can’t tell if they would have made the game any better or worse. We’ll never know!!!

So yeah, it’s not the greatest game ever made but I really like the ideas that were attempted here. It’ll probably be sticking with me for a while anyways since it was a the perfect amount of goofy to get me through a shitty week, but at the end of the day it really just made me want someone new to pick up the mantle and create a similar Spore-like game to mess around in. There’s definitely a foundation here for something to build off of and there’s gotta be some weirdo game designer out there who played the fuck out of this game as a kid.

Also hey, if you’re photo-sensitive just be careful streaming or watching someone stream this game. For some reason in a game capture, it’ll turn every black screen into a crazy fucking rainbow light show of glitched textures. I ain’t posting an example, but I did not know this would happen and got clotheslined by a wall of radioactive lava lamp fluid. Not really sure why this happens, but it is a common bug apparently tied to the game’s v-sync and resolution settings. From what I experienced, it does not do this if you play it normally and only happens in the video capture while recording it. Just doing my part for whoever finds this information relevant. 👍

El joc està lluny de ser perfecte, però fa tantíssimes coses bé i és tan únic, que només puc ficar-li la màxima nota. Una de les coses més importants és recordar que torna als origens de Maxis i per tant no és un joc per a tot lo món.

Realment és molt rotllo "juntar a un joc tots els que ha fet Will Wright al llarg de la seua vida" i com la majoria d'eixos jocs a mi m'han agradat... La llàstima va ser que EA clavara presa per a traure el joc abans de temps i es quedaren prou coses pel camí.

Igualment és un joc molt addictiu i amb uns editors molt potents que ofereixen moltíssimes possibilitats. La part jugable destaca especialment en les fases de criatura i espacial, més encara a l'última, on puc dedicar-li una muntonà d'hores.

El joc em va encantar al seu llançament del 2008 i continua encantant-me ara. Crec que val la pena mínim provar-lo.

P.D. No tinc tots els logros realment, perquè hi ha uns quats que a dia de hui són impossibles de traure. Però sí he tret la majoria del joc normal, incloent passar-se totes les fases en difícil i dur a nivell 10 tots els arquetips.

Ah! La Sporepedia i per tant compartir creacions, encara funciona. Recomane comprar el joc a GOG, que sí donen claus per a registrar a EA amés de ser DRM Free (el joc original només permitia fer 4 instal·lacions...).

Goodest News Everyone, BAZINGA!😎 sosorry, deepest apologies wise clergymen and creative playdough enthusiasts, GruG somehow "forgotten" last saturday was actually Towel Day!!! yep, do like talking to funnywacky alien like Fwippo ^.^....but not right now, ANOTHER COLONY NEEDS OUR HELP !!!!! ,,,teh Kessel spice must flow, Härkönen Empire's Ur-Quan Reaper Borgs will defeatd, then the "deep&intricate" 42 secrets of teh StarBorn in center of MilkyWay await , get suited up & ready for suicidemission my gorgeous intelligently designed compatriots!!! Will you be Good OR Evil, or maybeperhaps, ""necessary Evil""...? in Black&White2, you can do Literally anything, But all villagers in your underwater colonies (surely you have many of em) will turn into pre-rendered DreamWorksCGI trolls if thou art not a capital g provider&caretaker...doNot ask how know that, wont be digging up video older than You showcasing this (does not star Will Wright), GruG simply donot care enough..but he rember!

Ps:Grug's favorite toddler-proofed minigame? dunnoooo me litrly UngaBunga!! donot like FarCry Primal (NO DINOSAURS!!!) so gonna go play Hey You Pikachu on my NintendoDS. yepp,one could say 4X games require 4x my Grug IQ, so no objectiv Shadow Empire essay will be painted on these cavern walls of mine, Grug guarantees....caveman does not wanna "go 2 cosmos", big and scary like starry night sky Aurora, prefer heroesmightmagic Mod
pps:donot look into heroesmightmagic Lores.......DO NOT "REDEEM" THE 3D PRINTED ANDROIDS!!!!!

I'm complaining, this is the Complainer's Corner. I like this game. Now I'm complaining about it.

I genuinely don't know how this game is perceived for the kids who were born later and weren't around to see the tech demos and showcases of this game before it came out. Absolutely no clue. But you have to understand that the idea behind this game and how it was pitched was so engaging it had the world's eyes on it.

The greatest failing this game had was stats. It's really that simple. I don't know how this got greenlit, I don't know how it got shipped, but whoever decided "strongest piece takes precedence," like...WHAT DO YOU MEAN?

Like first off, from the perspective of this game where the whole. Entire. Point. Is to make creatures anyway you want. You decide to make this ABC-ass gameplay loop where first off, what your creation is mostly only matters for the first two stages. But second, having specific pieces just be best? Hello??? They straight up invalidate your other pieces and the problem with that is that pieces don't really have special characteristics of their own so the game is really just aesthetics and stat sticks. It's just like putting on armor in an RPG, completely invalidating the creature creation aspect which was the whole point of the entire game to begin with.

But third and most importantly, your creature doesn't matter anyways. The coolest thing about the showcases for this game was the fact that if you made a creature, there was no disconnect between what you made and how it functioned in the world. It made sense to have to make a creature with an arm that pops out of its head because that helps it reach high places. Making a creature a certain way would allow it to interact with the world differently, that was the most exciting thing about it in my mind.

But instead, nah, the body parts just clip. Nothing matters. The Creature Creator is just a for fun thing. And the worst part of it all is that the most of the stages feel like they should've just been their own games because they clearly took away from the whole project trying to fit these different ideas into both this engine and this game that they had to release in a timely manner.

And by "these different ideas" I mostly mean the Space Stage, because you can tell that was both the one they had to put the most time into and the one that's the most half-baked. It's not completely boring but it consistently feels like it should've been so much more and simultaneously you'll get this nagging feeling that the Creature stage (and the others as well, really) probably got neglected/rushed because they had to make the space stage so "vast."

But I think the thing that makes me saddest is the fact that there was never a follow-up. I don't necessarily mean a sequel, more like a spiritual successor. There is no Spore-like or Spore 2, and genuinely the only game I can think of that kinda has a similar vibe is Eternal Cylinder, but even if there are some out there that are kinda like it, I really wish and hope that one day we end up getting a game that lives up to what Spore was supposed to be.

Na Steam eu não consegui colocar uma nota "encima do muro"... AQUI EU CONSIGO! :D

Não me entenda mal, Spore é definitivamente um grande clássico, tem uma ideia muito boa e esse foi um dos jogos que me cativou muito quando eu era criança, eu já criei muitos aliens nesse jogo antes de comprá-lo na Steam, eu gostava tanto que cheguei a comprar na época o DVD de Darkspore, mas meu PC não rodava e os servers já tinham fechado... ENFIM!!

Apesar disso tudo, Spore continua sendo um jogo com uma ideia muito boa, mas sem muito investimento, esse jogo poderia ter muito mais mecânicas interessantes do que realmente tem, tudo nele deveria ter sido trabalhado 3x mais pra realmente ter ficado bom, muita coisa nesse jogo é extremamente bugada, e os únicos estágios de evoluções, que realmente foram legais pra mim, foi o Criatura e o Tribal, de resto tudo muito chato e entediante, PRINCIPALMENTE O ESTÁGIO ESPACIAL.

MEU DEUS, O QUE EU MAIS GOSTAVA NA INFÂNCIA HOJE EM DIA É O MAIS CHATO DE TODOS.
É praticamente impossível progredir nele sem ser milionário, e não tenho vergonha de dizer que usei "moreMoney" nessa fase pq é mto chato e complicado conseguir dinheiro nesse modo.

Fico triste por não ter sido tudo que eu me lembrava, e acho que não vou abrir esse jogo tão cedo novamente...

Spore was such an innovative and ambitious game when it came out and still remains a unique and worthwhile experience. That being said, there are so many glaring problems that leave me wishing there was a sequel or successor to come out to correct them.

First of all, the whole game is simplified to be as user friendly as possible while sacrificing so much potential of what this game could have been.

The cell and creature creators make what looks more like cartoonish blobs than believable organisms, the tribal and civ stages feel like teaser mini-games, and the space stage gameplay essentially boils down to fetch-quest missions and collecting spice.

By today's standards, just about every feature (planet terraforming, vehicle creation, city building, etc.) is a small gimmick rather than a meaningful or impactful game mechanic. Collectively, this is what Spore feels like; lots of trinkets to toy around with until, inevitably, you get bored and stop playing.

Still, 16 years later, no game has taken the reigns to fill the niche that Spore has made and correct the mistakes.