Upon reading some information on Spore, I came across one review from a source that I have typically found to be less than credible in their original thought, but I figure "hey, they have to write this themselves since they reviewed the game." I went ahead and read their impressions, which I am now going to pick apart. I hope most of you can relate in hating Kotaku for being a useless waste of bandwidth.
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Impressions: Spore? Or SimSim?
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We've all seen screen shots and video of Spore's 3D character design. There seem to be limitless options provoking endless game play.
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Fair enough. We had all read about the idea of your critter evolving based on how you interact with the environment and that Will Wright had said it'll be impossible to duplicate scenarios.
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But what not many people know about Spore is that the experience lasts just five hours before you are done with a majority of the game's features. Yeah, from all of that cute character creation to the large scale city dynamics, it's over pretty quick.
"I waited in line, where's the ride?"
"The line is the ride."
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Now maybe I'm crazy, but in these other Sim games, you're given the chance to plop down your city on one plot and then plop another one down on another plot. Its almost as if you can have more than one city at a time. Let's see The Sims: Multiple lots for your houses. Guess what? You can make a whole neighborhood. I find the prospect of your area to grow: Sims(a neighborhood) to Sim City pre-2K4(a whole city and neighboring cities to Sim City 2004(an entire county and then some) to what Spore offers: The whole friggin universe. I find it very likely that I will be able to have multiple games going at a time.
Kotaku gives the impression that this is your RPG where you're bound to one character for all of eternity while completing all the tasks the game has to offer, ensuring you that starting a new character will only net you the same quests you did your first run through. Remember, the game name is Spore, not SimSpore.
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So where is the ride in Spore? Four of the five stages, which Crecente recently detailed more than I will here, are done shortly after they begin. As soon as you get used to walking, you are founding a society. And as soon as you get used to conquering other societies, you get the fuck off the planet.
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Wright did state that the majority of the game is set in the space section, where interaction with the other civilizations takes place.
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The effect is like watching highlights from the history of Maxis, a sort of Will Wright Cliffsnotes™ version—everything you may have missed from Sim Earth, Sim City and The Sims in an afternoon. But simultaneously, it seems like Maxis has cut out the very heart of what makes these games "Sim" titles: the actual time spent...Simming.
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Sim Earth.
Sim City.
The Sims.
I find the trend there yet do not see it in the title "Spore." This isn't the Sim series that Kotaku believes to be. Its one thing to have experienced nothing else by Maxis over the years other than these simulators and to be uncomfortable with a change, but the incorporation of a different style is okay. It doesn't mean the game sucks.
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On-planet RTS elements like vehicle battles and defense towers are simplified to what looks like a casual RTS—if such a genre exists—resembling less the metaphorical game of paper, scissors rock while leaning toward the more literal interpretation.
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Congrats, you took a quote from Wright in calling it a casual RTS. He wanted to bring different elements of game play into this title, allowing players to experience a variety of aspects of gaming while all linking them together here in one game. Its as if Kotaku believes that there cannot be new genres, scoffing at the lack of it being a "true" RTS with overly complicated controls, scaring away those who prefer not to micro-manage and control resources and locations.
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The payoff, therefore, needs to be the fifth level of Spore: space. It's here where players will spend hours 6-infinity conquering civilizations on a planetary scale, with each planet comprised of single player campaigns from players around the globe.
While we know that in space there will be missions to complete, I don't think that Maxis is showing anything about it at GC '07 other than a few scraps of video.
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This is still a very unclear part of the game as far as what you can do short of landing on a planet and attacking the other civilizations or what we all enjoyed with moving an enemy critter to a planet that it cannot survive on and watching the thing's head explode.
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So there are two ways Spore could fold out.
1. We've all been duped. The first four levels are but an homage to what's been done, with the fifth level starting the real game, William Wright's unsung opus to be revealed in full in the coming months...the real Spore.
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2. Spore kinda blows.
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I'm sure that this criticism is over the Leipzig demo that was shown, which was without a doubt just accelerated for the purpose of being able to show a wide spectrum of the game, not just the "first five hours" of the game. The beginning is called a tutorial for the space section. You would think that you get to do more of that creation later on.
Adding to the replay value is the fact that not only can you make a new organism, but the fact that it will interact differently than the last one. The one aspect that all these Maxis games seems to retain is the sandbox mode that you experience in each one. They've all proven that the replay value in creation is always above the bar. I'm sure that simply with the understanding of perhaps the inclusion of monoliths on other planets as you get to "start over" there with a new species, suddenly the poor review turns around into what these people want: species creation. Then again, what's the harm in starting a new organism over like you do a new family on the Sims?
Doubting Will Wright is rather bold. The man is one of the greatest game creators and that his success in the past has yet to give any reason to think otherwise about his projects. The concept of "games must be 40 hours of linear play" is crap, as are most of the "experts" on Kotaku. Their lack of original thought combined with their staff's inability to examine a game for what it is and not what they want it to be has once again given me very little reason to visit, much less read any content on kotaku.com, short of using the source for criticism to educate readers and encourage them to take interest in titles based off their own impressions and not from someone who is paid to copy+paste all day.
