SPORE has been uninstalled from my computer.  Even with running through it a second time with a much more agressive species just didn’t hold my attention.  It’s a neat toy…  It kept me occupied, on and off, for a week or two.  But ultimately I’m just not enjoying it that much.  The whole thing seems kind of pointless.

I realize that a lot of the Maxis games are like that - there’s no real storyline to advance, you’re just messing around with a city, or someone’s life, or a planet, or whatever.  But previous games like The SIMs and SIM City were far more engaging.  I kept coming back to see how much further I could go…  With SPORE, I’m just not caring that much.

And now that I’ve had a chance to really play with it and evaluate it and see how everything works, I’m very glad I didn’t pay money for it.  Which, I suspect, is why there is no demo available.

My first experience with SPORE was quite a bit less than satisfactory.  I suspect that a good portion of this was due to how I was playing it…  I was very carefully trying to walk down the middle of the road.  I didn’t want any restrictions placed on my game.  I wanted to see both sides of every option.

So, during the cell stage, I made sure to eat one plant for every animal - assuring access to omnivorous mouths.  During the creature stage I made sure to socialize with one creature for every creature I killed.  In the tribal stage I again made sure to socialize with one tribe for each tribe I killed.  Back and forth, back and forth.  Carefully calculated.  Always keeping count.

Aside from being distracted from the gameplay with my constant balancing…  My creature also turned out pretty unimpressive.  I was looking more at the stats than the over-all aesthetic, and I was not terribly happy with the results.  I put on parts just because they had the skills I needed, not because they fit with the character of the creature.  And that trend continued throughout SPORE - focusing more on the stats than the experience.

So I figured I ought to give it another try, with an approach I was more likely to enjoy - evil villain.

In the cell stage I ate everything that moved.  I could not possibly have become any more carnivorous.  In the creature stage I continued eating everything…completely ignored social interaction and went for all-out hostility…but also tried for an interesting creature at the same time.  I designed some kind of strange dinosaur/bird hybrid that I was quite happy with.

The tribal stage was much easier with my more agressive playstyle.  I didn’t have to worry about raiders coming to steal my food…  Didn’t have to make friends with anyone…  I just killed everything and everyone.  And I noticed that your creature’s abilities do affect the gameplay in the tribal stage.  You certainly have to gather the appropriate food…  And I was disappointed to find that you cannot eat the other tribes…  But my creatures were also hopping/gliding and using their spit attack, which I did not expect.

The civilization stage went very quickly.  Previously I had been trying to establish trade routes and improve relations…  This time I just killed everyone else.  At this stage of the game your creature is largely irrelevant.  Their various abilities no longer matter.  You don’t even have to gather the right kind of food.  The only influence that your history has is that you get different special abilities.  As a hostile carnivore, my special abilities involved blowing stuff up.  But I never really used them…  I was able to build a very effective military with very little effort and simply destroyed everyone else.

And then I was at the space stage again.  And again, while it is fun, I’m a little disappointed that it has so little to do with the creature I spent so much time building.

You don’t have to gather food anymore, so it really doesn’t matter if you’re a carnivore or herbivore or whatever.  You’re flying around in a spaceship, so it doesn’t matter if your creature has wings or fangs or dances well or anything.  It doesn’t even seem to matter much that I exterminated everyone I met during the tribal and civilization stages - the new planets I find are perfectly willing to chat and trade with me.

The only thing that your history changes, at this stage of the game, is what kind of secret uberweapon you eventually have access to.  That’s it.  And it seems to be dependant solely on what you eat.  An aggressive, murdering race of carnivores like mine gets the exact same secret weapon as a peaceful, social race of carnivores.  It doesn’t matter whether you killed everyone or made trade agreements with them, it matters whether you ate plants or animals - which seems a little odd to me.

And at this stage of the game you have absolutely nothing to do with growing or evolving a creature.  You fly around in a spaceship and you can trade with other planets, set up colonies, blast other spaceships, collect samples…  But the creature itself is completely irrelevant.  You don’t even see the actual creatures unless you buzz a colony or open up the communication screen.  The rest of the time you’re looking at planets, stars, and spaceships.

I certainly had more fun this time around.  The journey to the space stage was a lot more enjoyable, and I’m much happier with the overall aesthetic I came up with.  And it is neat to look back at my race’s history and see how I’ve clawed my way up to where I am.  But, really, that whole journey just doesn’t mean anything anymore.  Once you get to the space stage it’s just a 4X-style game with relatively shallow mechanics.  And that is, honestly, pretty disappointing.

It doesn’t matter that I built my cell for pure agression.  It doesn’t matter that I ignored defensive armor in favor of a bigger mouth and faster movement.

It doesn’t matter that my creature agressively attacked anything that moved.  It doesn’t matter that it could fly, or hide, or run fast.

It doesn’t matter that my tribe never used a single musical instrument, never even attempted to make peace with anyone.

It doesn’t matter that my civilization obliterated everyone else, even when more peaceful options were available.

None of that matters at the space stage of the game.  The only thing that matters is the fact that my species eats meat.  And all that other stuff along the way, while fun, is completely meaningless.

Of course, the whole point in playing a game is to have fun, so it doesn’t really matter if there’s meaning to any of it or not…  But why bother designing a creature with wings if, ultimately, they’ll do you no good?  Why bother making friends with a tribe instead of killiing them if, ultimately, there’s no difference?

I would really have liked to see your actions and choices along the way influence the space stage more.  Maybe if you’d built a creature with lots of health you might have access to better armor or shields.  Maybe if your creature had wings you’d have access to more wing-looking parts when building your ship.  Maybe if you were agressive throughout your evolution the new races you run in to might be more hesitant about communicating with you.

And, frankly, if I wanted to play a 4X-ish game I’ve got plenty of better options.  I could install Master of Orion II again…  Or play Sins of a Solar Empire, or Galactic Civilizations, or one of the several Civilization games - all of which deliver a far more fulfilling 4X experience.  The whole point in SPORE was to be able to grow your own species, to create your own world.  Or, at least that’s what I thought the whole point was.  But when everything is said and done the species that you grow and the world that you create just don’t matter, and you’re looking at a very basic 4X game.

Slashdot | EA Hit By Class-Action Suit Over Spore DRM

The ever-growing unrest caused by the DRM involved with EA’s launch of Spore came to a head on Monday. A woman named Melissa Thomas filed a class-action lawsuit against EA for their inclusion of the SecuROM copy-protection software with Spore. This comes after protests of the game’s DRM ranged from a bombardment of poor Amazon reviews to in-game designs decrying EA and its policies. Some of those policies were eased, but EA has also threatened to ban players for even discussing SecuROM on their forums.

It’s about time somebody did something about all this DRM crap.  I’m getting tired of paying $50+ for a piece of software and then not being able to use it as I see fit.  If I’m buying it, if it now belongs to me, let me use it how I want to.

If it doesn’t belong to me, if I can’t use it the way I want to, label it as such.  Call it a rental or something similar.  And price the product accordingly.  I sure as hell wouldn’t pay $50+ to rent a game, and I don’t think anyone else would if they knew what they were doing.

Space, the final frontier…  Or the final stage of evolution in SPORE at least.

Once you’ve conquered your own world you get to build a space ship and send it off to explore the universe.  You get to abduct alien life forms, terraform planets, shoot at the neighbors.  This is actually a lot of fun.  This is, quite possibly, my favorite part of the game.  Which is good, I suppose, since it is easily the longest part…

But I’m not sure if the journey to the space stage was really necessary.  Sure, it’s fun to look back at your race’s history…  See how you crawled up out of the ooze and struggled all the way to spaceflight.  It’s neat to look back and remember all those fond times.  Remember that time when the spider monster ate your baby?  Or the time your chieftan accidentally killed that creature instead of talking to them?  Remember how goofy your first boat looked?

But by the time you’re in the space stage none of that really matters.  The abilities you had as a cell, or a creature, or a tribe, or even a civilization no longer matter all that much.  What matters now is how you interact with the neighbors, how big your planet gets, and what you equip on your spaceship.  They could easily have skipped over all that in-betwen stuff and cut right to the space stage.

So, ultimately, I’m fairly disappointed with SPORE.  The initial hype about a game where you could make anything and be anything just did not deliver.  You are consistantly limited in just what you can make or be by arbitrary roadblocks in the game.  And by the time you get to the end all that making and all those roadblocks just don’t matter anymore.

I’ll tell you right now that I just don’t feel compelled to keep playing.  I’m not terribly interested in creating a new race and working my way through all of that again.  I’m not interested in exploring the rest of my galaxy or meeting strange new creatures from other people’s games.  I’ll probably putter around in the space stage for another day or two, but this game will not stay installed on my drive for much longer.  It just isn’t that good.

And I’m certainly glad that I pirated a copy of it to try out before buying, because I’d be pretty upset right now if I’d spent money on it.

None of which is to say that it is a bad game.  I’m sure a lot of people will have a lot of fun with it.  But SPORE just does not live up to the expectations that I had.  Not because the hype was too big and the game just didn’t deliver, but because the message was simply wrong.  SPORE just is not the game that it was advertised to be.  The whole “design a creature” thing is really just a very tiny part of the game.  And the majority of your time, if you keep playing, will be spent in the space stage - where all those design decisions just don’t matter anymore.

I was quite happy to see the end of the Tribal phase of SPORE…  I just did not enjoy myself.  It played like a half-assed attempt at an RTS.  Not enough control to make it playable, too much going on to make it fun.  So when my creatures finally evolved enough to found a Civilization I didn’t hesitate for a moment.

Unfortunately, the Civilization stage is another attempt at a half-assed RTS…or maybe 4X game.  This time around you’re dealing with cities instead of tribes…  And you’ve got vehicles instead of individual villagers…  And you’re gathering spice to earn money, rather than gathering food…  But the gameplay is virtually identical.  Gather stuff to build up your city, send people out to conquer or convert the other cities, rinse, and repeat.

In the civilization stage you get to edit your buildings, and your vehicles, and your creature’s outfits again.  You can attack the other cities with your military, or you can try to convert them to your religion, or you can buy them out with your economic might.  But, really, it’s just a slightly larger version of the tribal stage.  And, as such, I did not enjoy myself all that much.