Gamespot's Exclusive First Impressions

[Matt@Sim_Moves]

It's a sign of the anticipation surrounding a game when you're a developer visiting a foreign country and passport control asks you about its release date. That's exactly what the developers of Spore were met with when they entered the UK for the London demonstration of their game. Thankfully for both immigration officers and the gaming public at large, Spore is now "pretty much finished" according to EA, and a worldwide release date of September 7 was recently announced.
The game itself is looking much more complete now, although it has been six months since its last showing at Leipzig in August 2007. With the game now in fully playable form, we got to see the life sim as its gameplay progresses from single-cell organisms to intergalactic warfare and everything in between. It was also a good opportunity for us to put our questions to the development team about Spore's many community features, and to take a look at the Nintendo DS version of the game.








Jumping straight onto one of EA's demo PCs, we wasted no time in getting a hands-on with the game. Spore will offer five evolutionary stages in its duration, and given that we've covered the early parts of the game in other previews, we decided to jump forward and check out space exploration. As with the creature-creation tools, you can customise your spaceship to a highly advanced degree. We chose to use a flying-saucer-shaped vessel as a template, and from there we altered the proportions, applied different colours and patterns, and adorned our creation with various cannons and lasers. Although there was no way that an advanced civilisation would be caught dead in such a monstrosity, it's clear that the tools will let players create pretty much anything they can imagine.


When it came down to playing the game, our hastily designed creation was no match for the toilet-shaped vessel that had already been designed by the Spore team. The game holds your hand with a tutorial on the basic controls and abilities of your ship, both those needed for flying low over planets and abducting creatures, and for interplanetary travel. Controlling the ship in the air was simple. You use either the WASD keys or a right-click of the mouse to move around, and the mouse wheel to ascend or descend. You select weapons and tools by clicking icons at the bottom of the screen. Equipped with a tractor beam, you can click on unsuspecting creatures and pull them into your ship with the left mouse button.










Spore has a very dry sense of humour, and it calls on you to collect creatures for your own nefarious ends. However, there's a downside to your scientific experimentation, and in our demo we managed to introduce a rogue infection to our city by collecting bug-ridden creatures. The result: You have to eradicate the surrounding colonies with your onboard laser, using the left mouse button to fire. Before you can start exploring and colonising other worlds, your final task on your home planet is to colour it purple, although we couldn't quite understand why.


The first planet that we visited was completely barren and needed development before life could inhabit it. We equipped our ship with a variety of plants and used the tractor beam to drop them on the ground. With vegetation available, the next step was to introduce herbivores, with the setup complete once carnivores were dropped on the planet.
Aside from actual gameplay, the big theme of EA's presentation was user-generated content. It's clear that Spore has learnt much from Facebook and MySpace, and instead of being a separate component, the online community features are very much woven into the fabric of the game. In fact, much of Spore's terminology borrows directly from Web 2.0 vernacular; sporecasts let you subscribe to other users' creations, whereas sporepedia is the in-game directory for all of your content. Sporecasts will let you transmit and receive user-generated content, and you'll be able to search the entire Web based on ratings or specific tags (for example, "Doctor Who" or "purple"). We were shown how one of the designers had created a series of animals based on letters from the alphabet, and then put them in a set that can be downloaded by any Spore player online.


Don't expect the online aspect of Spore to be limited to the gameworld, either, because the creators want it to spread to your browser as well. Although no specific announcements have been made, it's clear that the team wants to develop a variety of badges and links that can be embedded into blogs and social networks to show your activity in Spore. Of course, with so much encouragement for user-generated content, it presents an interesting proposition for the creators of The Sims. With so many add-on packs helping to make their previous game one of the best-selling of all time, can we still expect the same sort of support for Spore? The answer that's being hinted at by Maxis is that rather than directly making stuff for the game, the company will release more tools to help users produce it instead. But whatever happens, Spore is clearly a franchise title for EA, and the game is bound to be heavily supported once it finally makes its way to store shelves.


Speaking of franchising, Spore is also being released on the Nintendo DS. Though you can still build creatures and explore new worlds, the handheld version is much more task-oriented than its PC counterpart. The character-building aspect of the game is used to solve problems. The game boasts Phantom Hourglass-style cel-shaded visuals, and the characters have some of the colourfulness of the animals from Viva Piñata. You control your creature by touching the screen, and you use the stylus to shake trees for fruit or attack other creatures.


Spore is shaping up very nicely, and from what we saw in London, it's well on its way to completion. EA has now announced a worldwide release date of September 7--in the meantime, should it drip-feed any more information, we'll be sure to keep you updated.

- Gamespot

[Matt@Sim_Moves]

UK, February 13, 2008 - Hidden amidst the most recent data splash concerning Spore was a first look proper at the DS version – a bespoke take upon Will Wright's manically ambitious attempt to realise Sim Everything. Dubbed Spore Creatues, the handheld arm of what is looking to be this year's big gaming event manages to create an enchanting action adventure game from the DNA of its elder brother - and its release may well prove to be a highlight in its own right when it comes to Nintendo's machine this September.

Naturally, Spore Creatures is shorn of the vast majority of the content of the PC version. Concentrating solely on the creature mode of Spore, the game is replete with its own distinctive artistic style. Think along the lines of Paper Mario mixed in with a little Wind Waker and you'd be getting there - Spore Creatures is a 3D world inhabited by lovingly drawn 2D sprites. The style serves the game well, and even though what we saw was some months off release it looks set to be one of most visually striking titles on the DS.

Here's one we made earlier.

Instead of taking a creature from the primeval soup all the way to the stars, Spore Creatures give players control over one character in a linear journey across a single planet. Much like the corresponding mode in the full fat version, gameplay centres around forming partnerships with some species and taking down more hostile species. The DS deals with this in its own distinctive fashion – blows are administered to foes with a slash on the touch screen, while befriending other animals occurs through a rhythm-based mini-game.

The action plays out much like an action RPG – starting small and humble, over time and through the completion of tasks new abilities and body parts are unlocked that can be implemented in the Creature Editor screen. Again, don't expect all the bells and whistles of the PC's procedural animation system – however, in it's place there is a more than competent suite of options. Body parts can be dragged to the desired location, and there is more than enough room for a little creativity and subsequently scope for a whole world of character.

Evolution of the player character looks to be largely dictated by certain tasks – at one point we came across an insurmountable body of water and were required to attain and employ more amphibian attributes to our Spore. This more focused approach gives the game more than a whiff of the Zeldas, which of course is no bad thing.

The DS version has its own style, and it works remarkably well.

Every one of the species encountered are backed up with the game's own Sporepedia – a pocket-sized tome in comparison to the PC version's colossal affair, but nevertheless imbued with no end of charm and serving to fill out the experience. This is all backed up by a hearty hand of multiplayer options, with the capacity to share creatures with other DSs.

All in all, Spore Creatures is a very handsome package and was a pleasant surprise – unique and adept, it will serve as both an accompaniment to the main Spore experience as well as providing the DS with an exceptionally polished action adventure. We look forward to having an extended look some point in the near future.

Spore is due to be released this September for PC, Mac, Nintendo DS and Mobile.

[Matt@Sim_Moves]

A video interview has been released by Gamespot and is available here.

[dtr sim expert]

I really do like the space ships idea and the look of that one in the screen shot.

[Stitch1200]

POSTING IN OLD THEADS RULES


soz that was an impules thing

[Marcolon]

you just violated 2 forum rules...
Spam and posting in old threads...

Not cool
And im spamming now aswell

[Stitch1200]

yh soz impules thing you know?

[Deza007]

Not again.

[Stitch1200]

ok ok i wont any more ever and i mean it if i do again i will leave forums for forever!

[EAUK_Adroit]

Posting in old threads without having something valid and constructive to add certainly doesn't "rule".

Thread Locked.