Latest review on a pc based version of game – full of screenshots, game tips and hint. One of the latest screenshoted review about PC game – Spore.

The idea behind Spore is this; you are God, the Alpha, Omega and Almighty. You are omniscient, omnipresent and capable of creating a rock so big you can’t possibly lift it. Then you can lift it. You’re God and that type of feat is your bread and butter.

Specifically, you are the God of a particular species that you will design, craft, sculpt and guide through from primordial ooze to inevitable extinction.You start off small, designing a single cell and guiding it through the cesspool in which all life must begin. As time passes you use evolution as the tool by which you will shape the destiny of your creature for better or worse. A mouth here, a leg there, and a twist to the torso ‘ you slowly create the creature you want. You can do that. You are God.

Spore is perhaps the most ambitious game ever

From there, the game expands ever outwards and you will move from guiding a single cell or creature to encouraging a small tribe, then a city. In the climax to this universe in a box you’ll be aiding your civilisation in spreading to other stars and planets.

Such game concepts are truly the things of dreams ‘ open, sandbox worlds with almost limitless possibilities and completely open setting. The game says to you; ‘Here are the tools, now do as you wish.‘

In Tribe stage the game zooms out once more and players are no longer controlling a single alien. In this stage it’s more like The Sims as you monitor the needs of a small tribe as they carve out a niche in the alien landscape. The penultimate stage of the game is the Civilisation Stage where it transitions from The Sims into Sim City and you’ll be controlling whole cities in cultures.

Sporecasts make the game endlessly replayable

EA calls the technology behind this idea a Sporecast and revealed to us how it ties into a huge and previously unseen social network behind Spore.

The best way to describe exactly how Sporecasts work is by example; so imagine that you’ve just booted up the game and named your planet. You’ve gone straight to the second level of the game’the creature phase’and you’re running around like a madman. Now, the basic planet is always the same ‘ you’ll have the same hills, the same continents and so forth. What is different is everything else; animals, vegetation, allies and enemies for your race. These are all taken from the Sporecasts of other players.

This works both ways and as you create new races and aliens they too will be downloaded via the Sporepedia by other players.

Sporepedia is the framework around which all of Spore is built. At its most basic level it’s little more than a catalogue of free content and a help-desk through which players can get tips and guides. Delve a little further though and Sporepedia becomes much more and players can start to take advantage of the social networking tools held within.

Each player in the game has a page on the Sporepedia and it’s possible to browse through by using any number of filters and tags to see a specific player. From that page you can send messages to that player, see what Sporecasts they have created and so on and so forth. You can even monitor their popularity and see what achievements they’ve unlocked in the campaign game.

Still, DNA aside, the Creature Editor can definitely be seen even at this stage as a clear success on the part of EA and Maxis. The creation system is simple and easy to use, utilising simple drop down menus and tabs. At the same time though it’s wonderfully complex and affords gamers tremendous creative freedom.

Creating an alien is easy. When you first enter the editor there’s a basic blob in front of you with a backbone running through it. Click and drag the specific bones and areas you want to play with and force them into the shape you want. After that you can add limbs and the like and alter them in the same way.

My first time in the game I jumped straight in at the start of the game, eager to see as much of the game as I could. If you want to then the game does free you up to skip to certain stages, but doing so will mean that you miss out on all the achievements and rewards. That’s fine though ‘ as one of the producers pointed out to us, casual gamers who like a specific part of the game and want to play that aren’t interested in achievements. Hardcore gamers, on the other hand, will be interested in that and will be willing to play the game as a whole.

My first creature was a monstrosity and even as it grew up through the cellular phase it was ugly for me to behold ‘ but at the same time I loved it. My beast was shaped like a cartoon greyhound with low back legs, high underbelly and defined ribcage. I covered the underneath in pincers that would afford it more aggressive attacks in true RPG style, gave it jagged spikes on the back legs, Velociraptor claws and a huge tail which ended in a spinning circular saw made of bone.

The game can be played completely peacefully if you want

I had a few points left over at the end, so I dumped some rudimentary wings on its back, coloured it lime green in honour of Mankini Man and that was it. I had named the planet Cardland out of pure lack of imagination, so I named my alien race ‘Cardigan’ and shipped it out. Sure enough, it hatched out of its egg and was promptly eaten by something called a Valeroid. I cursed, stamped and screamed ‘ an hour of hard work bought to waste. Memories of the twisters from Sim City came to mind and I started to wish Will Wright had never been born.

Thankfully, the game was far from over and I was promptly bought back to life. Another Cardigan was hatching nearby, so I assumed control and immediately took to flight. The animation on my freshly created content was perfect and Cardigan II as I had taken to calling him was able to scrabble all over the world in search of food.

It was fascinating and delighting to see that the Creature stage of development had some basic RPG elements to it. Each appendage and addition to your design gives them new advantages and abilities that fit well with the reality. At basic levels this translates to ‘Have wings, can fly’. At a more involved level though it involves specific uses and I quickly found out that, because I had chosen a mouth that looked good for the race of Cardigans, and not one that was useful then the race was a little limited.

Despite all the spikes, pincers and bonesaws on Cardigan II, he was actually a herbivore because the jaw I’d given him fitted that type of creature. Naturally, I wasn’t going to spend four or five hours playing a vegetarian, so I found a more interesting mouth, saved some DNA points and evolved Cardigan II to something a little meatier.

SimSpore

From the creature phase things start to get a little more or less interesting, depending on your tastes in terms of game genres. If you find detailed simulations to be less interesting than quick arcade action then Spore is going to get progressively less interesting the more you play through it.

Fortunately, the more you play, the more editing there is to do. By the time you reach the Civilisation and Space Stages then there’s plenty more content creation to do to help break up the micromanagement. You’ll get a chance to design vehicles, buildings and later, UFOs.

Content creation can be as simple or as complex as you like

Designing all these structures is essentially very similar to the Creature Creation stage, except you don’t start out with a torso for a starting point. Instead, it’s down to players to place simple geometric shapes down, tweaking them and adding detail until you get the look you want.

Now, that style of editor may sound simple, but it can be as complex as you want. It’s very much like Lego in that it can be as involved or simple as you want. If you’d rather get down to the nitty gritty of running an entire culture and have your industries ticking over the way you want then all you need do is draw a cube and add a door. If, on the other hand, you want to do something a little more satisfying then, well, the possibilities really are endless and you can make your designs as crazy as you like. Personally, I always had a thing for Arthurian legend growing up so I made my City Hall resemble my own idea of Camelot.

Unfortunately, I kind of forgot that theme by the time I got round to creating a UFO and my spaceships ended up looking more like rolled up porcupines that had sat down on a jet engine. Watching a big spiky ball take off while surrounded by medieval castles is an odd experience.

By the time I got round to the space stage though, I had other things on my mind than how ludicrous the world my imagination had built was. The Space Stage of the game is arguably the most explicitly driven part of the game and unlike the other stages of the game it has goals which are directly given to the player via the race they have created.

Players get a chance to build every aspect of their world

As you fly your UFO around the world expect to have the head of your own Starfleet on the screen telling you what they need you to do ‘ everything from scanning flora to abducting and probing fauna.

Chatting with some of the folks from Maxis, it was hinted at that although Spore doesn’t have an endgame or an overall victory scenario it may in fact have a way to win in some way. EA and Maxis were both closed-lipped on details, but there are definite suggestions of such a thing in the Space Stage where the game starts to feel more goal orientated and less like a playground.

In my opinion, the Space Stage is where the game starts to feel most like a game too and where the graphical style of Spore is most appreciable. The cartoony presentation and bright colours look OK, but not much more when you’re zoomed in on the Creature Stage.

By the time you can see the whole planet though the world is starting to get filled up with cities and buildings of your own design and the look of the game is at its most awesome. The contrast of the white clouds, green land and inky blackness of space in particular looks pretty awesome ‘ especially since it’s filled with flying porcupines

And in the end – enjoy this videos if you haven`t see them yet