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Rating the possibilities...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 20 / 29
Date: September 01, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Well, this isn't usually something that I do, but that's just how much this game has already impressed me even without being released. I've been playing computer games for quite some time now and I consider myself an avid gamer. Some of my all-time favorites include Age of Empries 2: The Conquerors, Quake 3, Worms (and all subseqent sequels), Prey, Warcraft 3, Counter-Strike (the first one) and several others that I still play. I've always enjoyed the Sim City games and no one can deny that, at the time, the original Sim City was more groundbreaking then anything else on the market. This game is designed by the same brain, Will Wright. I can see SPORE being the same in our day and age as was Sim City, and then some! It encompasses the idea of advancement and evolution within a PC game more than anything else I've ever seen. Even though this game is barely BETA, the videos that I've found on the web showcasing it's possibilities are downright incredible. For those of you new to SPORE, here's a basic rundown of what this game is all about:

You begin in a world as basic as can be. You are nothing more than a single-cell microorganism that's only job is to feed and aviod other more powerful microorganisms. As you feed, you receive, from what I can tell, DNA points. At a certain amount of DNA points you hit the very first stage of evolution. You can then personally edit your organism to include certain things like extra flagelae to attack or different shape for speed, etc. All upgrades are your choice. You can even edit the shape and size of your parts. It's all up to you! Eventually, after 3-5 evolution "generations" you finally become a simple, multi-celled sea-creature. Again, as was originally, your main responsiblities are to eat and avoid the bigger predators. Same rules apply as before - you upgrade for a set number of generations until you CAN (if you choose) eventually evolve legs. From this point it really gets fun!

During the creature stage, which, to me, looks to be the most enjoyable portion of the game, the basic ideas still apply. However, now you have other functions and responsibilities. Not only do you eat and avoid predators, but you also need to do several other things in order to survive. First, find some friends. In other words you need to call out and find others of your species. If you successfully become part of a pack, you also must mate when you have enough DNA points. VERY IMPORTANT since you are no longer an asexual organism. So you mate, find a safe spot for a nest, you or your mate lays eggs for the next generation and then you wait for them to hatch. Not so fast, though! You have to protect your eggs from scavengers and predators too! If they survive long enough to hatch you finally get to edit your creature again. This portion of the editor is by far the most intricate and important. Do you give it claws? Fingers? Spikes? Longer arms? More legs? Or, if you are so lucky, a bigger brain? This goes on for 20 or so (from what I understand) generations. You slowly work your way up the food chain and become smart enough of a being to build a colony. On to the next portion of the game!

You now no longer play a first-person game, but an RTS! Both? You've got to be kidding! Nope. Your pack of creatures are now a small tribe of primitive "people". From here you need to focus on upgrades relating to weapons or trading or tools or what-have-you. Now, instead of editing your creature, you can personally edit your buildings and vehicles. So you upgrade your technologies and increase your intelligence until you begin to build cities. These cities compete (or trade) with other neighboring cities and you expand your territory...hopefully. If you are good enough, after some time you might take over the planet. Think you've won the game, eh? BEEP! Wrong! Your technology should be far along enough to build a spacecraft.

Now, what seems to be the farthest expanse of the game, you can travel from planet to planet and, eventually, from solar system to solar system. Thus, giving you thousands (eventually could be more depending on the following) of possible planets. What do you do? Attack other worlds to take them over? Maybe you want to befriend them and work together. You can impress a primitive species to think you're a God, or blast them and make them fearful. When you fly to other systems in space, they aren't just populated by the AI, they are other players broadcasting their civilizations across the WWW! So, by this point, if you choose, the game is no longer single player. The space race can last as long as you want since it has now taken the form of a MMORTS (Massively Multiplayer Online Real Time Stategy).

So, let's sum up:

This game is basically a single player First Person Shooter (while you're at the beginning stages), Role Playing (running as a creature trying to evolve), Real Time Stategy civilization builder and eventually an MMO exploration/domination game. Insanity...

I can't say enough for what I've seen so far. [..]
The jokA

Good Review Brandon, but...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 12 / 17
Date: September 13, 2006
Author: Amazon User

A good comprehensive review, tho it should be pointed out that the space part of the game isn't a massive multi-player online game. The game is indeed hooked up to the internet (tho you can play it without a connection too) but you aren't competing with other players so much as thier creations.
What happens is the computer downloads content from a giant data base of other players games and populates your game with it. So you may have Bob from Topeka's planet and his sponge people in your universe, but it is controlled by your computer and if you blow it to hades it has no effect whasoever on his game. The same with the creatures you first run into on your starting world too, I believe. So while you are competing with other players creations you aren't actually competing with the player, which is smart since I really don't want to have so ten year old with issues blowing up all my diligently crafted worlds.
The game does look awesome, incredible, or any other adjective you want to throw at it. In discussing it Will Wright said that the universe might have hundreds of thousands of worlds to explore. I don't know if they'll manage that, but in any case it looks like it will be the next huge leap in gaming.

Hmm...Interesting.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 10 / 20
Date: November 24, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Now we all know of Will Wrights' works; the man who created classics like Simcity and the Sims 1 and 2 (which I own most of them). Now it seems like he's about to outdue himself again. The bits of info are as scarce as that when Half-Life 2 was announced years ago. But what we do know is that this game is aiming big, and I mean big! The game starts out rather small at first. From a microscpoic bacteria consuming other microbes, struggling to survive. As its done eating up enough points, it moves on to the next phase: the creature phase. From here on out, we see the true nature of the game as it is. Every aspects of the player's creature; raging from its legs to its feets etc...etc, is made up by the player. It is really sweet (no not kind) of the developers to allow us to customize our creatures as we see fit. My only complaint would be, if it be true or not, that their won't be that many options to fool around with. But that will have to wait until we get more information.

Anyways. So we got the ability to customize our creature, nice. Once we've done enough woo-hooing, eating, sleeping, while avoiding danger and gathering some more points, we set ourselves up for the third phase. In the third phase, we gain control of an entire tribe. Gone are the days of being a one man army, for now. We now have a tribe to tor...err...I mean guide through some turbulant times. Once we've manage to get them on the right foot to safty guarrentie, they move on to their forth phase: city phase. Heres where we get to customize the buildings (ranging from what looks like farms, apartments, fortresses, etc...) as we once again take up the mantle of leadership. I believe, as you will all agree, this will be like Simcity in someways, only made simple.

All right, all right, we've gotten to the point where were managing a city, now what? Well its time to be like that of the Romans: explore, conquer, and dominate the known world. And thats what phase 5 is gonna be all about; building up your empire to be militarally, culturally, or politically influencial with other cities in order to reign supreme. I bet this is where some good old RTS brawling will commence. Of course, this will be made simple, as Will would want it to be easy to get into. I only hope it won't be too simple to manage, otherwise it will be too quick to get to the next phase.

Well, here we are, you've bitten, clawed, talked, and fough your way up to being the only species to erect an glorius empire. Now what's next? Settle down? Nope, its time to enter into phase 6: space! Yes friends, outer space awaits us after we reach #6! From here on out we get command of our only starship. It is not clear wheather there will be more to come, or if we can build starfleets (that would be awesome!!!). But what we do know is that we'll get to explore our little galaxy, (little is somewhat an understatment) encounter alien races of other player's creation, and enevedably build up a galactic empire! (ques the Imperial March). Yes, I believe phase 6 will be the most looked forward to out of all other phases. (in my opinion that is)

Did I forget to mention that all that we make will be stored into a database that will be distributed to other players? Yep, your species may end up on Tom's Planet or Judith's Civilization has come in peace towards Mortimer's inferior race on Bob's Planet. Now about this, we won't get to actually play with each other (that would be a bad move for Maxis in my opinion) Rather we get to choose the many subjects that are up for display. Our galaxies will be filled out with all of what we've made. I find this interesting; I like to play alone sometimes, but its nice to know that not all that I see has been made by the developers.

So in closing, this game has alot of things going for it. No news as of yet of whats going on. But I've got my fingers crossed it will be all good news (like a release date or a new trailor) But who knows really? I don't. What I do know is that for those of you who are iching for some more info on this ambious game, its best to sit on you hands and wait. Or go to the website to check it out. Like the only saying goes "good things come to those who wait" Too bad I don't know who came up with that line.

YA!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 13 / 49
Date: November 29, 2006
Author: Amazon User

ME WANT GAME IF ME NO GET GAME!!..... ME SMASH! ME SMASH ME SMASH ME SMASH!!!

Looking Forward

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 19
Date: November 25, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I am one of the many people looking forward to this game. This is probably going to be another of the hugely popular and exciting games by Will Wright. An outstanding new feature for this game will be the ability to share your creatures with any other player via the internet. This induces a massive singleplayer game that keeps the game from getting old.

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