Spore has been in development for what seems to have been a mammoth of time, but finally last week it hit the streets and people have been going mad for it ever since. What can you expect to find in Will Wright’s newest creation? Well first let’s discuss how we got to this point first….

So no doubt hardcore gamers will know who Will is, and all you casual readers out there would have at some point either played or heard of a little game called The Sims. The Sim series of games started in the late 80’s with the classic Sim City which was followed by a numerous amount of games until the ever successful The Sims, and The Sims 2. I’m not going to lie, controlling peoples lives instead of living your own seemed a rediculous idea to waste my valuable time, but many people love the game, hell I did find myself killing a few spare hours on it, and people keep buying it, and keep enjoying it, but there is something that just doesn’t sit right for me.

Sure The Sims I get that, but then they released some expansion packs. Sure I understand how these can be cool, but at $99.95 AUD for The Sims/The Sims 2 followed by a further $49.95 AUD for each expansion pack it adds up to a LOT of cash for your new found addiction. 

Sure one or two expansions at that price not too bad, but there are what seems MILLIONS of the packs floating around. The Sims: Hot Date, The Sims: University, The Sims: Pets, The Sims: Government Lies, The Sims: Dog took a dump on new Persian Rug so need to get someone to clean the carpets extravaganza, The Sims: Terrorist Holidays the list goes on.

So now we have Spore and immediately I found myself drawn to it. You start off as a cell from an asteroid that hits a planet (which you get to name) and you float around in the water eating either plants or meat depending on WHAT your species is. This portion of the game lasts a good 25 mins or so, and while can get boring it certainly pays off. 

Once the requirements had been fulfilled I found myself evolving to the next stage of life. This involved me getting on land, and meeting and befriending, or killing and setting species up for extinction. While all this is going on, I am finding shiny new body parts available for me to create my species the way I see fit. 

And now I’m up to the third stage of evolution, getting a tribe together. This plays out like a watered down RTS game, but I still enjoy it immensly. The idea of the game is to evolve to outerspace travel, in which you can fly around visiting other planets and futher enhancing your species. The online component allows you to visit other players species on other planets, and also track their stats in the Sporepedia.

So really many people are describing this game as a God game. Yeah that’s cool but isn’t the church telling us that Evolution doesn’t exist?

8/10