Spore

 Don't Panic!

I arrive on a meteor, chucked from the heavens to this lowly rock on the furthest wisp of it's celestial spoke-wheel. All from there, in some way or other, will be a brutal duel from utmost simplicity to advanced sciences, the hounding of 'survival of the fittest' will dog me and others every solitary step of the way until it's rough iron creases out only the final victor. Never perhaps the toughest, nor the meanest, but certainly the most resourceful among us. And ever as we toil, evolving and distending into ugly bizarre fishes, then colourful mammals, and onwards to vicious tribals, the question hounds of 'what comes next', where will be our zenith. Of course how are we to know then, that zenith will obviously be when everything melds and coalesces into a bad Star Trek The Next Generation episode, complete with a faux 'borg' copy and paste job. So perhaps not the preordained 'rulers of creation' we had hoped for, but we'll make do.

I talk a lot about 'scale' and 'scope' whenever it comes to talking about games that I respect from a conceptual level, which I suppose just goes to show right and clear how I feel about titles that try something incredible when other titles that stay relatively safe. (Although that being said, Persona 4 Golden is one of my favourite games of all time for the express reason that it simulates everyday life, so what does that say about me?) And how much more grand can a game possible get, then literally trying to tell the story of evolution from microscopic unicellular amoebas to rulers of the cosmos. (Well, I say rulers; you actually more just end up as desperate freedom fighters struggling against a pre-laid out Stellaris endgame sceanrio) does it get any more sweeping than that? Probably not, which is why I and quite a few others fell for the once unbelievable charms of Maxis' Spore.

Yes, Maxis sometimes made games other than the latest malformed and malnutritional Sims entry, packed with just enough empty promise to fuel hundreds of dollars worth of DLC and DLC for that DLC. (Still can't believe they did that) To say that my respect for Maxis has dropped significantly since the days of early Spore would be a tad of an understatement. When I spied the first trailers for this game I was beside myself, certain to my core that Maxis were visionary geniuses capable of things that no other developer would ever dream off. I drooled over the prospect of the one, true, forever game; wherein you'd tell over and over the simple greatest story in creation; that of creation. Is there any more pure a conclusion for those who lean towards the god game ecosystem, then literally playing a god of evolution? And in many ways little me was right, because simply no developer has tried anything nearly as insane as this concept in the 13 years since. Not even Maxis, who have since gone on to being slave drivers for their Electronic Arts masters. (I miss when games companies got better with time, even though I think I'm starting to realise that never was the case)

In many ways the very idea was like, and I'm sure this was bought up in the planning stages at one point, directing your very own show on the discovery channel. And that is the sort of overarching destiny-shaping power and world-altering manipulation that control freaks out there yearn for. (even if, I suppose if you were actually filming some sort of discovery channel show, you'd be tethered by crappy rules such as: having to depict actual reality) Of course, any game even attempting something like this was going to have some distinct conceptual limitations, and framing those as positives, when the entire concept of the game was about turning oneself into a god of this world, would be the prevailing challenge of the marketers. And considering how far they sold me, hook line and sinker, I'd call that a total success on Maxis' part. (although they were selling to a child, so take that for what you will.)

Spore starts with you as a germ on a space rock full of bacteria, and trying as hard as possible to survive a total underwater free-for-all battle for survival. Countless other gross single-cell monstrosities are trying to mindlessly eat their way to victory, and over millions of years you have to contend with that. Where it becomes clever is in the building system menus, wherein you get to build your cell to look how you want, but also to have the 'parts' that you want. Parts are addendums to the body, eyes, tails, vicious spikes, et cetera, which improve stats and shape how you look. As you slay more creatures and earn more 'DNA points' you can put better body parts on your creature, and already I'll bet you're starting to see the way in which the core concepts of evolution are going to work squashed into a video game economy. Works better than I thought it would, truth be told.

Whilst the chaos of cell mode is a lot of people's favourite stage, I was always further drawn in the creature mode, when your cell grows big enough to wiggle onto land and start a 3d adventure across the face of it's home planet. This is a part of the game that represents a more advanced version of the cell stage, with a little more flexibility to it other than 'kill everything and don't die'. There's food bars to have to deal with, influenced by the type of eating implements you've fitted your creatures' mouth with, a rudimentary diplomacy system where you get to play interpretive dances with other species and a Pokémon 'gotta catch 'em all' draw to it, in the way that new body parts are 'unlocked' by scouring skeletons for bones. It's in this stage that the creature you're making forms it's final look and ends as the mostly dominant species on the planet.

From there most people fell off the game, and it makes since because the promise of creativity sort of falls off too. Tribal and Civilisation mode are kind of like dime-store strategy game rip-offs, with Tribal stage being a simple RTS and Civilisation stage playing like your prototypical 4X game. Neither are particularly bad, it should be said, but neither offer the sort of appeal you could easily get from other specialised titles in their respective genres. This goes especially true for Space Stage, which was meant as the ever lasting endgame but often ranks as people's least favourite stage. Sort of juggling a 4X framework over a third person explorer gameplay. Imagine playing Stellaris, but you have to manually fly to each world in order to micromanage, then carve out a lot of the complexity so that most of the worlds can operate themselves but still need personal intervention sometimes, and you'll pretty much have the Space Stage in a nutshell. Oh, and there's Borg in that mode as well. Spore calls them Grox, and they guard the core of the galaxy. I guess they're pretty much what counts as 'main antagonists', if this game needed that. Apparently is does, and the Grox are it.

Before Maxis decided to perfect it's craft at draining the Sims fanbase dry, I think that Spore marked the very last step in their experimental teenage years, and that alone makes this worth a wisp of attention. It tries for too much at times, and falters, but I'd rather have a game that goes to be more than it can be, then one that purposefully neuters itself out of fear. My only shame for the game comes in the fact that, since Maxis are cash cows now, we'll never get the polished and refined sequel that a game like this could have definitely had. Or if we do get it now, we'd be inundated with creature part DLC packs ad nauseum for the next 8 years. So let the ambitious, flawed, masterpiece that was Spore persist as a relic of a crazier, freer, time for the gaming industry. (You'll never evolve into creature stage, poor Spore.) Oh, and I have absolutely no idea what Darkspore was, maybe I should look it up some time...