Thursday, October 2, 2008

Rigo reviews the cell stage of spore!

This review of spore is one of 6, each detailing the individual levels of spore, and then an overall score.

SPORE : CELL STAGE REVIEW!

Hello and welcome to rigo's first review of spore, this one is of spores first stage, the cell stage. This is the first of 5, each with their own individual style of gameplay. The cell stage consists of you being 'created' when a meteor shower hits your home planet. You begin in a primordial soup, competing with other newly created creatures for food. You can be either a carnivore, who eats meat which drops from dead creatures, a herbivore who eats plants floating in the water, or an omnivore, who eats both. You can soon add different body parts to your creature, after mating. These include fins to move faster, little things that shoot in or electricity, and different eyes. However I would have liked more variety in the different parts in the cell stage. You gain extra parts by defeating enemies with them, or by breaking open meteor fragments.

To 'win' the cell stage, you have to collect enough DNA points by eating things, which are also the 'money' that let you buy new parts. Depending on which route you pick, be it carnivore, herbivore, or omnivore, you get a specific 'evolution card', which entitle you to different special abilities in later phases, and ultimately your 'class' so to speak in the space phase. After you have enough DNA points to evolve to land, you get to spend your remaining points on legs (or not) to walk the planet on. Your mouth also determines what you can eat in the creature and tribal stages, but more on that later.

CLOSING COMMENTS

overall the cell stage is well designed, albeit lacking in content, I hear that the company who made spore (maxis) are planning on releasing many expansion packs for the game, one of them for the cell stage. Hopefully we get more parts and depth to the stage.

SCORE:

presentation – 7 – nice looking interface, but can be somewhat complicated to understand when you are new, and gives out very little information for someone who has played many times.

Graphics – 8 – while good, they are far from perfect graphics, looking too unrealistic. Not that I want perfect realism, it is just too cartoony for me :/. I would also have liked to be able to add more effects to your creature, like gills and such. However the paint mode is very cool

sound – 10 – amazing music and quality, very relaxing, and soothing. Nice effects when you kill another creature then eat the meaty chunks that explode from the creature :)

gameplay – 8 – the idea is there, but it is very simplified. I would have liked more parts, and some better controls

lasting appeal – 7 – once you have played it about 3 times even, it gets boring real quick. After the 9th time, which you will need to do if you want all the achievements, it will most likely be very boring

TOTAL = 40/50 = 8/10 = 80% = A- = pretty cool

Rigo, out

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