Dicks and Murder in the Name of Spooge

It's not very often that I dream about a game. It's like advertisement on the astral plane, and fuck it's annoying. Man, did it hype this game up for me, though. Everyone knows and loves Sim City even though it's not fun outside of watching your city be demolished in flames and disaster at the hands of a burgeoning lizard monster taller than your tallest commercial city. Spore is creator Will Wright's latest foray into the venture of sandbox sim gaming, and it's been a long time since an RTS (sort of) felt so engulfing.

I haven't beaten it yet (technically speaking, you don't beat Spore), but I've been wholly consumed by the amazing levels of detail involved in this gem and how supportive of creativity it is. I know, I know; I shouldn't have expected anything else, but the things I've created are amazing because I've created them. As with any game, there are a few problems.

Spore's manual is thick. It's a lot to take in, but even then it doesn't tell you the things you'd like to know. For instance, all those nifty creatures people have made and uploaded to YouTube? It's true that you can recreate and edit all of them to your liking, but that's if you take several things into consideration. Your diet will dictate which parts you're allowed to use in the cell and creature stages, so be weary of the diet you choose (and try to push for omnivore, dammit), and a lot of your progression will happen on it's own, seldomly making sense.

One of the biggest peeves that I've had with it so far is being the friendly guy I am and not warring with a single species or tribe up until the civilization stage. What did this make me? A religious group. What the fuck? I didn't throw Bibles at other tribes, I played the god-damn Didjerridoo! Sigh. Anyway, I get around to civilization stage, and I decide to become a militaristic nation. This is where I have to tip my hat to the creators of Spore.

While I was editting my vehicles with weapons, I noticed that there were a lot of over-the-top weapons, and it'd be exciting to see what damage they do on field. So, I take my submarines out into the middle of Cerebus (my planet's name, a-thank you) and launch an assault. At first, it was incredibly underwhelming. Destruction has never seemed to boring, to be honest. That's precisely where the genius lies, though. There is virtually no insentive to tackle civilization and colonization one way over another. You can be militaristic, but why with how underwhelming it is? While, it doesn't necessarily qualify as a lack of diversity considering you cannot play the same game twice, it does promote experimentation that's been practically void of all games these days.

That's without a doubt the reason I'm so addicted to Spore. Seeing these inter-stellar races of beings interact with some pompous piggy assholes that I've created is so affirming, it's one of the first time in ages where I felt like I was in control of this game's progression rather than the other way around.

As an impressed with this game as I am, my hopes are still equally high for the rest of the games that I'm looking forward to. Anyway, this is just a small update to stay update-y. Back to Spore.

A quick addition: Going to be helping Bon out in a bit with recording some video-game footage, so I'll probably have some up soon as well. Yay.