s p o r e
I consider myself to be a light gamer. I have a PS2 which I barely use, a GameCube, and I have a Wii (which runs all my GC games) which I play maybe once a week. I’ve solved The Legend of Zelda:Twilight Princess, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, Metroid Prime 3:Corruption, Super Mario Galaxy, and Cooking Mama: Cook Off..
I love my Wii and the Wii Sports games are still super fun, alone or with a group.
But my PC (or iMac in my case) gaming days pretty much ended with Doom 3. It was breathtakingly evil, had the ability to scare the pants off of me while playing, and gave me that all-out gore-fest I expected from a Doom series game. Once I finished it, I set it at a higher difficulty setting, but it was a done deal. I was over it, despite how gorgeous it looked.
Until I heard about Spore.
I knew Maxis, the creators of the game, from my old i386 gaming days when I lived with my parents. SimCity, SimLife, and above all my favorite, SimAnt were games you had to think about, and I loved them. Raiding the red ants’ colony successfully in SimAnt for the first time was a real thrill. They were also games that were touted as “educational” so I had no problem getting the parents approval to buy them. I bought them (I was working in the restaurant when I was young) with my cash. I just needed approval from Mom & Dad…
The later incarnations of SimCity didn’t do much for me, nor did TheSims, which everyone seemed to rave about, and would become the most popular software game ever. But what TheSims really did for Maxis was stuff their pockets full enough cash to take the time to create what, from the early reviews, the screenshots, and the general geek buzz, seems to be one of the more ambitiously fantastic looking games they’ve created to date. That game, of course, is Spore.
In Spore, you control the entire evolution of a species from a single-celled organism in a veritable primordial soup to it’s ability to explore galaxies and colonize new worlds. Along the way you move through many phases of life, each with it’s own challenges and gameplay based on how you have chosen to shape the evolution.
I’m a software geek and I’ve worked in a software development group for nearly ten years. My mind reels at the technical challenges the Maxis folks faced while creating such a layered game. For that reason alone, outside of the fascinating gameplay aspect, I knew I had to have this game.
I pre-ordered my copy yesterday. Sunday morning I’ll be at the Gamestop at 11am to pick it up. I plan to spend the entire day with the game. And if my eyes don’t dry out from staring at the monitor all day, I’ll be sure to post about it.
You can check out the games’ website for screenshots and more info.