spore needs to keep evolving
Spore didn’t want to work with the graphics card in our circa 2006 PC running Windows 2000, though after an hour of digging around online we found a hack to get it to run. It didn’t want to launch on our 2008 PC running Windows Vista, though we’ve found that if we click relentlessly on the error message we get, the game will eventually launch.
(Seriously, guys? If you can’t find time for QA in a project that stretches over this many years, when will you find time for it? As a user, it sucks to spend money on a product and discover, when you get home, that - unless you go online and find a hack - your would-be diversion from the frustrations and annoyances of life is itself from the get-go frustrating and annoying.)
The game itself is charming, and presented in a manner that allows for either a lengthy narrative (nurturing a race from cell to space) or an easy little chunk (a single stage.) There are some questionable decisions. I struggle to understand why there are inconsistent camera controls across different stages. I understand the game designer is a big fan of asking people to look at things in different ways. Great! For me, the task of re-learning camera controls is a distraction from the content.
I quibble, though. It’s an amazing achievement. I suspect that the people who love this game will be the same people who loved the Sims. I am not one of those people. I am more curious to see the evolution of Spore’s social community. Will certain monster designers become ‘legends’?
Regardless, I do hope that Spore keeps on evolving. A little further, and it might turn out to be the great game we’ve been hearing about for so long.
3 years ago