The Elitist's Least Favorite Game Moments: Spore

     It was a fresh concept. Take themes and concepts from all the great video game genres and throw them into one awesome smorgasbord of a game. The hype was huge, the game was big, huge, it's sales went far far beyond 1million. So why on earth is The Elitist using it for one of his LEAST favorite video game moments? Let's dive on in.

 First, being a good little amateur  journalist, allow me to set up my case. To start I have to say that overall Spore was a fantastic game, and the majority of the game was a great success. You start out as a microscopic organism, fighting and feeding for life. This part of the game is very basic, but with it comes your first choice. Choices are critical in good games. Carnivore, Omnivore, or Herbivore? You have to pick how your species will continue to survive. Now,  you run away from big scary things, and either you eat the crap out of things smaller than you, search for some tasty plant type thingies (lame) or both! Easy, fun, great game play. Soon, you evolve (Darwin would turn in his grave, it happens so damn fast). Now, you are a creature who lives on land. Whoo! So, now that you walk you have to make your second choice. Do you viciously attack all of the other animals about, and take their food, or do you make friends with them and share, or whatever nice animals do. I always just ate everybody. The combat/interaction is very real time RPG like. You can either beat the pulp out of things, or try to court them to like you. Very fun, and the decisions you make affect the rest of the game Soon you become intelligent enough to smack rocks together and make fire and do Tribal things. It is at this point that the game takes another huge game play shift. Now, it takes on an RTS feel. You as the play control your cute little tribe and you have to either trade and make nice with all the other tribes, or kill all that stands in your way to be the dominate force. This style of game play continues as you go from tribes to civilizations. Finally, you become awesome enough to create a space ship, thus introduces the Space Age, and the games biggest flaws.

Video Games | Spore | Space Stage Walkthrough

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

"That alien is ugly I need to kill it" That's the problem with the world these days.

 
      So, you are a big shot space pilot, able to conquer (or alli with) entire planets with your awesome (and upgradeable) space ship. You fly around, terraform planets, sell spice, help allies, defend your planets and be a general badass. Soon you become the destructive force of a huge sprawling empire, covering star systems light years apart. How can anyone compete with such a force of power? Well apparently, during the process of creating faster than light speed travel, and the best weapons in the galaxy, no one thought it would be a good idea to invest in a military. See, even though you are the (second) most powerful empire in the entire galaxy, your ship is the only force of policing and protection for your vast array of controlled planets. Environmental hazard threatening to destroy the planets atmosphere? Can't send a small terraforming division, you have to go. Pirates stealing your spice? Can't send the police, you are their only hope. Another species as found one of your planets and is attacking? You can't send ambassadors to negotiate, you must go solve the problem. You happen to be hundreds of systems away from the planet that is under attack? Well... I guess they are shit-outa-luck. So, you have collected enough money/eradicated a sufficient number of creatures/converted a healthy majority to your religion, now what do you do? Well as far as the game is concerned you have won. Almost. Right at the end, you discover some great secret at the center of the galaxy. Should be easy enough, jump through some worm holes, fly on into that super massive black whole in the middle there. Oh wait, that's right, and unstoppable force of an evil and malicious race known as the Grox inhabit all the surrounding systems. They apparently thought to train more than ONE FIGHTER PILOT, and each planet is protected by a plethora of such warriors.  So to reach the center of the universe you have to... well.. what you have to do is.. umm... See, I actually have no idea, because I just got sick of struggling through Grox infested planets to reach an unknown goal, all the while my home is being ravaged raped and plundered while their only defense is millions of billions of miles away seeking the center of the galaxy.

     Spore had one of the best character/building/vehicle creators ever made, in my opinion. For the first 3/4 of the game, it was really really fun. On the whole, it was a great game, worthy of the success it received. However, it does have the taint of being one of the most disappointing games I have ever played. It's a sad thing, but that's the video game industry, Ups and downs. See you all next time.