Spore: Hands-on Preview

Initial Thoughts

There’s no question in my mind that Spore is going to be fantastic on pretty much every level and I can already tell that I’m going to be have to be very careful when it’s released. Too much exposure and I can easily see myself getting addicted to the game. In that sense Spore stands to be hugely successful – more so than Guitar Hero or even The Sims.

I find the backstory of Spore fascinating too, not just the up-front gameplay. Electronic Arts gets a lot of stick from the gaming press and from gamers at large and a lot of people hold the uber-publisher with ire – the company is well known for its repeated visits to Sequelville.

At the same time though, Electronic Arts has not only published the likes of The Orange Box and Crysis, but is now set to publish a genre-creating game.

So, EA likes The Sims a bit too much when it comes to expansion packs – that doesn’t have to be a bad thing!

I actually got a chance to speak to some of the marketing people recently and I quizzed them about the future of Spore – pressing on whether we could expect to see a slew of new content on shelves soon after release. The reply was a stark awakening to the brilliant reality of Spore in that I was treated to a kind of “I don’t know” answer and an explanation of how that wouldn’t work with Spore.


You see, in The Sims, new items can’t be easily created and the expansions can consist mainly of new furniture and so forth. In Spore that doesn’t hold true and the future of the game seems to be grounded more in adding new tools to the game through expansions – ways to export and import creatures to Photoshop or Maya 3D. It’s not enough to simply give people a new building or two, because those can always be made by the community.

To me, this attitude perfectly expresses how important Spore will be.

Frankly though, even if the game doesn’t prove to be as redefining as I think it will be, then it’s still shaping up to be a fantastic game and clearly shows how even the most complex of tasks can be accomplished with enough persistence.

Spore does have flaws in some regards and it’s plainly obvious that most players aren’t going to enjoy parts of the game. Personally, while I loved everything from the Creature Stage onwards, I did find the first part of the game—the Cell Stage—to be a little tiresome and pointless. I’ve nothing against simple arcade styled games at all, but there are titles that do that better than Spore.


Spore’s strength though lies in that the game overcomes the personal loves and hates of certain people and frees players up totally. You can do almost anything you want with the tools on offer here and the game is totally open to let players skip to the parts they want. If all you want is the micromanagement and sense of control then Civilisation Stage is there for you from the get-go.

If on the other hand all you need is cuddly animals and something to show off to your friends then you’ll rarely need to stray beyond the creature editor.

Given the mammoth development cycle and the staggering ambition of Spore, there was always a fear that the game would at best become vapourware or at worst be released as a shadow of its intended self. From what we’ve seen of the game though, Spore is shaping up to be the type of game that can truly deliver on its promises. With any luck, all of us will have a universe in a box on the 7th of September and we can't wait.

Are you the same? Let us know in the forums.