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Spore sprouts a new world, growing and changing in unexpected ways. Part game, part design program, and always playful, Spore leads you on a journey from tiny creature to colonizer of the galaxy. You create the experience as much as the developers at EA’s Maxis studio; you build the main creature, vehicles, structures, and even adapt whole planets along the way. And your choices determine your path; choosing an herbivore mouth for an early creature might eventually lead you to form a peaceful society that negotiates its way out of trouble.

The game has so many ways to play that it won’t be the same experience twice, yet Spore still provides enough structure for gamers who need specific goals. Execution stutters in a few places, but Spore’s awesome premise makes it a must-have for serious and casual gamers alike.

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You begin in the Cell Stage, the first of five evolutionary sections of the game. Initially, you design a simple, two-dimensional creature that swims through a sea of primitive life. We easily dragged parts onto a blob body and used the scrollwheel to resize attributes. Here, and throughout the game, we balanced the cost of parts versus their abilities. Fins, for example, cost more DNA points—earned by eating—but move quicker than tentacle propulsion.

Once evolving onto land, you’ll face the Creature Stage, moving around your unique planet and meeting other ambient life. You’ll need hunt or befriend—and eventually domesticate—these animals to progress. Throughout this stage, you’ll discover dozens of new body parts—horns, feet, venomous spit, and more—that you can use to upgrade your creature. Certain physical attributes help win new allies, which is important since not every creature is interested in being your friend. We enjoyed the options offered by the Creature Stage, evolving our creature into its final state at the end of the stage.

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In the Tribal Stage, you’ll control a group of your developed species. Your tribe needs to conquer or make peace with neighbors by inventing technologies such as instruments and spears. Instead of the previous levels’ general click-to-attack gameplay, you’ll also need to multitask, making sure certain tribe members are fishing, for example, to keep everyone fed. Once we felt confident with our supplies, we especially enjoyed attacking one of the giant beasts that had tormented us earlier in the game. This was one of many places Spore plays with scale, making our revenge that much sweeter for having to earn our way up to it.

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In the Civilization Stage, you’ll develop treaties or attack opposing cities to unify the planet. Using strategy-based gameplay, you’ll need to capture Spice mines to fund further progress. Send out evangelists to convert opposing cities to your cause, spread bribes to win them over, or crush them with attacks—by land, sea, or air. While gameplay is a bit simpler than stand-alone games with a similar premise, we found enough complexity, enjoying developing our cities and taking new footholds on the planet.

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The Space Stage builds this concept into a galactic level, letting you colonize new planets, ally with aliens, or fight new enemies. You’ll establish trade routes to sell different types of Spice and reanimate dead planets along the way. A linear story unravels, urging you to explore more, but even here, you can continue nonlinear play if you prefer. We had fun spooking and abducting ambient life on random planets, painting the surface of worlds, and otherwise playing in the Spore sandbox. With literally millions of planets unique to your game, you won’t run out of places to explore.

Throughout the game stages, Spore offers plenty of creative options, letting you create vehicles, structures, and more. For tinkerers, focusing on those editing tools, dreaming up new skyscrapers and life forms—instead of following the rest of the game—offers a satisfying experience. Every creature, building, or even planet you encounter may have come through the Internet from another player of the game. We enjoyed meeting creative species designed by other players, and could even look up their designers in a social-networking-style index within the game.

While its game design excels, Spore suffers from several technical problems. A major graphical error with ATI Radeon 1600- and 1900-based video hardware forces players to turn off a key visual effect, making the game look worse but run well. EA says that an OS X update will fix the problem, but Apple controls that rollout. Occasional interface inconsistencies frustrated us, such as right-click steering a spaceship over a planet, but left-click piloting it between solar systems. And frequently in the Civilization Stage, some of our units weren’t smart enough to attack adjacent invaders, letting cities get taken over without proper defense.

Spore includes many events and activities along its evolutionary path, but it unravels each stage progressively to keep from overwhelming players. And unlike most games, the unraveling thread is more about defining your own experience than sticking to a designer’s rigid path; we felt surprisingly connected to our planet and creatures after seeing them progress in so many ways.
 

Spore is a bag full of Legos, a “Choose Your Own Adventure” story, a classroom terrarium, and much more. Its playful attitude and creative design will entice experienced gamers and newcomers alike.

Spore
COMPANY: Electronic Arts
CONTACT: www.spore.com
PRICE: $49.99; $79.99 for Galactic Edition, with DVD extras
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS X 10.5.3; Intel Core Duo or better; 1GB RAM; 4.7GB disk space; ATI X1600 or NVidia 7300 GT with 128 MB of Video RAM, or Intel Integrated GMA X3100

Epic scale accessible through five stages. Ample discovery and play throughout. Can create creatures, buildings, and other items. Sharing system propagates your universe with creatures and assets from friends or strangers.
Major video bug for ATI 1600/1900 users. Occasional, minor bugs. Occasional interface design flaws. Civilization Stage AI sometimes slacks off.