I like games. Any kind of game, mind game, puzzle game, and simulation games especially. That is why it wasn’t smart for me to buy the newest simulation game: Spore.
I don’t follow the gaming industry and the first time I heard about Spore was from my friend Eric, he was pretty excited about it. So late Saturday night I went to www.gametreeonline.com and ordered my copy of Spore for the Mac. I got the license email mid day Sunday as September 7th was launch first day and I was playing after the 3.5GB download at around 4pm.
Now why wasn’t it good for me to buy? These games suck the time away. Before you know it two hours are gone and even though you had fun, it probably wasn’t the most productive two hours. So I have to exercise restraint and make sure I play for a limited amount of time. Since having my own business, the work doesn’t stop at 5pm, I normally work into the evening. And since we are going away next week I have a lot of work to do! Hopefully I can balance work life and get it to a regular Monday to Friday work week so I can play guilt free. But everybody needs time away from work right?
So what is Spore? Well it is my kind of game. I have always loved the Sim games, Civilization, Sim City, The Sims, even games like Rollercoaster Tycoon. The type of games where every time you play it is different and your actions dictate how the game progresses.
Spore is no different. You start as an organism and your main task is to eat vegetation if you are a herbivor and other organisms if you are a carnivore. Once you have proceeded through a couple of levels of that, you evolve into a being where you can walk on land.
What makes this game so cool, is that you create your character as you go. You can select what kind of feet, body type, defense weaponry, colour etc. that your creature has. So really no two characters will ever be alike. And your characters get uploaded to the EA server and others will see your characters in their games. How cool is that?
I really like how this game doesn’t take itself to seriously either. When you meet new characters you do a little dance or a pose and if they like you they will become your ally. Or of course you can fight them and gain DNA points that will take you to the next level.
So this game turned out to be great. I’ve have never played before, I don’t know any history of the game, but I’m enjoying it thus far. Hopefully it doesn’t get to hard where I get bored and give up to start again… a normal thing for me to do in games like Civilization.
So below is the evolution of my current character…