Which not only does a fair degree of disservice to Charles Darwin, but also leaves Spore‘s simulation elements and core gameplay disappointingly slim. If you’re attentive enough and good enough at clicking, evolution’s a piece of cake. It’s all very simplistic and doesn’t require much thought or skill. Build more units, breed more tribe members, call out for some backup and overcome your foes with military or economic or religious force until they throw up the white flag. Whatever foreign policy you choose, the time-tested strategy of power-in-numbers is really all that’s necessary. Through each stage your objectives change in scope and context but remain the same: conquer your rivals through diplomacy or warmongering. Then comes Civilization Stage which is like, well, a dumbed-down, real-time version of a Civilization title.
Tribal Stage follows and plays like a rudimentary RTS. The subsequent phase, the Creature Stage, plays like the first ten experience levels of World of Warcraft with lots of mashing hotkeys and right-clicking as you eat or befriend rival species to gain biological dominance. The goal of Cell – to eat, grow, and thrive – remains at the heart of Spore through the bulk of its lifespan. You’re just chomping and swimming through primordial ooze, trying to eat while avoiding being eaten, but from the Pac Man-esque triumph as you beef up and your predators become your prey to the relevatory moment of your first evolution, Cell’s basic but addictive, and each second’s a memorable step up the food chain. For all its click-n-drag minimalism, Cell surprisingly has some of Spore‘s most compelling gameplay. Rewinding the clock by a few billion years, we arrive at Spore‘s Cell Stage, where the path from amorphous amoeba to space-faring civilization begins. Spore‘s a brave new world: flawed, to be sure, but unique enough to be worth any gamer’s time and cash.
But if Spore fails as the ubergame, it might be something else even more exceptional – a game that ignites your imaginative fires, that will have you reconsidering your own creative power and that of your fellow gamer. Contrary to its creator’s claims, Spore isn’t “Sim-Everything.” If we’re taking this game as The Gospel According to Will Wright, then the history of life as we know it is no more than a handful of stages that play like Cliff’s Notes of classic genres in gaming history.
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