Spore = Creationism ^ Down Syndrome

TinyURL'd

Critics claim that the release of the Spore Creature Creator is nothing more than an easy cash-grab.  After a few hours playing as the most retarded god since Black & White, I have come a conclusion: even if the full version of Spore were released, only % 0.002 of the entire gaming population would have gotten any further.  It is just retardededly fun.  You will laugh so much from the fun you are having, people will actually assume you have a mental handicap.  They released this part of the game merely to let the massive influx of YouTube videos and models of sexually inspired creatures in an effort to spread out the tension on our precious internetz — and yes, I said YouTube.

Initially I followed Spore as intently as Michael Jackson did the t-shirt:skin ratio of Dakota Fanning.  But dudes, it debuted in E3 2006, and it has been a long, long while since then.  Some people thought Spore might have lost some steam when its release was bumped last summer (I believe that was when).     Judging, however, by the ~900,000 custom creatures made since release (June 17, 2008), this is not the case.  So at least to me, the implementation of YouTube was a total, awesome and surprising surprise.  The community aspect of Spore insisted on this type of feature, after all.

The Creature Creator, which is only one portion of the final game, has three parts to its window.  The “building” section, the “testing” section and the “skinning” section.  The middle one, the testing ground actually has YouTube implemented into it.  The testing ground is used to test out your creature, see how he reacts to certain commands, how he walks around and how funny his (or her) babies look like.  Right in the bottom left are two buttons, one for taking photos and the other for video taping.  You can then take videos of your creature dancing around and YouTube it, showing off your creative prowess to the lesser beings on the internetz.  The bottom of the screen is where you name, describe and tag your creature — and then where you upload to the Sporepedia, allowing other players to bring them into their worlds.  Given the chance that someone extincts your creature, you are messaged thusly, giving you the option to insult them in the forums with mad caps-lock-stylez.

There is some strategy to the creating, as each item you use adds a certain amount of points to various parts of a creature, be it the ability to actually see, how powerful their charge attacks are and how fast they are.  But Maxis seems to have taken into account the fact that no one will pay much heed to that aspect of the building, and lets us throw on whatever we want.  The only problem with this game is convincing your little sister that your creature does not need three mouths inside one, even if you secretly agree.

If you do not mind the cartoon look to the game — buy it.

If you do mind — buy it.

If you do not buy it regardless – get off my internetz.

Tags: games, PC, spore