EA and Maxis have brought us such classic games as the Sim City series, The Sims series and other Sim titles such as SimEarth, SimAnt and SimCopter. Their latest instalment is Spore and it's that which I've been playing for the last week or two, getting to grips with my inner intelligent designer.

As a devout atheist, it's my firm belief that our evolution has been borne of necessity rather than the careful and methodical modification by a greater being and while I'm happy to have a giggle over my beliefs, the Christian crazies at antispore.com , which may actually just be a hoax, though will doubtless represent real right-wing Christian opinions, are very unhappy that their beliefs on creationism (that a single god made man as is, and shaped a woman from one of his ribs) are not being taught with Spore. 

In case you've been living under a rock for the past month or so, the Christians aren't the only ones to be pissed off with Spore.  The game uses a digital rights management (DRM) system that means that the game will only allow itself to be installed onto five machines.  The number was originally three but such was the uproar that they increased this number to help douse the flames on consumer review sites and fora. 

Spore is a five-part game that takes you through each stage of evolution that we're aware of and possibly a bit beyond with the view of building your empire from microscopic organisms to colonisation of the stars.  While it's a fairly straightforward concept, it's Spore's expansive customisation options that actually provide the most fun and replay value.  From the very beginning, you design your micro-organism, placing on the body as many or as few eyes as you would care to have, this type of mouth or that, little wiggly things, fin-type things, or whatever you might wish to select from the palette of wonders provided by your creature creator, which itself is available as a standalone tool.

If you so choose, you can make your micro-organism look like a turd.  You can make it look like a hot dog with eyes.  You can make it look like a primitive fish with a parrot beak, you can make pretty much anything, place it where you want, sizing and angling it in any number of ridiculous or grotesque ways.  My little purple swimmer had two eye-stalks on either sides, little finger-like fins and a pair of spikes at the front, as well as being able to spit poison.

Once Scampillum minioscum (I named the little guy as if he were bacteria, and named him after Scamp, our cat, and Midgin, our former cat, who's now a bit dead) had made his way onto land after eating everything else, evolving a little and growing a lot, I was given a map and able to explore small settlements of my - and other - species. 

The way Spore works is that it takes the creatures of othe users and imports them into your game, so that you're not stuck with the same old enemies or prospective friends.  I really love the idea of that, with the whole game being a massive online repository and stock room for creatures, which are then deposited wherever they're needed, though that does make you a bit conscious of the fact that perhaps your creatures are a bit shit and everyone else's are going to be amazing.

In the creature stage, your mission is simply to form friendships with other species, or destroy them.  It's quite simple, really and doesn't last too long, but, looking back, it was one of the most fun parts of the game.  Fairly soon, though, you're plunged into the tribal part of the game, where you're done evolving (this only happens, unfortunately, in the first two stages of life) and you're in control of your tribe.  What you then have to do is conquer or become friends with the all the other tribes on your planet.  Primarily, I went for all-out assault as I thought that playing digeridoos for other people was a bit strange, and actually, the tribal section of Spore made me a bit bored with it.  It went on a little and things became a bit difficult and less fun. 

I didn't want to be limited to throwing spears, hand axes and flaming torches, I wanted to go that bit further and develop guns!  And I missed the third-person control over the creature as well.  Stage three turned the game into a bit of a real-time strategy where you had to assign so many tribe members to attacking and others to defending the children, or as healers.  Or as digeridoo players and as a result, I found that I felt disconnected from those creatures that I'd spent such care and effort crafting. 

The civilisation stage, which brought in familiar elements from the SimCity games, removes the player even further from the creatures by putting them inside vehicles of your design.  Land vehicles to begin with, then later ships and aircraft. 

The fourth stage was much the same as the third, just on a bigger scale.  Instead of conquering neighbouring tribes, you're out to capture other cities by use of these vehicles or, if you're less belligerent than me, by way of negotiations and such.  By this time, all the fun of the game had drained away.  I was happy creating creatures and seeing how well they worked, but now I was making...  tanks...  And sending them to places to blow things up.  Bleh.

Well, after I'd captured all the cities and spice geysers (I dunno...) we made our way into the stars and I had to design a space vehicle. 

My space vehicle may look a little familiar, but I really couldn't think of anything else I fancied creating.  My buildings were all in the same theme, my vehicles were all vastly different and so I wanted a little something special.  I called it NCC 1701 for fairly obviously reasons and set about... you guessed it, colonising and capturing, but on a planetary scale.  And now, thoroughly bored, I have given up with the game.  I may start over again on a different planet, so that I can enjoy the most fun parts again, but once I get to tribal stages, it's just going to be dull again. 

For some reason, Spore rushes you through the most interesting and fun parts of the game in order to get you to the longest, slowest, most boring and tedious parts, which is very Maxis, I think it's fair to say.  "We've created this system where you can actually live out a virtual life, but instead of allowing you to do interesting things, we're going to make you get up and go to work every morning!"  Amazing.  Thanks.

I don't want to be travelling half the way across the galaxy to try to sell heaps of spice or collect stuff, I want to still be creating creatures and, say, fighting them against one another, like, I dunno, Sportal Kombat.  I just want to have fun with a game, not be bored by it!  Sure, I'm happy to work through certain things in a game, otherwise, I wouldn't have completed Oblivion twice, but come on, give me variety, sure, but don't take away my third-person control scheme in preference of point-and-click! 

Elements of Spore are amazing, I'll give it ten out of ten for its intuitive and fun customisation, but the game they've plonked that feature into is repetitve and dull.  Sure, it'll pass a train journey, but it's really not going to set anyone's life on fire.  Buy it though, for you may have more patience than me and might love your little dudes and their cutesy noises, sweet little animations and their vast number of customisations.

It is after much deliberation that I give Spore...
72%

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