7/4/2023 0 Comments Spore game creatures![]() Add six pairs of legs and you still have a speed of 2. Add one pair of legs and you get a speed of 2. The creature creator that comes packaged with the game is actually fairly comprehensive and making it so that the wide range of body parts available all fit together and animate smoothly is a genuine accomplishment, but it’s one that’s utterly undone by the in-game functioning of every creature you make being completely identical. I guess I always had trouble believing that Maxis could stuff up such a good concept so badly surely there’d be at least some fun to be had just watching your creature evolve all the way up to a tool-using organism? Even the worst Civilization-style games offer the vicarious thrill of developing nuclear weapons while everyone else is still figuring out which end of the gun goes bang, after all, but in Spore? In Spore your choices are so insubstantial – the game is so insubstantial – as to be essentially meaningless. It’s actually kind of shocking to me just how lightweight this game is, even despite all that I’d heard about it in the four years since it was released. They may be frothy, but they are not shallow.Īnd then we have Spore, a game which deals with possibly the most complex concept possible - the evolution of an entire species from the single-cell stage all the way up to interstellar spaceflight – and which is nothing but froth. I’ve invested dozens of hours in the various SimCities connecting up plumbing and worrying about my education budget, and even the unapologetic virtual dollhouse of the Sims is surprisingly complex for what it is. What made Maxis games so successful – up until this point – was the fact that that layer of froth usually concealed a deep and comprehensive game experience lurking beneath. “Software toys” sums up Maxis games perfectly for me they are almost universally open-ended sandbox designs where you’re set loose in a virtual playground to do what you will with the systems Maxis have provided, and they’re presented with a thick layer of light-hearted frothiness to encourage you to have fun. They’re very up front about the fact that they are games, to the point where they had this as their company ident circa SimCity 2000. Maxis games have always been a little bit frothy.
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