Unless you have had your head firmly under a rock for the past 3 years it?s a given that you?ve heard of Spore; Designer and alliteration enthusiast Will Wright?s newest foray into reinventing the paradigms of gaming and making a metric ass load of cash while doing it. And while the actual full version of Wright?s evolution-o-matic is still months off, he has granted us a demo of the creature creator, one of the many tools available to the player that will enable him to create new and interesting civilizations. Or a race of cock monsters.
I believe that the sudden spamming of hundreds of phallic monsters upon The demo?s release shows, more then anything, the Achilles heel of this game. That is of course, that people are colossally stupid. It goes beyond the mere abuse of the game engine for personal enjoyment, ie torturing the sims to death in Wright?s previous game, to just pure vulgarity. Yes, its perfectly clear that you can make a walking penis with this Demo, that?s very nice, go stick it with the billions of other penis monsters. However, it appears that so far, thankfully, these creations seem to be quickly diminishing, as more and more people realize , yes, it has been done before.
As per the actual game and mechanics, its just about everything you could ask for. Theres a wide variety of parts, many of which have sliders to allow mutations. Oddly absent are sliders to elongate the fingers or actually to do anything to the hands whatsoever. Beyond this, some of the sliders, the Circular ?rotation and angle adjustment tool? seems to be both overly sensitive and suffering from some strange bug that can cause it to slam things into some odd position and make it near impossible to remove them. Beyond this as well are a few oddities like spines or wings randomly rotating out of position if you extend the spine, the fact that wings don?t allow true flight, and that the only sense is that of sight, with smell, hearing, and taste all left to the realm of ?charm? points.
One last gripe is that of collision detection. Its not at all uncommon for a creature to extend his arms through other parts of his body, commonly raising them through his head or the like. While its nothing really important, this does rather ruin the suspension of disbelief, and can make an otherwise amazing creature seem strangely lackluster.
Over all though, Spore?s creature Creator is an amazing piece of work, which allows a massive degree of freedom to anyone who wants to play with it. With luck, the finished edition will have a few of these minor bugs ironed out and Wright will have created yet another in a long line of insanely popular games.
I believe that the sudden spamming of hundreds of phallic monsters upon The demo?s release shows, more then anything, the Achilles heel of this game. That is of course, that people are colossally stupid. It goes beyond the mere abuse of the game engine for personal enjoyment, ie torturing the sims to death in Wright?s previous game, to just pure vulgarity. Yes, its perfectly clear that you can make a walking penis with this Demo, that?s very nice, go stick it with the billions of other penis monsters. However, it appears that so far, thankfully, these creations seem to be quickly diminishing, as more and more people realize , yes, it has been done before.
As per the actual game and mechanics, its just about everything you could ask for. Theres a wide variety of parts, many of which have sliders to allow mutations. Oddly absent are sliders to elongate the fingers or actually to do anything to the hands whatsoever. Beyond this, some of the sliders, the Circular ?rotation and angle adjustment tool? seems to be both overly sensitive and suffering from some strange bug that can cause it to slam things into some odd position and make it near impossible to remove them. Beyond this as well are a few oddities like spines or wings randomly rotating out of position if you extend the spine, the fact that wings don?t allow true flight, and that the only sense is that of sight, with smell, hearing, and taste all left to the realm of ?charm? points.
One last gripe is that of collision detection. Its not at all uncommon for a creature to extend his arms through other parts of his body, commonly raising them through his head or the like. While its nothing really important, this does rather ruin the suspension of disbelief, and can make an otherwise amazing creature seem strangely lackluster.
Over all though, Spore?s creature Creator is an amazing piece of work, which allows a massive degree of freedom to anyone who wants to play with it. With luck, the finished edition will have a few of these minor bugs ironed out and Wright will have created yet another in a long line of insanely popular games.