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Spore is one of the most revolutionary and innovative games from Maxis. This is a game that is based on a very original idea that you can find in a long time. And the way that idea is executed here makes it an enjoyable as well as a very deep and broad game. The idea of the game is to make a creature and evolve it from its cell stage to galactic civilization. And as the game progresses, you will be amazed and fascinated by the amount of freedom you get in evolving your creature for its survival.

Those who have played the Creature Creator which was released earlier, have played only a small part. Even though at the later stages of the game you will be constructing vehicles, town halls etc, the real fun lies in evolving your creature. You can add legs, arms, wings, horns to your creature in a variety of ways. It is up to you if you want to create a funny or a deadly creature. All the things that you add will have an impact on the attributes of your creature. The game will begin with the Cell Stage and you will start your journey as a tiny cell. You will swim in the ocean eating plants as herbivore or other creatures as carnivore or both as a herbivore. During this you will collect DNA which can be used to evolve your creature in the Cell creator. To enter the Cell Creator, just send a mating call and another member will soon join you. You will also discover various parts that can give you different abilities. For example you can add spikes to protect your self from Carnivores, fins to help you swim and turn fast in water. Initially you will just swim about alongside a whole variety of carnivores or herbivores eating things and avoid being eaten. The more you eat, the more larger your creature will become until the evolution meter in the bottom of the screen gets filled.

Then you are ready to evolve more and develops legs to enter the next stage, the Creature stage. Here also you are evolving but you will also learn how to interact with other creatures. You will be moving through the area, befriending other species or even making them extinct. So if you want to make friends, just select the parts that lets you sing, dance, charm. Or if you want to attack, just add claws etc. To make friends, you will have to interact with other species and imitate there actions. To fight with them, you will click on them and use your abilities to do your damage. As you play through the stage, you can also build your little group of followers which will follow you around. As you play the creature stage, you will notice  a wide variety of  species and you will also think that you could have been like them. That’s the power of Evolution in this game, such a wide variety of things to choose from. You might eventually develop a bond with your creature. One more thing i want to point about the game is the ‘Sporepedia catalog’. As you discover new species and click on them, information about them will get added to the catalog. It not only keeps tracks of your content, but also allows you to access content of other Spore players from around the world. As you progress or make friends in this stage, the evolution meter will again fill up and you will be ready to enter the new stage.

The next stage is the Tribal Stage. Here the game becomes a bit of the RTS game. Here you will not be controlling your individual creature, but a whole tribe. Your tribe members gather food which is used to support the large population and develop buildings that offer various upgrades. Here also, you have two choice to make. If you want to fight, you can equip your tribes with weapons and take down other tribes or you can just serenade other tribes by using your instruments. You cannot modify your creature here but can certainly dress them up in different clothes or accessories that increases there social or combat skills.

Next comes the Civilization Stage where you will be controlling the whole society or civilization. You will start with a single city and a land unit and the aim here is to capture cities through force, conversion or just buy them. You will capture spice nodes to generate revenue so that you can purchase more units, upgrade your defenses and build new units. Occasionally, you will be attacked and so you will have to prepare well. You can create a variety of buildings like house, factory, town-hall, entertainment places. Building such things will increase the happiness of your town. Each city can produce a single type of land, sea or air unit. So if you are going for military power, you have only 3 variety of units to control. That’s very less considering all the things which you have seen in the earlier stages. Or you can convert a city by sending religious vehicles over there and preach there citizens. However, not much strategic knowledge is required to complete the stage.

Next comes the Space Stage, the largest and the most wide stages of the game. You will be in control of a single spacecraft which you will build using the creation tools. You will fly around in the galaxy, visiting stars and planets. Some of them will be empty and some will have species in different stages of evolution. You will get various missions from the local civilizations as you visit them. You will also pick up a bunch of followers as you did on previous stages. You can also establish your colony on the other planet in order to expand the empire. You will also become part of some space battles. Some of the planets you will see will not support life unless you make some ecological changes there. There are a lot of options here for you to explore. You can also see a whole timeline of your evolution, see how every decision has affected you.

The graphics and animations in the game are top notch. The art design of the game is superb. Each monster or creature of the game looks unique and lively. The game ran well on my system at full settings very smoothly and there seems to be no crash issues which I have seen so far. The sound of the game sounds very unique and original. The creatures will make unique and funny noise. You will really feel like you are in a separate world surrounded by these creatures.

So like all of the Maxis games, this wonderful game  from “Will Wright” delivers what it promised, a whole new experience and a very original game. The replay value of the game is also very high. You can play from the beginning and make completely new and different creatures. So you can actually enjoy this game for hours without getting bored. Though sometimes, you might get bored, but there are so many amazing things to see and explore, you will get over it.

Ratings

• Graphics : 4 / 5
• Gameplay : 4.5 / 5
• Sound : 5 / 5
• Overall : 4 / 5

This game is very different and has a very new experience. Try this if you are a fan of Maxis games.

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