Sporing...

Like most people, I bought into the Spore hype. Considering that I had a "just...one...more...turn" addiction to previous Civilization style games, I was greatly looking forward to one that took you from the beginning of life to a galactic civilization.

But, quite frankly, so far, I'm rather bored. I have only played the first two levels, so we'll see how it picks up, but the first zone is basically the game flOw with more powerups. Its an entertaining toy but death is meaningless (you just respawn) and ultimately whatever powerups you choose don't matter once you move on to the next stage.

The second stage involves going around and either befriending or fighting other creatures. Befriending them involves doing a dance-off of sorts and fighting involves defeating your enemies. The one main carry-over from the previous stage is whether you are a herbivore or carnivore which impacts what you need to eat (fruit, or other creatures) and your special ability. Carnivores can roar to intimidate the enemy, for instance. But ultimately, there isn't much depth in the strategy, and the get missions to build up your creature ultimately amount to "charm X creatures" or "kill X creatures" over and over again. And over and over again. And its not very difficult to do it, so it doesn't stay interesting for long.

I'll try out the world domination phase next, which hopefully is more fun, but at the start of it, it again feels like my decisions in the previous stage don't matter. While the second stage determined the look of my guy (though at the last minute you can undo everything and rebuild your creature as something completely different!), aside from the cosmetic aspect, all that time playing amounted to setting one variable: how warlike my species is.

Anyway, this is by no means a complete assessment of the entire game, as I've only played a very short way through. But so far the game is spOREing..... [yawn].