spore

Overview

Spore is the latest game from the prodigious brain of Will Wright and aims to simulate the development of an entire species. The player begins the game in the form of a microscopic organism that arrives on a planet via exogenesis or panspermia, deposited in the primordial oceans by a meteorite impact. From this point on, the player has the ability to change the physical shape of the creature, giving it different evolutionary traits depending on what path the player wants his life form to take. Eventually, the creature evolves to the point of sentience, and a new gameplay mode begins in which the species establishes its own civilization. Cities are built, technology is researched, and eventually the player's species becomes capable of space flight; the player is able to first explore and colonize their home solar system and later, the entire galaxy. Will Wright has stated that the game's overall goal is to get to the center of the galaxy, and that the game does, in fact, have an ending. While there is no hard ending that acts as an end to gameplay, the final space section culminates in a one-off meeting at the galactic core where you are rewarded with the terraforming staff of life item.

EA is already planning Spore not just as a game but an entire franchise. The property has already been targeted for post-release expansion packs, Wii, and iPhone adaptations are already underway. Additionally, EA has announced an iTunes-style "Spore Store" which will be built into the game itself, allowing for the digital distribution of future Spore expansion packs as well as Internet sales of Spore merchandise including t-shirts, posters, a collectible card game, and possibly custom figures created from 3D prints of submitted creature designs.

Spore Creature is the Nintendo DS version of spore, featuring different gameplay and overall design based more on story and adventure gameplay, the Nintendo DS version of Spore also featured a unique cartoony style.

Gameplay

The gameplay of Spore takes place on a massive scale, and as such, the game generates many of its assets through procedural programming and system inter-connectivity. The majority of Spore's content is generated both by the game itself, by the player in his own game, and by other players. Spore is being referred to as a "massively single-player" game, in which the procedurally generated content (animals, sentient species, planets, vehicles, civilizations, and so on) of each copy of the game are spread to every other copy of the game on the planet, as long as that person's computer is connected to the Internet. Spore's gameplay is comprised of five individual phases, each based on a previously released franchise and genre. The initial cell or "tide pool" phase is based on a blend of Pac-Man and Flow, the creature phase is based on World of Warcraft, the tribal phase is based on Populous, the civilization phase is based on SimCity or Civilization, and the Space phase is based on Master of Orion.

Editors

There are a total of eight editors in the game, governing the creation of vehicles, buildings, creatures, and more. Each editor has a built in complexity limit to prevent the overpowering of vehicles or creatures. However, this may be easily overridden by a console command.

Game Stages

The game consists of five stages in which you will play through using various play styles while following the life cycle of your creature and the galaxy that they are in.

Cellular

After a cinematic opening of a meteorite crashing into a planet, the player begins his creature's journey as a microscopic cell, or microbe. During this stage, using the control of the mouse, you must survive by eating smaller microbes and avoiding larger ones, similar to gameplay in Pac-Man or flOw. After you have eaten enough, the microbe will lay an egg, allowing you to enter the first editor. In the Microbe Editor, you edit your cell with various parts including weapons, eyes, appendages, etc. These will aid you in survival and also grow your creature. After you leave the editor, your cell enlarges and the camera zooms out, allowing you to see even larger and more versatile microbes. After eating enough food, you progress into the Creature Stage.

Creature

Upon finishing the Cellular Stage, you will begin constructing your creature that will become your official species throughout the rest of the game. The Creature Editor (along with the other editors) will function the same way as the Microbe Editor, however will allow you to create a sentient, land fairing creature using arms, legs, eyes, mouths, etc. You will then need to carry out tasks such as eating, communicating, and eventually mating. You will encounter many other forms of creatures, both predator, prey, and your own species, and you basically play in a third person free roam. By doing so you will earn DNA points for the editor and evolve your brain, which is required to move onto further stages. After visiting the editor multiple times and meeting the requirements for brain level, mating with another creature of your species will allow you to advance to the Tribal Stage.

Tribal

After mating, your creature becomes sentient, which means it is intelligent enough to communicate and hold relations with other creatures. The gameplay style now switches to somewhat of an RTS; you can now control multiple creatures of the same species. The goal of this stage is to grow your tribe to fifteen members or conquer/ally with five other tribes on the planet (no matter what the species) by way of violence, diplomacy, or religion. Each tribe has a hut, which acts as a base of operations and can have many things added for the tribe members, such as for entertainment and weaponry, however at the cost of food. Your tribe also has 2 special abilities based on how you played creature, for example a omnivore type creature in tribal will be able to summon all creatures around it at the moment to help in combat and will be able to cause a giant sea monster to knock fish out of the water for free food.

Civilization

When the Tribal Stage is complete your creatures move on to build a city. Gameplay still acts as a RTS, however also adds in the need to maintain your own city, such as Sim City. Once again the goal is dominate the other cities around the planet, however with the addition of having to collect gas from geysers spread across the planet and keeping your enemies away. Cities are obtained in one of three ways. The first two involve building military or Religious units and sending them at a city. If victorious it will be conquered or converted respectively. Both of these methods likely will start a war. The third way is a peaceful method is building Economic units and sending them to open a trade route, leading to you eventually making an offer to buy the city.

Space

The final stage of the game allows you to construct a spacecraft, which grants you many abilities to help you explore and possibly conquer the galaxy. Hundreds and hundreds of solar systems are available to be explored, and with the use of the many tools that your spacecraft will gain you will be able to manipulate planets, scan for intelligent life, interbreed creatures, and even obliterate a planet entirely, which in turn may cause a new asteroid belt to form. During your encounters with other intelligent species, you may choose to once again settle things peacefully or start an intergalactic war.

Sporepedia

• Spore has a feature called the Sporepedia, the Sporepedia allows you to browse and download any other player in the worlds creatures,vehicles and buildings.
• Players can also create Sporecasts, which are constantly updating packages of creatures by a user.
• Players also have a friends system in the Sporepedia and can have their creations featured on the main page.

Controversy

SecuRom DRM

EA has limited each copy of Spore to five individual installs by the user at any given time; Also the game will re-authenticate any time you add new downloaded content from the Sporepedia. If the user surpasses the five install limit they will receive an error message that will ask the user to verify the registration code and to reinstall the game. Any further issues may be forwarded to EA's support service.

Piracy

Ironically despite the heavy restrictions put on Spore to prevent piracy it Spore turned out to be the most pirated game of 2008 with over 1,700,000 downloads between its release in September and the lists creation in early December by TorrentFreak. Spore also earned the title of being one of the fastest pirated games of 2008 with over half a million people downloading the game within 10 days of its general release. This is no doubt aided by the fact that Spore was available on torrent websites almost a week before it's official release date.

Religion in Spore

In an interview with Eurogamer posted August 11, 2008, Will Wright claimed that most of the "religiously" oriented criticism of the game has come from what Wright called "Militant Atheists", instead of the expected religious audience.

AntiSpore.com

A newly launched website called AntiSpore.com which claims Spore is teaching kids evolution. Also the website claims to want the E rating pulled and made into a M Rated game. The website was later revealed to be a hoax following references to the often implausible nature of content posted on the internet and Poe's Law.

Graphics Problems

Spore does not support anti-aliasing and is limited to 30 frames per second at all times. Also, by not being displayed at the standard LCD monitor refresh rates of 60 fps, you will notice screen tearing, which can be very distracting during the later parts of the game. Unfortunately, there is currently no patch to fix these issues. Graphics driver software, however, such as Nvidia forceware, can be used to enable anti-aliasing, texture filtering, and vertical sync.

Limited Edition

Spore's limited edition is called "Galactic Edition" and will include the following bonus content:

• The Making of Spore DVD
• How To Make a Better Being DVD (a 50 minutes documentary by National Geographic Channel)
• The Art of Spore (a 128-page hardback book with Spore artwork)
• 100-page Galactic Handbook
• Spore poster
• Exclusive packaging

Expansions and Patches

Creepy and Cute

The Creepy and Cute expansion pack adds 60 new creature parts to the editor, 24 new preview animations, 2 new test drive backgrounds and 48 new paint scripts (split evenly into base, coat and detail layers and 12 complete styles).

Spore Galactic Adventures

Spore Galactic Adventures was released in June 2009, It included a mission creator and allowed players to beam their creations down to planets and complete missions with them.

Using the Mission creator players can effectively create their own games filled with any creations from the Sporepedia.

Achievements

Spore Also features almost 100 unlockable achievements

1. Galactic God - In one continuous game, evolve a creature from cell to space travel
2. Photographer - Send a video or photo to a friend while in Test Drive mode
3. Architect - Create 50 buildings and share them
4. Automotive Engineer - Create and upload 50 vehicles
5. Biologist - Creature and upload 100 creatures
6. Spore Fan - Play 50 hours in your Spore galaxy
7. Spore Addict - Play 100 hours in your Spore galaxy
8. Creator - Play 50 hours in the creator tools
9. Universe in a Box - Play through each stage, and use each creator
10. Deja Vu - While exploring the universe, come across something you have created
11. Social Engineer - Make 5 Sporecastes of 50 assets
12. Rising Star - 5 Sporecasts must be subscribed to be 10 people
13. Front Page News - One of your creatures or Sporecasts must be featured on Spore.com
14. Creature Stage Unlocked - Unlock creature stage
15. Tribe Stage Unlocked - Unlock Tribe stage
16. Civilization Stage Unlocked - Unlock Civilization stage
17. Space Stage Unlocked - Unlock Space stage
18. Aluminum Cell - Beat Cell stage on hard
19. Landfall - Beat Cell stage, enter Creature stage
20. Pacifist - Beat Cell stage with zero kills
21. Completist - Unlock every Cell part
22. Speed Freak - Beat Cell stage in less than 8 minutes
23. Cell Addict - Beat Cell stage 25 times
24. Iron Creature - Beat Creature stage on hard
25. Evolver - Beat Creature stage
26. Everyone's BFF - Beat Creature stage by making friends with 20 species
27. Foe - Wipe out 20 species
28. Max Power - Creature must have maximum stats in 4 abilities
29. Survivor - Beat Creature stage without dying
30. Socialite - Meet 200 creatures created by others
31. Flight of the Bumblebee - Fly for 200 meters; can't touch ground
32. Devourer - Eat 50 species
33. Village Folks - 3 posse members must be from different species
34. Speed Demon - Beat Creature stage in under one hour
35. Bestial - Beat Creature stage 10 times
36. Cerberus - Evolve creature with three heads
37. General Custer - Lead 30 of your posse members to death
38. Epic Killer - Kill an Epic Creature in the Creature stage
39. Slugger - Beat Creature stage with no legs
40. Steel Tribe - Beat Tribe stage on hard
41. Founder - Beat Tribe stage, build city
42. Tribal Socialite - Convert all five tribes to your beliefs
43. Vicious - Eradicate all five other tribes, kill all, destroy all of their villagers
44. Domestic Bliss - Domesticate three species, and farm them
45. Watchful Parent - Beat Tribe stage with zero tribe member deaths
46. Tribal - Beat Tribe stage 10 times
47. Ergonomically Terrific - Beat Tribe stage in under one hour
48. Adamantium Civilization - Beat Civilization stage on hard
49. Starman - Conquer all Civilizations, beat stage, launch first spaceship
50. Economist - Beat Civilization stage with 8 economic cities
51. Military Strongman - Beat Civilization stage with 8 military cities
52. Missionary - Beat Civilization stage with 8 religious cities
53. Spice Hoarder - Have control of every spice node
54. Relentless - Beat Civilization stage 10 times
55. Rolling Thunder - Beat Civilization stage in under one hour
56. Ghetto Blaster - Create 10 anthems
57. Super Pilot - Fly 40 hours in your shaceship
58. Civil Engineer - Raise 20 alien tribes up to civilizations
59. Conquistador - Conquer 15 star systems
60. Zoo Keeper - Create 15 zoo planets
61. Bio Engineer - Edit at least 25 creatures using the Creature Tweaker
62. Palm Greaser - Pay 50 bribes
63. Maxis Scout - Acquire 100 badges
64. Empire Builder - Max out colonies on 10 planets
65. Quietus Star - Destroy 20 different planets
66. Quest Master - Finish 150 missions
67. Gunner - Destroy 500 spaceships
68. Identity Crisis - Build an alliance between two races you created
69. Thief - Steal 50 crates of spice
70. 42 - Discovery the center of the universe
71. Manifest Destiny - Discover Earth
72. Careless Parent - Lose at least five planets
73. Alter Ego - Play Space stage using all 10 archetypes
74. Alter Ego's Alter Ego - Get Master Badge Level 10 using all archetypes
75. Zealot Passion - Play as Zealot
76. Warrior Passion - Play as Warrior
77. Bard Passion - Play as Bard
78. Knight Passion - Play as Knight
79. Wanderer Passion - Play as Wanderer
80. Trader Passion - Play as Trader
81. Shaman Passion - Play as Shaman
82. Scientist Passion - Play as Scientist
83. Diplomat Passion - Play as Diplomat
84. Ecologist Passion - Play as Ecologist
85. Zealot Hero - Get Master Badge Level 10 as a Zealot
86. Warrior Hero - Get Master Badge Level 10 as a Warrior
87. Bard Hero - Get Master Badge Level 10 as a Bard
88. Knight Hero - Get Master Badge Level 10 as a Knight
89. Wanderer Hero - Get Master Badge Level 10 as a Wanderer
90. Trader Hero - Get Master Badge Level 10 as a Trader
91. Shaman Hero - Get Master Badge Level 10 as a Shaman
92. Scientist Hero - Get Master Badge Level 10 as a Scientist
93. Diplomat Hero - Get Master Badge Level 10 as a Diplomat
94. Ecologist Hero - Get Master Badge Level 10 as a Ecologist
95. Split Personality - Complete 'change archetype' mission

System Requirements

PC

Minimum

Windows XP

• Processor: Pentium 4 @ 2 GHz or Athlon Equivalent
• Memory: 512 MB
• Hard Drive: 6 GB Free
• Video Memory: 128 MB with Pixel Shader 2.0 Support
• Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
• DirectX: 9.0c
• Keyboard & Mouse
• DVD Rom Drive

Windows Vista

• Processor: Pentium 4 @ 2 GHz or Equivalent
• Memory: 768 MB
• Hard Drive: 6 GB Free
• Video Memory: 128 MB with Pixel Shader 2.0 Support
• Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
• DirectX: 9.0c
• Keyboard & Mouse
• DVD Rom Drive

For Computers with Built-In Graphic Chipsets

• Processor: Intel Pentium D @ 2.6 GHz or Intel Core 2 DUO @ 1.8 GHz or Equivalent
• Memory: 768 MB
• Hard Drive: 6 GB Free
• Video Memory: Intel Integrated Chipset, 945GM or above
• Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
• DirectX: 9.0c
• Keyboard & Mouse
• DVD Rom Drive

Supported Video Cards

• ATI Radeon series: 9500, 9600, 9800 X300, X600, X700, X800, X850 X1300, X1600, X1800, X1900, X1950 2400, 2600, 2900, 3650, 3850, 3870, 4850
• NVIDIA GeForce series: FX 5900, FX 5950 6200, 6500, 6600, 6800, 7200, 7300, 7600, 7800, 7900, 7950 8400, 8500, 8600, 8800, 9600, 9800, GTX 260, GTX 280
• Intel Extreme Graphics: GMA 950, GMA X3000, GMA X3100

Mac

Minimum

• Mac OS X 10.5.3 Leopard or higher
• Intel Core Duo Processor
• 1024 MB RAM
• ATI X1600 or NVidia 7300 GT with 128 MB of Video RAM, or Intel Integrated GMA X3100
• At least 4.7GB of hard drive space for installation, plus additional space for creations.

The game will not run on PowerPC (G3/G4/G5) based Mac systems (PowerMac).

For Mac computers using built-in graphics chipsets

• Intel Integrated Chipset GMA X3100
• Dual 2.0GHz CPUs, or 1.7GHz Core 2 Duo, or equivalent

Supported Video Cards

• ATI Radeon(TM) series: X1600, X1900, HD 2400, HD 2600
• NVIDIA GeForce series : 7300, 7600, 8600, 8800
• Intel(R) Extreme Graphics: GMA X3100

Spore will not run on the GMA 950 class of integrated video cards.