The stars look very different today.

Just one day ago, we were building creepy mutated Sporemen. Two days ago, we were conquering the world. Three days ago, we were just a spore.

Throughout these days, Spore has challenged me to make decisions about life, the universe, and flagella. The game forces you to answer such questions as "Is it wrong to eat a baby?", to which the response is, "Not unless you're an herbivore." Which I don't usually agree with, but if it'll save me from being trampled by 50-foot tall sporecreatures, well then, sorry, babies. You'll understand when you get older--oh wait no hahaha!

Now, however, I have entered the final stage of Spore--the Space stage. This is the stage I've heard the most positive things about, and I was eager to get here. And let me tell you...it delivers. Space (space space) is the place. First of all, you're now directly controlling a spaceship, instead of merely assigning units to do your bidding. However, flying a regular UFO is boring, so you get to design (!!!) your own ship. I wanted to make the Axiom Starliner, from WALL•E:



...and I ended up designing the Haxiom Starliner.



You control your ship with the mouse or keyboard, and are finally able to leave orbit. Doing so reveals that you're in a solar system, and zooming out even further reveals other solar systems. Your ship can only move so many parsecs at once, so in order to get around, you need to hop from system to system (or upgrade your engine as the game progresses). Zooming out totally shows you the swirly spiral galaxy from the game's main menu screen, which is also in the Spore logo. See? Now you're part of the galaxy. You started out playing flOw, and now you're flying around like an idiot in a fake Axiom Starliner. Isn't life grand?

This is where the game reaches total awesomeality (is that a word i think it is). You are now able to communicate with empires stationed on entirely different planets, establish trade routes with them, form alliances, conquer them, hire them to attack other empires, and so much more. It's like Civilization mode, with less stress on immediately taking over everything. As in, other empires don't randomly attack you as often as other nations did in Civilization mode, although they do get mad at you for entering their airspace. Okay, there's no air in space, so...spacespace. However, you can curry their favor by accomplishing tasks for them, which are pretty neat. You can abduct animals, shoot them, erase their minds, terraform their land, paint their skies, or just steal their treasures. Space also leads you to my favorite thing to do in Spore, which is backstab your allies.

Example: I teamed up with the Yellow Empire (these empires actually do have names, but are all assigned colors again--and since I can't remember made up names of 200000000000000000 empires, we're sticking with the colors) and have established three trade routes with them. Now, when I try to gain the approval of the hostile Pink Empire (those jerks!!) by flying to one of the many planets in the Yellow Empire and shooting 6 infected animals, the yellow guys get a little ticked off--but since I'm supporting their economy a lot and they like me (they really like me) they stay allied with me--and I still have the use of one of their spacecraft to help me do my dirty work. It's all very backstabby and political and amazing, and once you get the hang of it, you can really work it to your advantage.

You also can sell spice directly to other empires, by delivering it to them. Different colored spice is worth more in different empires, so you've got to manage how much you're selling to which planets in order to maximize your profits. You can also buy spice from other planets and resell it, so it's up to you if you want to invest your Sporebucks in Green Spice. I'm still getting used to that mechanic, but it's great fun.

Combat is a little difficult, at least I think it is, because I only have one ally ship at the moment and we're taking on entire fleets of fighters at a time. However, I can manage smaller combat missions, which are exciting. Many missions come with a time limit, so if you're quick enough, you can pop back over to your home world, recharge your ship, and fly back into battle. I don't think that's what you're supposed to do, but if you can manage it, give it a shot.

All of this seems to be quite the overwhelming experience. So much, in fact, that even after spending a day in Space, I still feel like I've barely scratched the surface. I'm nowhere near halfway through, and then, who knows what'll happen? Maybe the universe will explode. Maybe the Greenus McWhatThe Empire will invent their own version of the Large Hadron Collider and create a black hole that sucks everything into it.

At least there isn't Autosave.

Labels: Mac, The Spore Diaries

The world is changed. I feel it in the spore-water. I feel it in the spore-earth. I smell it in the spore-air.

No longer am I micromanaging individual citizens of the planet (which happens to be called LOLSville, in case you were wondering) and caring for their eating habits. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, they're not eating at all--and if they are, they're eating spice from one of the four spice derricks that our nation has forcefully taken. I don't know how an entire civilization is supposed to survive on spice, but they are.

Since we destroyed all other tribes in Tribal mode, the planet is filled with different sovereign nations of Greenus McWhatThes. Each nation is assigned a color, that has nothing to do with anything. In this mode, you also get to design buildings. I've mentioned the Lantern Memorial Tower before, but this is the first time you get to see the creation I'm most proud of: the Sporeman Edifice.



PNG version, to drop onto your copy of Spore:



Behold, a Sporeman! This is what I imagine sporecreatures think humans look like: horrifying. This also doubles as an entertainment building, and apparently it doesn't matter that the door to get in is actually the Sporeman's mouth and that it's like 200 feet in the air with no stairways or anything. However, it keeps them happy, and it probably gives them something to do between spice overdoses.

Things were not so happy when the Crimson Nation (note: not the Red Nation) started to get on my case about "being too big" and "attacking them". So, I did what any good warrior nation would do: I cut off their spice lines. My army, now high on purloined spice, managed to wipe out the Crimson Army and establish an Economic City on their home turf. Thanks for helping me produce more spice, jerks! Those guys were totally jerks.

The game allows you to backstab, too. Not literally, because I don't really think all of the sporecreatures have backs. No, what I was able to do was ally myself with the Yellow Nation, assign them to attack the Blue Nation, and vice versa. After Yellow defeated Blue, I tasked them with attacking the Red Nation, and then, at their happiest, we struck.

By this point, I had about 20 of these on my side:



The battle was almost over, until I realized that I had two cities left to conquer. What to do, what to do...oh, right. I launched the ICBM, a weapon which I only was able to use after I had around 25,000 sporebucks, and flattened them. WE WILL BURN SPOREUTICA TO THE GROUND.

And with that, I moved on to space, the final frontier. (and stage!)

What awaits Greenus McWhatThe in Space?!

I dunno.

Labels: Mac, The Spore Diaries

I was never really good at strategy games.

I think my first encounter with strategy games was on this CD-ROM I got with this package of Hansen's juice once (or something, it was sponsored by them and I don't really remember where the CD came from). It had some pretty good demos, some creepy ones (at least, Bad Mojo was creepy when I was like 10), and a demo for some Heroes of Might and Magic game. I liked it because you could move knights around on horses and stuff. I hated it because I didn't have any idea what was supposed to be going on.

Of course, it's 12 years later now, and since then I've attempted to play strategy games every couple of months. I've got enough problems with the Advance Wars series, and I've tried Command and Conquer demos and the like and I've never really caught the bug, I guess. The closest I've gotten is CivRev on DS, and even then, I'm only playing on one-level-above-tutorial-mode. There's something about commanding units that's not as exciting as actually doing stuff.

Imagine, then, my surprise, when my poor little clan of Greenus McWhatThe changed into a warrior tribe of Greenus McWhatThe, and was plopped into the middle of a simplified RTS. You see, every decision you make in the game actually effects (affects? EFX?) the next stage of the game, and while I started this stage with the Adaptable (read: middle-ground) trait, I was soon entrenched in battle.

First, of course, you need to arm your spore army (Sporemy?) like so:



Also, a few revisions since last time: different mouth, and the poison spitter is now mounted on their hands (so it's like they shoot webs of poison, like Poisonspiderman or something) and oh yeah a ton of armor.

Soon, though, our enemies moved into the territory. The game informed me that I could give them a gift, or defeat them in battle. I was still getting used to the controls, and I didn't actually know how to give them a gift yet, and--let's face it, my creatures have poison spitters on their flippin' hands. So, obviously, we went into battle and emerged victorious. This strategy didn't always work, as four more tribes appeared out of nowhere--some stronger than others. No longer were Singing and Dancing and Charming and Posing viable options. Instead, we used axes and fire and medics and spears and strategy and war and like three losses to the pink tribe. THE PINK TRIBE. Who do those guys think they are? Better than me at war? Probably.

After many many losses and births of babies, the Greenus McWhatThe tribe wiped out the rest of the planet, as any good warrior tribe should. Coming up on day 3: the Civilization stage. What kind of crazy antics can go down in a civilization whose main city hall resembles a large lantern?



Stay tuned.

Labels: Mac, The Spore Diaries

I started as a spore.

That's how everyone starts when playing Spore: as a spore. I don't know if you know it or not, but that's kind of a large part of the game.

In case you're unaware of Spore, it's a fancy shiny new fancygame from the maker of SimCity, The Sims, probably SimAnt, SimLife, and Simsville (canceled). In Spore, you make a spore and raise a spore to become a bigger spore and then a bigger spore and soon you have a sporeman and you run a sporeworld and you develop a sporeculture. For 49.99!

If you're more Spore-savvy (Spavvy?) then you've probably already forked over the $10 for the Spore Creature Creator, a demo of a part of the game in which you create sporecreatrues. I know, I know, who would pay for such a thing? Oh right, me. Thanks a lot jerks! We'll see if I ever invite you to any of my parties again.

I probably won't, though, because Spore is so immersive. At least, that's what the back of the box indicates, and if the back of the box is lying to me, I think I've got a pretty good case against them in court. That is, unless they create a society of sporelawyers (splawyers?) to bite, charge, strike, or spit at me.

Anyway, I started as a Spore, and got to play a fancier version of flOw wherein I ate meat particles (what?) and smaller spores to nourish myself. Every once in a while, I ran across an extra "part" (raise eyebrows here) and was able to mate (!!!) with other spores (!!!!!!) to add parts to myself (????????????). That's when I realized that all the parts in the editor modes actually had purposes.

Let me explain. In the Creature Creator, people were finding all kinds of "creative" ways to make their creatures look "good". By "creative" I mean "entire creatures made out of arm flesh," which is about as creepy as it sounds. However, in the real (fake) world, it turns out that these sporetopotties actually need, like, mouths. And things to fight other spores with. And things to move around with. And body parts...to sing with.

You see, once my creature was on land and mobile, he needed to be able to make new friends with which to go killing/singing to other friends with. He also needed to be able to dance and "charm" (whatever those mean) and glide and jump and did I mention, kill other spores.

Also, apparently whatever I did at the beginning of the game means I can't buy the right kind of mouth to make him an omnivore, so he's stuck with these weird omnimouths that I gave him when he was just a little spore (as opposed to a MEGASPORE).

So, instead of turning out pretty awesome, I ended up with my newest creation, a mishmash of crazy body parts and no design sense whatsoever:

Greenus McWhatThe.

Labels: Mac, The Spore Diaries