#36300468588
06/17/2008 21:04:31
Re:Bring your imagination to life like never before!
WARNING: WALL OF TEXT BELOW. AVERT YOUR EYES IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ AN EXTREMELY DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE GAME.
A lightly paraphrased synopsis of how a Spore game will run, from what I've learned from Wikipedia and the Spore official Youtube channels:
You start the game guiding a single cell organism in the primordial ooze (lololol game banned in Kansas or whatever that religious state is?) where you have to protect it from predators as you gobble up weaker species or local plant life. As the cell evolves and becomes bigger, the formless shapes in the background become gigantic monsters, then smaller monsters, and smaller, until you can gobble them yourself! You search for "DNA Points" to add features or abilities to your creature as it advances until it can crawl (or slither) onto land.
Once you venture onto land, you'll begin interacting with other players' creatures as you continue to hunt for the basic needs of survival. Creatures' characteristics are categorized with a 5 star rating system in six areas: Speed, Stealth, Defense, Social, Cuteness, and Attack. There will also begin to appear other creatures of your species, and your task is to get two of them to mate, after which you must defend the resultant egg from scavengers (you can also go out and eat other species' eggs).
Before the egg hatches, you'll get to spend the DNA points you earned hunting food, after which your new creature will hatch and you control it as it makes its way into the world. At this point your main task is to set its social and intelligent behaviors (i.e. forming a pack or joining a herd). After a while your creature becomes sentient and you can move on to building tribes. Here you can also make friends or war with other players' creatures. Again, DNA Points are earned in this stage as your cranium gets loaded.
In the tribal levels, your creature stops evolving physically and you lose control of a specific creature. Now you have to control an entire village as they develope technologically. You no longer obtain DNA Points - instead, you must focus on hoarding enough Food to survive. The game switches from Sims to a more RTS style here. Your species learns to talk, use tools (including clothes), make pets (other players' creatures that haven't evolved to your level yet), etc.
After your tribe has evolved past the others', it becomes a civilization, and you gain access to more editors - namely, Building, Vehicle, and at the end of the level, UFO. The goal now is to dominate the entire planet using war or diplomacy. Based on the types of buildings you design, the Building Market will search other players' styles and let you buy those (saves me the hassle of designing my own buildings). At the end of the stage, you gain access to the UFO and have to... um, paint your planet, for some reason. Main currency at this stage is Spice, for some reason.
After your species makes space travel possible, you can travel to other planets (maybe other players' planets!) and start colonizing them using a Star Trek terraforming device. Like everything to be like Degobah? You got it. Tantooine? Done. Mordor? Got it. You can also conquer some planets using this tool, using Al Gore's inconvenient truth - global warming! Flood those dastardly planets with their own water! Cause record-breaking hurricane and tornado seasons, sweep tsunamis across the 3rd world nations, melt the ice caps! Turn the planet into a festering volcanic world!!! Bwahahaha!
You can also develope Biodome technology to put cities on the planets you just destroyed until they become habitable again. XD
Oh, and before you think you can become like the Empire, go read The New Jedi Order or the Thrawn series again, and be prepared for this fun fact: There are more than 4 billion planets in the game. Conquer THAT. Most of the planets will be player-created, which leads back to that one special player that might be able to stir up a Empire for you to face. (I think - I'm not entirely sure, gonna have to get the game to find out)
The only way to win the game is to reach the middle of this vast galaxy, which is controlled by the Grobb, the only computer-created species you get to mess with. Once you do, you get a fairly 42ish ending (not revealed yet, get the game!) and get to continue building your civilization for other players to interact with in "Sandbox" mode. Maybe one day you'll be able to conquer all the planets in your version of the game... maybe...
Also, you will be able to view stats of your creatures as they travel to other players' games. You'll be able to see how far a particular stage of evolution your creature makes, if it manages to provide a good threat to other players, how many times other players destroyed your home planet, et cetera.
EDIT: Wow, that is a long-arse post. I am really into this game. Oh.. and extreme laugh-out-loud win at your avatar, Ballzy. My favorite part of that video.
EDIT2: Either the EA download manager sucks dry nuts, or I've become over-eager and missed a release date. It says the full version of the editor will be released in "13 hours."
EDIT3: No, wait, I see what I did. I bought the full game. Haha.
