Some days overdue, but here comes part 2 of my review of EA’s Spore.
Tribal/Civilization Stages
Personally, I lump these two stages together because there is only a slight difference between the two. Again, I hope in future expansions, this changes and each stage stands out. In both stages you take control of a number of characters in a real time strategy setting. Tribe stage you control tribe members, Civilization stage you control vehicles (land, sea, and air) but the process is pretty much the same.
In tribal stage, your goal is to dominate the other tribes. You can do this through social conversion or military might. By default you start with 3 types of huts you can use to specify what your tribe members can do. You will always start with 1 weapon hut, 1 social hut, and 1 tool hut. Tool huts help you gather more food (fishing and gathering) or allow you to heal your injured tribe members (healing). Social huts offer you 3 musical instruments to play for other tribes to convert them (the same thing as making allies in the creature stage). Weapon huts give you 3 extra choices of weapons to fight with. Stone axes seem to do more damage to everyone and everything in general, torchbearers burn huts down faster, and spear throwers can attack from afar.
Taking over other tribes by conversion is really easy. Make sure you leave one person behind to defend your food and take the rest of your tribe and load them up with as many types of social instruments you have. You may also want to dress them in appropriate clothing as that can boost your rating when interacting with other tribes. Head to a nearby tribe and play your hearts out, making sure to get the crowd’s requests as they as for different solos.
Taking over other tribes by military means is also really easy. Easier I dare say if you start with axes and dress for war. Just head to another tribe, kill them, kill them, burn the village, kill them, etc. Same as the creature stage except you have to burn down their main hut.
Once you’ve disposed of the competition, you’ll be awarded with more clothing options and 2 more types of huts to use, which varies by who you kill/charm. Keep in mind, you only have room for so many types of huts, so don’t be surprised when you can’t be a jack-of-all-trades so easily.
The key difference from the above in civilization stage is the addition of money to limit how many units you have, the replacement of buildings types with city types, and the micro managing of each city’s layout. In addition, racial powers earned from previous stages played will play a bigger role in city stage, as well as the opening of a third type of victory, the economic victory where you buy an enemy city.
Much like military and religion (social) victories in civilization stage, you start by selecting an appropriate unit (military, religious, or economic) and select it to go communicate with another city. For economic victories, you’ll start a trade route with the other civilization. Once enough trade has been completed, you’ll be offered to buy out the enemy city. Keep plenty capital on hand to do this and don’t try to claim too many at once. Once you get enough cities, you’ll be able to pretty much finish the game by using the level 4 power of any of the 3 paths. As cool as it is, I do not recommend the military mega power… having to rebuild the other cities is annoying.
Tribal/Civilization Stage Pros: If you like RTS’s, these stages give you a nice simple way to enjoy that game play. At this point you also get to experience a lot of new types of customization using the Spore engine. Up to this point, we’ve only seen creature editors. Now in civilization stage, you get to start designing structures, vehicles, and other fun toys.
Tribal/Civilization Stage Cons: They are really simplified beyond comparison. There really could have been some detail, as well as allowing tribal building customization. The clothing options in these stages and space stage leave something to desired IMO and it’s rough trying to make something look like clothing on your creatures compared to just the attachments they give you. Also the fact that certain clothing will be worn by certain races is just kinda silly. Add more choices to these stages on customization and activity and I’d play them more often instead of just rushing through them.
Honestly, it feels like we’re missing a section here. Tribal jumps to modern too fast and it feels like there should have been a growing segment between the two in which your civilization starts establishing itself. The fact you can look the same at the start of civilization as you do at the end is a bit weird. Biggest change I’d make is some sort of developmental stage between the two; something with knights, bows, and the start of steam power and animal driven vehicles. That would also be fun to tie the fact you can domesticate creatures in tribe stage to the next stage by allowing you to use some of the larger creatures as pack animals. You could even add more exploring in this stage to really set the stage for the full blooded civilization stage. What could happen is they could set this up as the first half of the civilization stage before moving up to big vehicles and planes.
Once your planet is unified under your banner, you may now precede to
THE SPACE STAGE
Okay, I know a lot of folks like this stage the best, and I’ll grant you, it is fun, but I think it could have been better. Let me get into the description first before I get into my “How this could have been fixed” like I wrote in the con for the Tribal/Civilization section.
In the space stage, you’ll be dominated by a few things for the first hour or five that you’re developing. You’ll be focusing on development of your system and some nearby stars, getting the hang of the space economy, and learning about space combat and exploration. As you grow, you’ll start deciding on what you want to do as far as growth goes. You may want to start buying other planets, allying with other species, or assaulting them. Combat is rough though as you’re the only ship in your species that can actually fight. Everyone else has a dozen or more ships attacking you. In addition, eventually you’ll have to start fighting the Grok here and there. I’ll leave what the Grok is for you to discover. Game play at this stage is pretty fun and I’ll admit I haven’t explored all of it yet.
Space Stage Pros: It’s a sandbox. No doubt about it, after a point you’re pretty much capable of doing whatever you want on the 50,000 stars out there. Have fun, blow things up, go all 2001 on some unexpecting species, and master the galaxy. You can do a ton of things and I still look forward to testing them all.
Space Stage Cons: Pirates suck, getting slaughtered early in the game by a mistake sucks, etc. In addition, much like the tribe/civilization stages, there feels like there’s a missing stage here. Mainly a solar system phase. I still think it would have made more sense to have a mini stage here where you pretty much completely colonize your entire system at least partly. I can understand not terra forming everything, but getting a colony on every world in your system should have been a mission set.
Aside from my brief review of the space stage, that’s it for Spore. It is a fun game and I do recommend buying it. It is a fun casual set of games and it is cool seeing your creatures as well as knowing other players are enjoying them too. Don’t expect something ground breaking here in terms of game play. The customization element of Spore is where it stands out.
Now, EA, start giving me Sims-like expansion packs with more parts, design possibilities, and stages! I want aquatic races, plant races, more stages (aquatic life, mid tribe/civ, and solar system), I want to do more stuff with domesticated creatures. I want to spend more time enjoying each stage instead of rushing through them. Give me a reason to enjoy them.
Justin Diehl
PS: Epic creatures still stuck.