Spore - First Impressions

Yesterday, I played Spore for about seven hours total, mostly straight through. I took an hour break about four hours into play to eat and do some household chores. Spore has five levels of evolution: Cellular, Creature, Tribal, Civilization, and Galaxy. Each level has a series of goals you must accomplish to reach the next level. I completed the first four levels, and played about five minutes in the Galaxy level before I had to quit. Spore is definitely a different game. I found it to be quite fun, and think this is one of those rare games that would interest both boys and girls. I especially enjoyed the creature creator, and having the ability to design and modify my creature. Below are my impressions of each level: Cellular - For me, this was one of the funnest levels, but also the shortest. I completed the cellular stage after about 25-30 minutes, and now that I know how to do it, could complete this much sooner, I think. This is unfortunate, because I thought the cellular level was very enjoyable. My only other complaint is that once you reach your evolutionary goal, you stop being able to collect DNA points. You can still hunt/eat and you can mate, but anything you kill or eat does not go to your DNA bank. However, this appears to only be true on the cellular level. Creature - Once I understood what needed to be done, this was fun, also. I spent about 10-15 minutes trying to understand how to make friends with other creatures. In this level, you either need to make friends with creatures or make them go extinct. As you progress in this stage, you gain intelligence. That increased intelligence allows you add one or more creatures to your party. These can be creatures from your nest or from the befriended creatures. My creatures were more specialized for combat, which made befriending other creatures a little difficult. I made a few friends early on, but afterwards my dancing/posing/charming skills weren't high enough. When you try to make friends, you have to repeat what the other creatures does. For example, the other creature might do a little dance, so you push the dance button. Each creature in your group does the dance, and the more who dance the better you impress the new creature. However, I noticed that as I progressed, the new creatures would call his nest-mates over to dance with him. This makes it more difficult to impress them, because you need a higher skill of dancing to impress 2, 3, or 4 creatures. Don't get me wrong, this level was a lot of fun. You definitely should explore the map, as I picked up a LOT of body parts. I played this level for about thirty minutes more after I reached my goals, just so I could find new body parts (and earn more DNA points). This is the last level you can modify the base creature, so you want to find everything you can to make him the best. Tribal - This is definitely the most difficult stage. You start with a tribe of five creatures. You must make peace with or exterminate five other tribes. You must also assign food gathering tasks to some of your tribesmen. Finally, you must construct buildings so your tribesmen can use weapons, musical instruments (for making peace), and fishing tools. The first time I tried to make peace with another tribe, I found the instructions VERY confusing. The in-game instructions really did not explain to me what I needed to do. To make peace, you need to construct buildings that make musical instruments (horns, marachas, and pipes). You bring the chief and at least one tribesman with an instrument (best to bring all three types) to the new tribe. The new tribe will tell you (with pictographs) what they want to hear. Once you understand how to do this, it's very easy - much easier than making friends at the creature stage. I befriended three tribes, but two tribes tried to steal my food, so I decided to wipe them out. This is a LOT more difficult than you think. Each tribe has basically the same number of people. When I started my war campaign, we all had 12 people. The problem for the warrior is that you must leave at least one person (two is best) to do fishing and food gathering, and at least one more to protect your food from wild creatures. So, now you are invasion of 9 (at best) against 12. I found two strategies that seem to work for this. The first one is send people, one at a time to raid the food of the rival tribe. You want to send a stream (like five), one after another (not all together). Expect the first one or two to die - they are the diversion anyway. Tribes need food to create new people and to buy/repair buildings. I also found that during combat, you can send someone to raid the food, and the raider will be successful 90% of the time. The second strategy is one of attrition. I created two groups of warriors. The first group being the largest (five or six). Send the first group to the edge of the tribe. When a tribesman comes near, begin the combat. You want your five or six to distract the tribe, so let them fight all the people. Next, send your remaining soldiers to attack a building (or raid the food). The goal is to destroy the chief's hut, but the hut is very strong. One tribe I fought, I had to destroy the secondary buildings first to wear down the tribe's food supply. When they were finally broke, I was able to destroy the chief's hut. Civilization - Once you get use to the camera controls, this stage is more like an RTS (real time strategy) game. I found this level to be very fun. I played it for quite a while, mostly to experience the different methods of taking over the other cities. For this stage, you must unite the planet, which is covered by your race. You can convert the city by religious, military, or economic means. Economic takes the most time, but works best because there is no damage done to the new city (and you earn more money in the process). Religious works second best (and was a lot of fun to watch in progress). Religious takes the same time (or maybe faster) than military. However, a religious vehicle cannot fight a military vehicle. So, if you keep military vehicles around your cities, you can ward off a religious attack. Also, religious attacks don't harm buildings, except for the entertainment structures. The military attack is your standard military campaign. Build five or six tanks, send them to bombard the next city. However, you destroy all the buildings in the city. Sometimes, you even destroy city land, which means less space available for your structures, when you take over the city. Once you take over all the cities on the planet, you advance to... Galaxy - I only had a few minutes on this level, so not many thoughts. I went through the ship flying tutorial and started on the tractor beam mission before I had to stop. Flying the ship is not as easy as it could be. You control the ship with the mouse, but to ascend/descend, you use either the scroll wheel or the +/- buttons (btw, + goes down, - goes up). Maybe I will understand the reasons for this as I progress into Galaxy, but for now I'm wondering why the ship can't be controlled like the flying mounts of WoW - mouse point up to ascend (or press jump). Overall, Spore is a great game and a lot of fun to play. I'm giving it a 4, out of 5. I'm wondering how re-playable this is (for adults) once you complete the galaxy stage. I may amend my score based on what I find. Read my follow up post - Spore: Day Two