SPORE

GAME DETAILS :-

Developer : Maxis

Publisher : Electronic Arts

Engine : Not Revealed

Genre : God Game , Life Simulation And Real-Time Strategy

Release Date : September 7 , 2008

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS :-

Operating System : Windows XP / Windows Vista

CPU : Intel Pentium 4 Processor / AMD Athlon 64 3500+

Memory (RAM) : 1 GB

Graphics Hardware : DirectX 9.0c Compatible Video Card with Memory 128 MB

[NVIDIA : GeForce 6600 Series
ATI : Radeon X1300 Series]

Hard Disk Space : 6 GB

GAME FEATURES :-

Spore is an enjoyable game that pulls off an interesting balancing act. On one hand, it lets you create a creature and guide its maturation from a single cell to a galactic civilization through an unusual process of evolutionary development. Spore's greatest asset, by far, is its intuitive set of creation tools. If you've played the separate Creature Creator, released earlier this year, you're only seeing a small piece of the puzzle. At various stages, you'll construct, for example, town halls, land vehicles sporting cannons, and aircraft that spout religious propaganda. The creatures are the true stars though, and you can mix and match legs, arms, mouths, wings, and lots of other parts into a beautiful work of art--or a hideous monstrosity. Each part of your creation can be turned, resized, and twisted, so whether you wish to re-create a favorite cartoon character or develop an original concept, you'll probably find what you need in here. You don't need to be a budding Pablo Picasso to make an interesting creature, however; just slapping a bunch of random parts together can result in a truly hysterical beast. You will need to put some creative energy into Spore, but if you aren't the artistic type or don't find the building- and vehicle-creation tools as interesting as those for your creature, you can use premade designs that ship with the game. Even better, you can utilize Spore's extensive community tools, inserting other players' innovations into your own game in progress. In a game of Spore proper, however, you won't start off by molding the creature of your dreams. The game is split into five stages, starting with the cell stage. (However, once you unlock a stage, you can start a new game there and bypass any stage that comes before it). The creation tools at this stage are simple, limited to a 2D cell and a few odds and ends, like flagella and spikes. You choose the path of a carnivore or an herbivore at the outset, which determines what sort of food bits you can munch on. From here, you maneuver your cell about the screen using the keyboard or mouse, avoiding creatures that are looking to you for their next meal while grabbing a bite or two yourself. If you're an herbivore, you seek out the green algae; if you're a carnivore, you need meat.

You'll also uncover new parts as you swim about, and can then attach them to your organism. To enter the cell creator, you send out a mating call, which lets you get romantic with another member of your species. You swim around eating so you can get bigger, and avoid being eaten. If you do fall victim to a sharp-toothed protozoan, you'll rehatch with no real punishment. All in all, the cell stage may last you 20 or 25 minutes, which is just as well, since it's not very interesting and wears out its welcome quickly. Soon enough, you'll leave the environs of the sea, add some legs, and lumber into the creature stage. You'll still find new parts scattered about, this time hidden within the skeletal remains of other beasts. Again, the gameplay itself is pretty simple: You wander around exploring for other creatures and advance through the stage by either befriending other nests or conquering them. If you want to go the aggressive route, you should equip sharp claws, tusks, and spitters; if you want to make friends with the local duck-billed orangutans, you'll go with parts that let you charm, sing, dance, and pose. When you encounter a towering six-legged atrocity charging at the locals, you'll hightail it out of there--yet still be in awe, just as if you were the little guy himself. It's more about the gawking than the playing, but whether you're joining a pack of polka-dotted parakeets in chorus or catching a glimpse of an overhead UFO, there are some legitimately appealing moments to be had. Once you reach the tribal stage, you will lose some of that connection with your creation. You will no longer be playing as an individual, but rather controlling a tribe, and the stage plays like a slimmed down real-time strategy game. It's disappointing that you can no longer make adjustments to your tribe's main features past this point; you can, however, adorn the creatures with different clothing items for the duration. Conceptually, the tribal stage is similar to the creature stage, only now you focus the violence on an entire village, including structures. If you like that sort of thing, you can go so far as to equip tribe members with torches and set the enemy village ablaze. The creation tools are just as easy to use--and just as comprehensive--as those of the creature creator. Designing a mass of metal may not have the same charm as molding a living being from scratch, but the tools give you more control over patterns and colors, so expect to lose more hours of your life tinkering with the possibilities. You'll also create a town hall, a house, a factory, and an entertainment venue, and placing these in your cities has an effect on the happiness of your residents.

Each city is limited to one of these three brands based on how you choose to play, though the process plays out remarkably the same, regardless. And in its final transformation, Spore enters the space stage, where many of the previous gameplay elements coalesce. As a result, this stage feels like an actual destination, and while it's not nearly as complex as the space exploration games it cribs from, it does exhibit the great charms of the early stages that are missing from the civilization stage. This is partially because it harks back to the creature stage, putting you in control of a single spacecraft, and sending you off to explore the great black beyond. The scope of this stage is suitably massive. You travel from star to star, exploring newly discovered planets and searching for your galactic neighbors, and you can skim the terrain of a planet--or pull the camera light-years away to see the entire galaxy at a glance. The economy moves much more slowly in this stage than in previous ones, so you need to be careful about how you spend funds based on how you wish to play. Nor can you just choose any planet. Some worlds are simply incapable of supporting life, while others need to have the environment altered to allow for expansion and population. This is where the terraforming tools come in. Not only may you need to drop items onto the terrain to increase the density of the atmosphere or make the air hotter, but you'll need to jump-start the ecology by throwing in plants and creatures abducted from other worlds. Spore's sound design shines from beginning to end. The creatures themselves sound terrific, and are the source of much of the game's overflowing charm. The creature and tribal stages sound enchanting, from the thumping beat of the drums when you order tribal units to the squawks and squeaks of your creations. The subsequent stages are of similarly high quality. Taken on their own, its pieces are nothing special. As parts of a singular ambitious vision, they work far better. Throw in the best customization tools seen in years and an enthusiastic community brimming with creativity, and you have a legitimately great game that will deliver hours of quality entertainment. Spore merges multiple run-of-the-mill building blocks into a big, entertaining game.

GAME REVIEW :-

8.5/10

Spore Trailer :-