Spore
Monday, September 08, 2008
I haven't played any video games in a while. Good for me, you say, right? Don't judge me, you sons of bitches. You're the one who'd be arguing that movies were "ruined" by sound, back in the late twenties. Meet the steamroller of history, douchebag. I just picked up my pre-order of Spore and started playing it. It's my first new game since the cozily casual antics of Audiosurf.
Spore, for those of you who don't know, is a sandbox-type game (so sandboxy, in fact, it hardly counts as a game -- people have taken to calling it a toy recently). In it, you take a single-celled organism and "evolve" the thing to the point at which it walks on legs, takes to vehicles, and eventually conquers the galaxy. Everything in the game is editable, no distiction is made between biological traits and parts for spaceships. My first impression is: the time commitment is so huge, I don't think I'll ever finish it. I've been mucking around on land as a bipedal sort of monkey-snake thing for a long time, getting my ass kicked by biologically-impossible looking but obviously better-adapted creatures. My second impression is: Will Wright, the designer of the game, can be counted on to make some sort of analogy between human happiness and wealth. The question is, will it turn out to be as brilliantly parodic as it becomes in the Sims. If I finish the game, I'll let you know.
posted by Greg Purcell @ 12:17 PM,
