Spore: Lost in Space?

Eventually, once established as the planet's superpower, gamers take their race of creatures out into space. This is where Spore utterly falls flat on its face, turning into some kind of strategic board game, allowing the player to create one starship that serves as his or her single "player piece" against a backdrop of stars. To be honest, the bulk of Spore lies here, and that's unfortunate. The Space Stage is long-winded and utterly drab, void of any charm or empathic connection between the player and the creature. Strangely enough, the user's creature still resembles a tribal leader, and doesn't fit in with the technological, futuristic atmosphere established by the stage.

Still, the goal here is basically the same as the previous two stages but on a galactic scale. This time, however, there are missions to carry out such as eradicating infected aliens on a planet, collecting specimens or annihilating another colony altogether. The actual goal here is not conquering the galaxy per say, but to achieve enough badges in order to reach the title of Omnipotent. This process seems to go on indefinitely, carrying out the same missions again and again while fending off attacks on the home world every two minutes or so. The balancing act between empires is definitely an interesting one, keeping gamers on their toes when performing quests for one faction that very well may spark a war with another faction. If anything, the Space Stage is a hardcore strategic board game at heart, a full 180-degree turn from the simple, easy gameplay of the Cell Stage.

The first four stages seem like a flash in the fire when compared to the Space Stage. Not only does it put gamers to sleep, it feels utterly unbalanced in regards to the player versus other empires. While gamers can form alliances and acquire the help of other starships, Spore only allows the gamer one starship to control - the NPC starships tag along like unmanned drones. The game feels unbalanced simply because other factions -especially opposing ones - have small fleets that will overtake the player's single vessel in an instant. The result is that the player will end up with a new ship respawning at the closest allied base more times than necessary.

Unfortunately, the Space Stage is also where the major bugs come into play... and that doesn't refer to alien ones, either. The PC used to play Spore for this review sports the AMD Athlon 64 3700+ processor, 2-GB SDRAM and Nvidia's GeForce 7900 GS graphics card - average in specs at best but certainly not ancient. There are times when Spore has a hard time loading planet textures. There are also times when infected aliens do not appear on-screen at all - their yellow residue is the only clue to their whereabouts. Sometimes certain sound effects drop out altogether until the game is restarted. The strange thing is that these bugs don't appear in the other stages - they're saved for last.

Despite those issues, the Space Stage's biggest flaw is in ship-to-ship combat. While allied ships attack enemy vessels without a hitch, Spore requires the gamer to keep the mouse on the targeted ship no matter what direction it moves. This can be quite difficult, especially when multiple adversaries attack in a deadly swarm. Sometimes it's difficult to even tell that the ship is firing its weapons. If the player's ship is destroyed, it might actually respawn back into the firefight if that particular allied city is the central point of the invasion. There's no question that some of the weapons are cool to use and fascinating to watch, but the actual ability to attack is lackluster and annoying at best.

A religious conversion of a city from Spore's Civilization Stage.

Another annoying facet of the Space Stage is the terraforming aspect. There's no real clue as to how this is accomplished at first - it's downright impossible from the beginning without unlocking additional tools. Spore doesn't provide a thorough tutorial on how to accomplish terraforming, only a brief description of what terraforming actually achieves. Apparently, the ideal environment takes a while to generate and uses quite a few of those tools, such as meteor showers, ice storms, atmosphere generators and more, while planting vegetation and life forms keeps everything in balance. The artistic bonus to terraforming is the ability to alter the landscape and the color of the planet using additional tools - accomplishing this feat grants a few badges as well.

Despite the terraforming and alien encounters, the central point of conquering the galaxy is money (Sporebucks). Everything requires money, whether it's fixing the starship or bribing an alien empire. Spice is the key ingredient to making money, stealing the central source of economic growth from Frank Herbert's Dune series. To expand the empire, gamers must set up trade routes with other empires. In turn, when used long enough, these empires will sell off the spotlighted star system to the gamer, thus expanding his or her creatures' frontier. Think of it as the Federation, with the player's home world serving as the home base. As with Star Trek, there's always someone wanting to bring the galactic alliance down to its knees - it's up to the gamer to deal with the oppressors with either diplomacy or force.

As for the collectable badges, there are 30 types to acquire, most of which contain five badges each. These include Frequent Flyer, Planet Artiste, Zoologist, Terra-Wrangler, Colonist, Conqueror and more (for gamers who like to use the "moremoney" cheat, there's the Joker badge, too). As gamers collect badges, they rise in the ranks, moving up from Captain to Admiral and higher. Moving up in the ranks benefits the player by unlocking extra tools, weapons and even better drives for the starship. The higher the rank, the better-equipped gamers are to expand their empire.

But rising up the promotional ladder and earning the necessary badges takes huge amounts of time, and while the overall appearance of the Space Stage looks casual, the strategic balance of power and resources make this portion extremely difficult. It's insane how the difficulty changes from the point when the creature is a single-celled organism chomping on bits of matter to establishing trade routes and exploring the galaxy. It's safe to assume that - despite its early appearances and appeal - Spore is not a game for younger players, who will have to suffice with the Sims variants or wait for the upcoming Sims 3 game.

NEXT PAGE: Conclusion and Final Score

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