I feel somewhat out of my element here. My only visual art credentials are my self-taught semi-proficiency with Adobe's Creative Suite and a single art history lecture class which was roughly equal parts napping and schooling. I recognize I am something of a pretender in such matters, but it's no worse than the city of Pittsburgh claiming Andy Warhol who got the hell out of here after college and created essentially all his work in New York. Although, it is understandable considering every other famous Pittsburgher was an industrialist shitbag.
I recently made my way to Pittsburgh's Andy Warhol Museum to view The Vader Project, which will be there until May 3. The gist is that replica props of Darth's helmet were given to a host of "some of today’s hottest underground and pop surrealist painters, artists and designers," In other words, the people you're not familiar with because you're not cool enough. I'm not sure how strict the guidelines were, but they seem to have been, "take this and do your thing with it."
Seeing as how I am a card-carrying member of the open-ended definition of art club (depending on what you mean by "card," of course), and a certified head above the exosphere science fiction nerd, I obviously wanted to make sure I had a look at this one. As would be expected, the results varied widely, but I was not disappointed.
If I may take a moment to perhaps unfairly pigeonhole the pieces in the exhibit, there seem to be two major schools of thought concerning the project: Some artists attempted to re-imagine or re-create the helmet using different materials, and replacing or adding components, while others used it as a weirdly-shaped canvas to paint on. Now I'm not coming down on the second school, because some of these were very good, but I feel like those from column A were more effective on the whole.
A lot of the blame for this falls on the gallery space itself. Almost all the helmets were perched atop black columns at about eye level. They were lined up in rows, all facing the same direction with a taped-off rectangle around the each row. Believe me when I say I understand the need to create a border between the art and the viewer in this case in particular. I wanted to wear some of these so badly I had to slap my own hand away. However, those helmets which displayed some sort of diorama or painted image could not be viewed in their entirety unless they were fortunate enough to occupy the end spots.
Most of them, however, must be viewed twice. You observe the front of twenty or so, and then walk along the next aisle to view the back of them. I haven't the slightest idea as to whether or not the artists were informed of how the pieces would be displayed, but I doubt it. Now, I understand that space can be at a premium in galleries, especially for a traveling exhibit like The Vader Project. I just felt an unfortunate disconnect between the art and the presentation. Someone dropped the ball when Flickr is outdoing The Andy Warhol Museum in some of these cases.
That's precisely why I felt the more effective helmets were those that attempted to transform the object or take it out of its recognized context. Not only do I find that to be a better approach to what is, essentially, a sculpture gallery, but they also suffered less from the unfortunate layout of the exhibit. In these cases, more of the item's overall effect is preserved while merely viewing the front.
Despite the formatting issues, I still enjoyed the exhibit. Sometimes, the most interesting art can result from imposing unusual boundaries. The Vader Project is, at its heart, an exploration of that concept. You could say there was a scatter shot mentality to the project, but that's not a drawback in this case, where each piece is less a magnum opus and more an immediate, visceral, gut-level reaction to the subject matter. Artist and icon colliding.
That's my opinion, anyway. I'm just a guy who photoshops robots.
Battlestar Galactica, Reimagined Series
It's easy to play the curmudgeonly critic who hates everything besides sitting in a dark room staring at a blank wall. It's a simple matter to fill these commentaries with pop culture jokes and the occasional scatological wisecrack when you have little respect for the subject material. Today, however, I have to play the optimist. I'm forced to contradict my own screeds against serialized fiction and repackaging existing stories. I also have to account for the many, many mistakes made during the series because despite all of that, I still loved Battlestar Galactica.
And I like to think I hold myself to a higher standard, so I can't just say, "Yeah, it had problems, but it made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside."
I truly think Battlestar is the best science fiction television series of its generation. Now before you ask, I have not seen Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate Special Victims Unit or anything other than the original movie. I am aware that they are extremely popular among their devotees, but it's just not my flavor of Kool-Aid. And do we really need another story about humanity discovering the toys left behind by ancient, mysteriously vanished benevolent builder aliens?
Yes, yes. I was really into Firefly as well, but we can't just assume it would have continued to be great because it died so young. Come on, if it had lasted as many seasons as Angel or Buffy, that's more than enough time for it to spiral into Joss Whedon's trademark convoluted madness. They never should have trusted Fox, anyway.
Star Trek is not so cut and dry. However, the later series, which is to say, those that could more accurately be considered part of Battlestar's generation, are the weakest. Although it is tempting to take a rose-tinted look back since J. J. Abrams is poised to murder the franchise once and for all, that would not be honest.
In a way, I think Battlestar is as much a response to Star Trek as it is to its original incarnation. Star Trek attempts to imagine us at our best. Humanity is brought back from the brink of devastation by an outside force and actually learns from the experience. They try, even if they don't always succeed, to use technology and influence responsibly. They are the honorable and compassionate people we wish we could be. No matter how jaded I become as I get older, there will always be a part of me yearning for that future, impossibly bright and heartbreakingly distant.
Battlestar Galactica is about human nature as well, but it's nowhere near as confident. I'm inclined to agree that when and if we get spaceships and travel to other stars, we will still be the same violent, petty, conniving douchebags we are now.
It's part of what makes Battlestar so gripping, even when the plot has gone momentarily off the rails. The characters have emotions and motivations that we can recognize, even if their situation is extreme and unfamiliar. So often these grand space operas leave the human element behind as if only one-dimensional characters can break the speed of light. It's a spaceship than can wink out of existence and reappear light-years away, but inside it's gunmetal gray and manually operated doors that make a satisfying clank when they close. It's clear that a lot of thought went into this aspect of the show. Galactica initially escapes destruction because its systems are outdated. The characters communicate using handsets with coiled cords and garbled radio messages. They use bullets and missiles and flight suits. This aesthetic serves the show well, highlighting its unique approach. The alien and the familiar together.
In fact, when Battlestar Galactica gets it wrong, it's usually when things become a little too familiar. Science fiction is about imagining the future in order to make observations about the present, but the best SF does it with subtlety and style. Parts of the finale have this problem, but it was the New Caprica debacle that really made me cringe. They stretched and strained plotlines and characters in order to jump up and down and say, "Ooh, ooh! Look at us, We're topical!" I certainly would have advised against doing this at all, but they could have at least made their allegory a little more complex. These episodes were so bad, they had to be the result of either incompetence or contempt for their audience. Either way, they let CNN's coverage of the Iraq War write half of the scripts, and I was glad when it finally ended.
The whole exercise was pointless, anyway. They had more than enough time to address their pet theme of studying social structures in a states of extreme turmoil. This was the hook responsible for getting me on board at the outset. I found the relationship between the civilian government and the military chain of command the most compelling thing about the show. They had to gauge their commitment to their way of life next to their chances for survival. It's this kind of thinking that SF is all about. It's not just, "wouldn't it be cool if...?" but "what does this do to their society?"
It makes me wonder why the weird, not really explained, kind of tacked-on spiritual stuff needed to be there at all. They had a mostly believable "religion = science + a long time" sort of thing going on until the last season when everything went crazy and I don't think they got away with it. Characters have visions, characters disappear and reappear. Explanations were not given, but I think we all trusted that they were pending. Notoriously, the song All Along the Watchtower popped up as a plot device. It coincided with revelations about Earth and cylons and it seemed a little out there, but I assumed it would all make sense eventually. Instead, they hemmed and hawed and gave a couple of half-hearted attempts, but nothing felt convincing.
In the end, in lieu of an explanation for all that, we got a ridiculous and completely redundant scene in which some sort of higher power is mentioned by characters who may or may not exist and then... What? Roll credits? Are you kidding me?
It's clear the writers had their hands in too many pies, and I'll tell you why. The moment Laura Roslin wrote the number of survivors on the whiteboard in Colonial One, they were declaring loudly that the show was going to be about mortality. Indeed, this is a major theme throughout the show and is executed well. The few surviving humans cling to life in the black void fighting enemies who have the ability to resurrect. It was an emotional tool that I for one responded to, but it's hard to take it seriously with all the wishy-washy supernatural stuff going on as well. They tried to hedge their bets by tacking on a bunch of weird shit assuming at least some of it will end up being deep and moving.
It's a shame they felt the need to do that because all that death and danger creates some seriously tense action to go with the existentialism. Until they felt the need to undermine it in the later seasons, it was one of the show's biggest assets. There is an attack. Some escape, some stay and fight. Some lives are risked to try and save the species as a whole. When they're doing it right, it puts you on the edge of your seat because it's crystal clear just what is at stake every time they launch Vipers.
Speaking as the kind of mega-nerd who doodled space ships on his notebooks in school when he should have been paying attention, I like to think about Battlestar Galactica in terms of the titular vessel herself. She's solid, built with the understanding that she was going to get shot at. A lot. Her armor was pocked and scorched and falling off in places from all the damage she sustained, but by the end she was still intact, if just barely. The series was assaulted by ham-fisted and unnecessary allegory, a flippant and ultimately confusing approach to the supernatural, scheduling weirdness and a writer's strike, but I feel it was constructed well enough to survive.
I do not regret being on board.
And I like to think I hold myself to a higher standard, so I can't just say, "Yeah, it had problems, but it made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside."
I truly think Battlestar is the best science fiction television series of its generation. Now before you ask, I have not seen Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate Special Victims Unit or anything other than the original movie. I am aware that they are extremely popular among their devotees, but it's just not my flavor of Kool-Aid. And do we really need another story about humanity discovering the toys left behind by ancient, mysteriously vanished benevolent builder aliens?
Yes, yes. I was really into Firefly as well, but we can't just assume it would have continued to be great because it died so young. Come on, if it had lasted as many seasons as Angel or Buffy, that's more than enough time for it to spiral into Joss Whedon's trademark convoluted madness. They never should have trusted Fox, anyway.
Star Trek is not so cut and dry. However, the later series, which is to say, those that could more accurately be considered part of Battlestar's generation, are the weakest. Although it is tempting to take a rose-tinted look back since J. J. Abrams is poised to murder the franchise once and for all, that would not be honest.
In a way, I think Battlestar is as much a response to Star Trek as it is to its original incarnation. Star Trek attempts to imagine us at our best. Humanity is brought back from the brink of devastation by an outside force and actually learns from the experience. They try, even if they don't always succeed, to use technology and influence responsibly. They are the honorable and compassionate people we wish we could be. No matter how jaded I become as I get older, there will always be a part of me yearning for that future, impossibly bright and heartbreakingly distant.
Battlestar Galactica is about human nature as well, but it's nowhere near as confident. I'm inclined to agree that when and if we get spaceships and travel to other stars, we will still be the same violent, petty, conniving douchebags we are now.
It's part of what makes Battlestar so gripping, even when the plot has gone momentarily off the rails. The characters have emotions and motivations that we can recognize, even if their situation is extreme and unfamiliar. So often these grand space operas leave the human element behind as if only one-dimensional characters can break the speed of light. It's a spaceship than can wink out of existence and reappear light-years away, but inside it's gunmetal gray and manually operated doors that make a satisfying clank when they close. It's clear that a lot of thought went into this aspect of the show. Galactica initially escapes destruction because its systems are outdated. The characters communicate using handsets with coiled cords and garbled radio messages. They use bullets and missiles and flight suits. This aesthetic serves the show well, highlighting its unique approach. The alien and the familiar together.
In fact, when Battlestar Galactica gets it wrong, it's usually when things become a little too familiar. Science fiction is about imagining the future in order to make observations about the present, but the best SF does it with subtlety and style. Parts of the finale have this problem, but it was the New Caprica debacle that really made me cringe. They stretched and strained plotlines and characters in order to jump up and down and say, "Ooh, ooh! Look at us, We're topical!" I certainly would have advised against doing this at all, but they could have at least made their allegory a little more complex. These episodes were so bad, they had to be the result of either incompetence or contempt for their audience. Either way, they let CNN's coverage of the Iraq War write half of the scripts, and I was glad when it finally ended.
The whole exercise was pointless, anyway. They had more than enough time to address their pet theme of studying social structures in a states of extreme turmoil. This was the hook responsible for getting me on board at the outset. I found the relationship between the civilian government and the military chain of command the most compelling thing about the show. They had to gauge their commitment to their way of life next to their chances for survival. It's this kind of thinking that SF is all about. It's not just, "wouldn't it be cool if...?" but "what does this do to their society?"
It makes me wonder why the weird, not really explained, kind of tacked-on spiritual stuff needed to be there at all. They had a mostly believable "religion = science + a long time" sort of thing going on until the last season when everything went crazy and I don't think they got away with it. Characters have visions, characters disappear and reappear. Explanations were not given, but I think we all trusted that they were pending. Notoriously, the song All Along the Watchtower popped up as a plot device. It coincided with revelations about Earth and cylons and it seemed a little out there, but I assumed it would all make sense eventually. Instead, they hemmed and hawed and gave a couple of half-hearted attempts, but nothing felt convincing.
In the end, in lieu of an explanation for all that, we got a ridiculous and completely redundant scene in which some sort of higher power is mentioned by characters who may or may not exist and then... What? Roll credits? Are you kidding me?
It's clear the writers had their hands in too many pies, and I'll tell you why. The moment Laura Roslin wrote the number of survivors on the whiteboard in Colonial One, they were declaring loudly that the show was going to be about mortality. Indeed, this is a major theme throughout the show and is executed well. The few surviving humans cling to life in the black void fighting enemies who have the ability to resurrect. It was an emotional tool that I for one responded to, but it's hard to take it seriously with all the wishy-washy supernatural stuff going on as well. They tried to hedge their bets by tacking on a bunch of weird shit assuming at least some of it will end up being deep and moving.
It's a shame they felt the need to do that because all that death and danger creates some seriously tense action to go with the existentialism. Until they felt the need to undermine it in the later seasons, it was one of the show's biggest assets. There is an attack. Some escape, some stay and fight. Some lives are risked to try and save the species as a whole. When they're doing it right, it puts you on the edge of your seat because it's crystal clear just what is at stake every time they launch Vipers.
Speaking as the kind of mega-nerd who doodled space ships on his notebooks in school when he should have been paying attention, I like to think about Battlestar Galactica in terms of the titular vessel herself. She's solid, built with the understanding that she was going to get shot at. A lot. Her armor was pocked and scorched and falling off in places from all the damage she sustained, but by the end she was still intact, if just barely. The series was assaulted by ham-fisted and unnecessary allegory, a flippant and ultimately confusing approach to the supernatural, scheduling weirdness and a writer's strike, but I feel it was constructed well enough to survive.
I do not regret being on board.
Spore
I delayed playing this game for so long not because I thought it would be bad, but because I feared it might actually live up to its grandiose aspirations. The whole PC god game/strategy/simulation style of gaming usually gets me into a lot of trouble. I sit down to play a few turns of Civilization and then barely manage to pull myself away sixteen hours later because my weak human body requires food and water on occasion. It got so bad I had to force myself to quit playing that one, and they don't make a patch for that. From the beginning, Spore looked to be right up my alley, so I hesitated. But I can only resist something like that for so long.
Creator Will Wright's previous work is in the same general category as a lot of other games I enjoy, but I was never really sucked in by any of it. I have always been terrible at SimCity. My population centers were so mismanaged they ended up looking like faithful re-imaginings of The Wire viewed from some sort of dirigible. I do appreciate a game that assumes I'm not an idiot, but I'm a little too obsessive-compulsive for that much micromanagement. I simply cannot deal with the ubiquitous background noise of guilt about a housing block without adequate fire safety or an increasing pollution issue or one of the million other things I'm doing wrong. Naturally, I run out of money trying to keep everyone happy and have to squeeze the poor residents to fill my coffers (there are only about four people not living in squalor at this point). This makes me feel even worse. Eventually, I remember that it's a game and I should be having fun, and I go do something else.
Wright's other major title, The Sims, is a game that is really impressive in a pointless sort of way. You can take it at face value, but then you're essentially just playing Normal Life: The Game. You can instead do what everyone else does, which is to assume the persona of an evil god with powers oddly limited by the family's bank account, and set about ruining these digital beings' lives. This is immeasurably more satisfying than unleashing catastrophes to punish your lazy citizens in SimCity. They're not much more than dots. In The Sims, you can be as sadistic as the game will let you, and it is surprisingly accommodating. I know this was not what Wright had intended, but what did he expect from a market so saturated in testosterone?
However, it turns out there is an upper limit to the enjoyment which can be derived from utterly destroying Mortimer Goth's life by, I don't know, driving his wife into the arms of the neighborhood bachelor, forcing social services to take his daughter away, turning his home into a fetid nightmare covered in rotting food, and selling any useful appliances until he cries himself to sleep every night in the middle of the road, face-down in a puddle of his own urine. What's cool is that the game is so well-equipped that such nonsense is possible. The building and editing tools are both powerful and intuitive. I have always felt the series is to be commended for that, even if the subject matter is somewhat vanilla.
Spore, I think, was intended to be the ultimate god game; a simulation in five distinct chapters representing steps on the path of life from single-celled organism to space-faring civilization. It is built upon the Maxis tradition that video games can be about creation and management, not just running, jumping, and murder. It also takes considerable inspiration from other sorts of games which share little besides a common camera angle. The game has a real-time strategy section and Sid Meier's Civilization series is clearly the foundation for the entire later portion. The creature phase, on the other hand, reminded me of that old SNES game EVO. I loved that game.
The player's responsibilities and goals change considerably as their species and culture becomes more complex . Each of Spore's eras is essentially a different game, although after your first run through, you are free to skip ahead. You must, however, deny yourself access to powers earned for completing the earlier segments.
The cell stage is a relatively simple 2D combat game in which your tiny organism must swim about in the tide pool and find food. Along the way, you'll pick up new body parts, mostly defense or mobility-related, and apply them to your body by mating, thus giving birth to the next, more advanced generation. I have to admit, I didn't expect much from this part, but it's constructed very well. Every part has a function, but they don't just add to your creature's statistics, the positioning and application has a lot to do with their utility. It's rather complex, and I expected it would just be something I'd rush through on my way to the creature phase they're so very proud of. Eventually, as you eat algae and/or other simple creatures, your species grows a tiny brain and climbs up out of the water. A little too soon, in my opinion. This phase could have been twice as long.
You've probably seen at least one preview of the creature stage. It was the game's biggest selling point, something they started showing off years before they even had an expected release date.
To be perfectly honest, this phase was painful to experience.
The design tool is impressive. No, to be fair, it's an incredible achievement. I created a gaggle of ridiculous animals, but no matter what I did, it managed to convincingly animate the poor things. That is why it's such a shame that the actual gameplay is so boring. I was expecting something dynamic, a unique ecosystem every game. What I got was each species huddled around their own little nest waiting for my creature to show up and either entertain or devour them. I would have liked to have a little more direct control over my creatures' movements, but I accept that may have been a necessary sacrifice if the builder was going to work properly. However, there is no excuse for how static the world is. They've had much of this in place for years now. I know. I saw the videos. It just seems like they finished the creature builder and then knocked off to go have a cold one instead of thinking about the application. It's stifled and repetitive and no one seemed to notice. I'm not expecting some outlandishly complex functioning ecology. The simple, cutesy aesthetic gives them considerable latitude, but I don't get the feeling they were even trying to make it interesting. It's sloppy.
Eventually you sing and dance or kill and eat your way to to sentience. Your creatures discover fire and tools, they get together and form a small tribe. The goal here is to establish your tribe as the dominant culture in the region. You can do this by giving the other tribes gifts and playing music for them until they become your ally. You can also steal their food, kill their warriors, and raze their village. As with the creature phase, you can tailor your strategy to suit the situation, make nice with the axe-wielding berserkers and slaughter the peaceful musicians. When you make the jump from creature to tribe, your choices don't affect too much. It grants your culture access to different powers, but friendly herbivores are perfectly able to take up arms and conquer their neighbors as a tribe. However, the results of the tribal phase determine a lot about your first city in the subsequent one and the game is pretty picky about whether or not you were opportunistic enough to qualify for the middle ground award. The tribal phase is adequate, if simple.
The civilization phase is a mess. Maybe I'm spoiled by my years of playing Meier's series, but Spore's take is so horribly managed I almost quit playing before I got to space.
Okay, that's a lie. Skipping the space phase was never on the table for me, but still.
I thought the idea was for the gameplay itself to become more advanced as the player's species grew in intelligence and complexity. The reality is just tedium. It's like Civilization with all the good stuff like city management and technological advancement cut out, leaving only the grind and repetition. What scant variation this era offers isn't available unless you conquer the right cities. I think it would have been a better idea to allow military, cultural, and economic vehicles from the start, and instead add another layer of strategy based upon which category your cities are in. Instead, you have exactly as many tactics available as you have different cities, with a maximum of three.
It gets worse. Despite the severely limited complexity, it still manages to bungle the presentation of the information you need with an over-burdened clusterfuck of a heads-up display. Bright blue and white flashing buttons clutter the screen at all times. It's as if they'd heard of strategy games, but had never actually seen one in action. Before I played Spore, I was worried they would simply rip off Civilization, and now I wish they had.
Finally, it's time to go into space. After you establish your world government based on religion, greed, or bloodshed, your society will be ready to spread their disgust for others throughout the galaxy. You'll first design a spaceship using essentially the same builder tool you used to create your creatures, and it's still very good. You also used it to clothe them in the tribal phase and design buildings and vehicles in the civilization phase, but you almost never see any of that in action and it comes off as just a periodic reminder that even though you're not always having fun, the game is not without its accomplishments.
This is where things finally get interesting. The game gives you the freedom to fly around and visit other stars. A successful space empire uses all the different societal tools. You can focus on colonization and trade, or you can fight and conquer. There is also a terra-forming game wherein you settle alien worlds, give them atmosphere, and create a functioning ecosystem. This makes your colonies larger and more profitable. It is sort of fun but it suffers from issues similar to those of the creature phase. It's rigid. Everything plays out according to some simple gauges. If the planet has room for only one predator, placing another will cause the newcomers to die off. They should at least fight it out, right?
The chief success of the space phase, and one of the big strengths of the game as a whole is how tactile it all is. They really did a marvelous job with the builder program. There is considerable depth to it, and yet someone with little experience with gaming in general can learn how to use it in minutes.
There is a similar philosophy at work in the control mechanism of the space phase. It feels very hands-on because it takes the floating third-person view Spore shares with all the games that inspired it and attaches the player's avatar, the ship they created. Every weapon and tool is a piece of equipment on board. It pulls the player into the action in a way that I've never seen in a strategy or simulation.
There is a catch, of course. The final phase of the game involves many details which require quite a lot of attention. This is good to a certain extent, but I wish the player's increasing level of technology opened up some optional tools to help streamline and automate some of the more tedious aspects of managing a space empire.
It's not easy to put all that together. Spore is an ambitious project that overextended itself a bit. At some points I was really impressed with what they have achieved, while just as often I was furious at those segments which felt rushed or incomplete.
Should you play Spore? The short answer is yes. It is equal parts groundbreaking and derivative, visceral and monotonous, but there is nothing quite like it. I feel comfortable recommending it for the sheer spectacle, but I don't think they got it quite right yet. This is probably good. I don't know if I would have been able to stop playing long enough to write this if they had.
It's hard to have faith in this industry sometimes. If these companies spent more time designing than on marketing and hype, we could really start elevating gaming as an art form. I have even less faith in EA, but I always thought Wright and his people were really interested in pushing the limits of electronic entertainment and I still do. Spore isn't bad, it's just incomplete.
It's an awkward lurch in the right direction.
Creator Will Wright's previous work is in the same general category as a lot of other games I enjoy, but I was never really sucked in by any of it. I have always been terrible at SimCity. My population centers were so mismanaged they ended up looking like faithful re-imaginings of The Wire viewed from some sort of dirigible. I do appreciate a game that assumes I'm not an idiot, but I'm a little too obsessive-compulsive for that much micromanagement. I simply cannot deal with the ubiquitous background noise of guilt about a housing block without adequate fire safety or an increasing pollution issue or one of the million other things I'm doing wrong. Naturally, I run out of money trying to keep everyone happy and have to squeeze the poor residents to fill my coffers (there are only about four people not living in squalor at this point). This makes me feel even worse. Eventually, I remember that it's a game and I should be having fun, and I go do something else.
Wright's other major title, The Sims, is a game that is really impressive in a pointless sort of way. You can take it at face value, but then you're essentially just playing Normal Life: The Game. You can instead do what everyone else does, which is to assume the persona of an evil god with powers oddly limited by the family's bank account, and set about ruining these digital beings' lives. This is immeasurably more satisfying than unleashing catastrophes to punish your lazy citizens in SimCity. They're not much more than dots. In The Sims, you can be as sadistic as the game will let you, and it is surprisingly accommodating. I know this was not what Wright had intended, but what did he expect from a market so saturated in testosterone?
However, it turns out there is an upper limit to the enjoyment which can be derived from utterly destroying Mortimer Goth's life by, I don't know, driving his wife into the arms of the neighborhood bachelor, forcing social services to take his daughter away, turning his home into a fetid nightmare covered in rotting food, and selling any useful appliances until he cries himself to sleep every night in the middle of the road, face-down in a puddle of his own urine. What's cool is that the game is so well-equipped that such nonsense is possible. The building and editing tools are both powerful and intuitive. I have always felt the series is to be commended for that, even if the subject matter is somewhat vanilla.
Spore, I think, was intended to be the ultimate god game; a simulation in five distinct chapters representing steps on the path of life from single-celled organism to space-faring civilization. It is built upon the Maxis tradition that video games can be about creation and management, not just running, jumping, and murder. It also takes considerable inspiration from other sorts of games which share little besides a common camera angle. The game has a real-time strategy section and Sid Meier's Civilization series is clearly the foundation for the entire later portion. The creature phase, on the other hand, reminded me of that old SNES game EVO. I loved that game.
The player's responsibilities and goals change considerably as their species and culture becomes more complex . Each of Spore's eras is essentially a different game, although after your first run through, you are free to skip ahead. You must, however, deny yourself access to powers earned for completing the earlier segments.
The cell stage is a relatively simple 2D combat game in which your tiny organism must swim about in the tide pool and find food. Along the way, you'll pick up new body parts, mostly defense or mobility-related, and apply them to your body by mating, thus giving birth to the next, more advanced generation. I have to admit, I didn't expect much from this part, but it's constructed very well. Every part has a function, but they don't just add to your creature's statistics, the positioning and application has a lot to do with their utility. It's rather complex, and I expected it would just be something I'd rush through on my way to the creature phase they're so very proud of. Eventually, as you eat algae and/or other simple creatures, your species grows a tiny brain and climbs up out of the water. A little too soon, in my opinion. This phase could have been twice as long.
You've probably seen at least one preview of the creature stage. It was the game's biggest selling point, something they started showing off years before they even had an expected release date.
To be perfectly honest, this phase was painful to experience.
The design tool is impressive. No, to be fair, it's an incredible achievement. I created a gaggle of ridiculous animals, but no matter what I did, it managed to convincingly animate the poor things. That is why it's such a shame that the actual gameplay is so boring. I was expecting something dynamic, a unique ecosystem every game. What I got was each species huddled around their own little nest waiting for my creature to show up and either entertain or devour them. I would have liked to have a little more direct control over my creatures' movements, but I accept that may have been a necessary sacrifice if the builder was going to work properly. However, there is no excuse for how static the world is. They've had much of this in place for years now. I know. I saw the videos. It just seems like they finished the creature builder and then knocked off to go have a cold one instead of thinking about the application. It's stifled and repetitive and no one seemed to notice. I'm not expecting some outlandishly complex functioning ecology. The simple, cutesy aesthetic gives them considerable latitude, but I don't get the feeling they were even trying to make it interesting. It's sloppy.
Eventually you sing and dance or kill and eat your way to to sentience. Your creatures discover fire and tools, they get together and form a small tribe. The goal here is to establish your tribe as the dominant culture in the region. You can do this by giving the other tribes gifts and playing music for them until they become your ally. You can also steal their food, kill their warriors, and raze their village. As with the creature phase, you can tailor your strategy to suit the situation, make nice with the axe-wielding berserkers and slaughter the peaceful musicians. When you make the jump from creature to tribe, your choices don't affect too much. It grants your culture access to different powers, but friendly herbivores are perfectly able to take up arms and conquer their neighbors as a tribe. However, the results of the tribal phase determine a lot about your first city in the subsequent one and the game is pretty picky about whether or not you were opportunistic enough to qualify for the middle ground award. The tribal phase is adequate, if simple.
The civilization phase is a mess. Maybe I'm spoiled by my years of playing Meier's series, but Spore's take is so horribly managed I almost quit playing before I got to space.
Okay, that's a lie. Skipping the space phase was never on the table for me, but still.
I thought the idea was for the gameplay itself to become more advanced as the player's species grew in intelligence and complexity. The reality is just tedium. It's like Civilization with all the good stuff like city management and technological advancement cut out, leaving only the grind and repetition. What scant variation this era offers isn't available unless you conquer the right cities. I think it would have been a better idea to allow military, cultural, and economic vehicles from the start, and instead add another layer of strategy based upon which category your cities are in. Instead, you have exactly as many tactics available as you have different cities, with a maximum of three.
It gets worse. Despite the severely limited complexity, it still manages to bungle the presentation of the information you need with an over-burdened clusterfuck of a heads-up display. Bright blue and white flashing buttons clutter the screen at all times. It's as if they'd heard of strategy games, but had never actually seen one in action. Before I played Spore, I was worried they would simply rip off Civilization, and now I wish they had.
Finally, it's time to go into space. After you establish your world government based on religion, greed, or bloodshed, your society will be ready to spread their disgust for others throughout the galaxy. You'll first design a spaceship using essentially the same builder tool you used to create your creatures, and it's still very good. You also used it to clothe them in the tribal phase and design buildings and vehicles in the civilization phase, but you almost never see any of that in action and it comes off as just a periodic reminder that even though you're not always having fun, the game is not without its accomplishments.
This is where things finally get interesting. The game gives you the freedom to fly around and visit other stars. A successful space empire uses all the different societal tools. You can focus on colonization and trade, or you can fight and conquer. There is also a terra-forming game wherein you settle alien worlds, give them atmosphere, and create a functioning ecosystem. This makes your colonies larger and more profitable. It is sort of fun but it suffers from issues similar to those of the creature phase. It's rigid. Everything plays out according to some simple gauges. If the planet has room for only one predator, placing another will cause the newcomers to die off. They should at least fight it out, right?
The chief success of the space phase, and one of the big strengths of the game as a whole is how tactile it all is. They really did a marvelous job with the builder program. There is considerable depth to it, and yet someone with little experience with gaming in general can learn how to use it in minutes.
There is a similar philosophy at work in the control mechanism of the space phase. It feels very hands-on because it takes the floating third-person view Spore shares with all the games that inspired it and attaches the player's avatar, the ship they created. Every weapon and tool is a piece of equipment on board. It pulls the player into the action in a way that I've never seen in a strategy or simulation.
There is a catch, of course. The final phase of the game involves many details which require quite a lot of attention. This is good to a certain extent, but I wish the player's increasing level of technology opened up some optional tools to help streamline and automate some of the more tedious aspects of managing a space empire.
It's not easy to put all that together. Spore is an ambitious project that overextended itself a bit. At some points I was really impressed with what they have achieved, while just as often I was furious at those segments which felt rushed or incomplete.
Should you play Spore? The short answer is yes. It is equal parts groundbreaking and derivative, visceral and monotonous, but there is nothing quite like it. I feel comfortable recommending it for the sheer spectacle, but I don't think they got it quite right yet. This is probably good. I don't know if I would have been able to stop playing long enough to write this if they had.
It's hard to have faith in this industry sometimes. If these companies spent more time designing than on marketing and hype, we could really start elevating gaming as an art form. I have even less faith in EA, but I always thought Wright and his people were really interested in pushing the limits of electronic entertainment and I still do. Spore isn't bad, it's just incomplete.
It's an awkward lurch in the right direction.
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