Spore: Creationist, Murderist, Genocidal Fun for the Whole Creationist Family

By Andariel Halo

First, I want to let you in on a little secret; Penis-- I mean, I did not buy this game and I did not install it onto my computer. The game has what the tech boys call "Satan's Balls" in it, or what other tech boys call "SecuROM" which is an anti-piracy measure that does the complete opposite of "work correctly", and only encourages piracy---it treats the consumer like a pirate already by forcing them to activate their game online on first installation, and then intitiates a 3 (now 5) installation maximum, meaning that your game is basically little more than a rental piece of shit that you can only install five times. So if you change computers or wipe your hardrive a few times, your game is now useless after five times, fit for jamming your penis through the middle.

But that's not the worst part. The worst part is SecuROM, which secretly installs itself into the deepest recesses of your hardrive, what is called the Ring 0 Kernel and basically takes total control of your computer. You may not really notice it right away, but it is basically spyware; it monitors your computer use, sends information back to its headquarters, and has been reported to de-activate DVD/CD Burners and applications like Alcohol 120% which deal in CD/DVD burning.

Hilariously, EA now has some five to six class-action lawsuits filed against them for the secret inclusion of this malware in their products, and they STILL release more and more games with them on it. "Spore" has over 3,000 reviews on Amazon.com, leading to an overall rating of 1.5 out of 5 stars. LOLOOPS! Every other EA game with SecuROM has never breached the 3/5 rating due to its SecuROM inclusion.

Here is a copy of one of the lawsuits filed against EA Games.

Electronic Arts, a leading maker of computer games, defrauds consumers through its "Spore" game, which "completely wipes their hard drive" and replaces it with an undisclosed program that prevents the computer from operating under some circumstances and disrupts hardware operations, a class action claims in Federal Court.

The class claims that "Spore," a virtual reality simulation game, contains "a second, undisclosed program" called SecuROM, a "form of Digital Rights Management (DRM) for computer games."

Consumers are not warned about the program, which is installed without notice and cannot be uninstalled, even if the uninstall Spore, the complaint states. The secret SecuROM program is "secretly installed to the command and control center of the computer (Ring 0, or the Kernel), and surreptitiously operated, overseeing function and operation on the computer, preventing the computer from operating under certain circumstances and/or disrupting hardware operations," the complaint states.

Things such as these warm my heart, until I realize one of the lawsuits filed regarded SecuROM inclusion in the "Spore Creature Creator Trial version" which I had downloaded for free off their scummy website. oopslol. I hope that sneaky-shit SecuROM removal kit works, though my CD/DVD burners still function.

 

BACK TO THE SPORE...

Spore is advertised as a huge-ass galactic God simulator where you get to create a species from cell stage to GALACTIC SENTIENCE as they colonize other planets and all sorts of general assholery. To snatch-up from Yahtzee, Will Wright, the creator of this mess and The Sims, due to the massive success of The Sims and The Sims 2, has a lot to live up to with this next-step-up in the whole life/god simulation. And to quote Yahtzee, his success in the short answer is "No", and the long answer is a huge-ass "No" with a few hundred "O"'s added to the end.

While The Sims was indeed cartoony, Spore jacks that shit up to a degree where absolutely nothing can be taken seriously. This undoubtedly helps it's E for Everyone rating when several levels consists entirely of committing genocide, if you so choose.

So I'm gonna take you down to the creation of MY species, which is immediately better than all of yours, called the Shphtytoods, on planet Halonic Death Beam. They began as sweet cuddly little cells, and I have to give this game its first star on the sound. These things are absolutely the cutest sounding fucks I have ever heard in any game ever. They squeal and squeak and purr and go "brrrreeee" in ways that make my girly heart dance with delight. It's an orgasm to the ears, and far more than any of you have done for your women lately, I suppose.

My Shphtytoods were carnivores, because if you pick herbivore, you're clearly a sucker for sucking and dying. I got to run from bigger cells, eat little nuggets of meat, and bop enemies in the head with my spike. The more I eat, the bigger I got, so that the one MASSIVE porcupine cell thingies are now my main source of food.

You also get to collect "upgrades" in the form of horns, buttsacks that spew poisonous fart gas, buttsacks that shoot electricity, and buttsacks that spew gas to make you move faster. Some slight semblence of evolution is lost as you "upgrade" by having sex with another of your species, then taking on the role of the bastard-bitch child with a totally new body, five spikes, two buttsacks, and some flippers.

As soon as you reach the end, gameplay comes to a sudden and jarring halt, and any semblence of a smooth segue into the next stage becomes as smooth as a surprise ass fucking with your underwear still on. "Boy, that sure does sound rather uncomfortably awkward" you may say, while a small portion of you proceed to test this theory by penetrating yourselves anally with a metal dildo through your underwear.

Next is the Creature Stage, and any semblence of evolution that was left over is subsequently completely eaten, shitted into a lake, and destroyed in a pile of messy Darwinian gore, shit, shit-water, and Bibles as you can basically turn what was once a fish with legs into a monkey or a dinosaur or an alligator with 6 foot legs and five arms and legs on its back.

The whole "creature crafting" thing is limited only by a certain amount of randomly useless shit to cram onto your "intelligently"-designed hunk of shit, and none of it matters so long as the stats add up. by this logic, a one-legged platypus who happens to have ULTRAMEGALEG can be FASTER than a ground-hugging caterpillar with seven legs because it has the Down's Syndrome legs that all the creatures start out with, and a creature with eighteen eyes all around its head and ass (one in the same) has no particular benefit over a creature with NO eyes or ears or antennae whatsoever.

Everything, from the creatures to the fighting vehicles in the Civilization Stage, amount to little more than "pick whatever gives you the most stats", so regardless of whether your think is a reptile or a bird or a landfish, you may as well pick the monkey legs since they make you run faster. And paint them neon-green too, because fuck, you may as well be as obnoxious as possible with whatever your freak baby is.

At this point in stage, my Shphtytoods became giant Praying Mantises with four monkey legs, two gigantic fucking claws, and an insect-type mouth. Its special abilities were to dance, sing, pose, flirt, and RIP THE FUCKING SHIT OUT OF YOUR ENTIRE FUCKING FAMILY. I went around, found the cute animals and tried to flirt with them. They said no, so I'd go over to the big angry beasts' nests, smack them around, then run for the cute animals' nest. Hilarity ensues.

Let me say here that the designer of this game is clearly one of the types who believes that peace solves nothing. Not only is it at least 1.5 times harder to ally with a nest of other creatures than it is to just murder them all, but just about every single nest that is stronger than you is immediately hostile and will kill the fucking shit out of you if you step onto their land for any reason.

Then comes another huge fucking problem; the controls. Controlling your creature is the equivalent of trying to play a card game with oven mitts and a gas mask, and drunk. Rather than be able to control their walking, you don't control shit so much as you order your creature to do something. To do this, you must click on the exact spot of land you want them to walk towards. Because the camera angle is that of a Third Person Shooter, this means you will almost never hit the exact place you want them to go, as you might click on the spot below a hill, and the game will register you wanting to go ON TOP of the hill. Nice!

Best of all is if you want to have sex with another of your species in order to enter "Create-A" mode, and make your Velociraptor into a Squirtle, you have to run up to them while hearts fly out of their head, and click on them. I can say from my multiple times of trying, I have been able to run up to them without fault and mate successfully exactly one time with each "campaign" of species. Every other time, I have ended up rushing right past them, and walking around in circles. Not even any variation, like walking around in squares, or just continue walking into the nearby ocean, they ALWAYS walk around in circles.

But it's not all shit; this is arguably the most fun part of the game. And if they included blood and gore, it would be worthy of an M rating, or even as high as AO. Your wretched abortion wanders around a huge landscape, completing missions consisting of "dance and sing and pose for your enemies to make them allies, or make them go extinct". You can also find fossils which give you upgradeable parts to add on to your thing haphazardly. There's also no restriction as to where parts go, so you can put three mouths on their ass, give them horns instead of legs, and one arm extending high up into the air instead of a nose.

Sometimes allying is good, as when you grow smarter, you can literally form a gang in which either your own species or ally members will follow you around and kill shit with you. The more people you have, also, the more effective you are at being a pansy-ass faggot who dances and sings for alliances. Killing the shit out of enemies is better, as you get to surprise attack regardless of whether they notice you at first, and there are NO LIMITS.

Absolutely none. You can kill males, females, children. You can even eat their unhatched eggs.

And so the shining achievement of the Shphtytood Nest was seeing my enemies driven before me, wailing in misery as I stood atop their nest, and ATE ALL THEIR FUCKING EGGS! One of their children dared to step up to me, waddling with its stubby dinosaur legs, and hissing. I eviscerated him. One fucking headbutt with my thorny antennae-covered head, and it was DEAD. AND THEN I PROCEEDED TO EAT THE CHILD'S CORPSE IN FRONT OF ITS PARENTS.

In total non-sarcastic, snarky cynicistic sarcasm, if this game had blood and gore, this stage alone would be the absolute best mini-game element of any game ever released in the past few years ever. There was just so much stuff to collect, so many children to eat, so many species to murder, so much genocide to commit.

Then comes the steel wall of "Insanely Awkward, Piss-Poorly Executed Transition Segueway" that leads on to the "Tribal Stage". Once into this stage, you cannot mishy-moo your bastard-bitch abortion's appearance any longer. Like it would even matter for anything other than aesthetic appeal---your stats no longer matter a damn, as you now wield tools and shit. You can craft clothing and armor for your creature, but I will tell you now that aside from being pretty much completely useless, it has the same amount of grace, aesthetic appeal, and collision detection as... well I can't think of another reference.

The point is that nothing fits. The armor and clothing and shit doesn't snap onto your creature to fit properly, so if your creature has a long chest, you can either have a bit of armor that pretty much only sticks to the pointy end of its chest, or otherwise clips into it to fit at the base. Everything will either clip, or float just a few centimeters away from your creature's flesh.

Tribal Stage is summed up like this: Using only 6-9-12 people, either ally with as many enemy tribes as possible, or destroy them all. With only 6 or 9 or 12 people.

This is the equivalent of doing homework for yourself and five other people, and then attend a Movie Marathon of the Star Wars Saga all in one day.

The only service Allies provide is "Won't Kill You" and free food. Allies contribute nothing else. The early stage consists of collecting food, putting it at your camp, and then using the food to either buy weapons or musical instruments (if you're a pansy-ass faggot) or to spawn new tribal members. After a certain amount of food, your limit is increased a bit, though the maximum is 12. You can domesticate wild animals, but they don't do shit but eat and watch your enemies kill the shit out of your children and tribal hall.

Another huge issue you need to address concerns wild creatures as small or smaller than your foot. These things wander into your village, and CAMP on your food supply, draining each wad of food, which took you like 3-5 minutes to collect just one, in one second each wad.

The camera as well follows the previous stage's movement concept of "Slow Acceleration, Slow Brake, Fast Speed" in terms of scrolling, and the 3D movement aspect is clearly something that probably required a keyboard to design, what with how complex and insanely difficult it is on the mouse.

Once you're friendly with all the tribes, or have burned their villages down using their children as kindling, then you move on to Civilization Stage, which can best be summed up as "Nuke Everyone, next stage".

Well, if you're a pansy-ass faggot, you can go through the whole "lez design buildings LOL" with the same amount of clipping and total-lack of sticking as the clothing in Tribal stage, and design either Religious cities, Military cities, or Economic cities. Religious cities produce weapons which convert nonbelievers to their cause. I tried this once, but it got destroyed, so I quickly deduced that that was "Completely Pointless, Useless, and Expensive Bullshit" and soon discovered that the only thing that worked was killing the shit out of enemy cities on foot, then investing all my money into either nukes, or aircraft, because the whole "transport units across sea" has completely eluded these nuclear superpower states.

If you're not a pansy-ass faggot, you don't even need to fight anyone. You can fight them, sure, and take their cities, but anything and everything you do is pretty much pointless in the end, as you have the option to research INTERCONTINENTAL BALLISTIC MISSILES! Just hit this once, and any city that isn't yours is immediately God-Mod Deus-Ex-Machina'd into oblivion. It's the equivalent of the Battle of Stalingrad, in which so many brave Soviet and Nazi soldiers fought to the death for their own survival and nations, in which over a million men were killed or wounded on both sides, ending with the Soviets just nuking the fucking shit out of Germany, and every other country in the world. That was rather nice of the whole 500,000+ soldiers dying for the Soviet Union when they could have just nuked the fucking shit out of everyone earlier.

The Space Stage continues the game's tradition of genocide and murder by upping it an ante into more deviously cruel ways. You are now just in control of one asshole in a spaceship of your own designing, complete with the same useless aesthetic additions of "float-inches-from-surface" or "clip-through-surface" as you explore a literally massive galaxy where you can meet and ally with other planets species, receive random threats of violence from species all the way across the galaxy, speak to a species who believe in a God that can best be described as "Apathy and Neutrality Personified".

But fuck all that shit if you want, because this stage introduces ECOLOGICAL WARFARE!

Depending on how much money you get, you can do such things as settle atmospheric generators which generate atmosphere on desolate planets, followed by scooping up plants and animals from your own planet, and dropping them onto the shithole planet to make it more life-habitable, then settle down a colony there and get to populating. Also, you can pick up people and drop them to their deaths.

And for enemy planets, there are de-atmospheric generators, which suck down atmosphere, and lower it a level each time. Enough times and you can completely destroy a planet ecologically! You can also suck up animals from your planet or another, drop it into their planet, and utterly destroy their ecosystems by throwing it off balance.

You can go about doing this until you die (for real in real life) or get sick of it and stop playing. Final stage in the game.

So I'm sick of talking about the game, so I'll sum up. This is an ultimate life simulator with options of being the perfect game to get a pansy-ass faggot who believes in peace love and harmony being the key to success, or a dangerous sociopath who gets their jollies from genocide of all conceivable types.

And despite that, it was still a shitty game:

- Tribal Stage was a glorified cold (as opposed to hot) wad of shit.
- Civilization Stage was completely pointless filler material with absolutely no benefits.
- Every stage except Cell and Space stage have piss-poor camera and movement controls.
- Limitations in creation means that you have to spend hours either murdering nests in Creature stage or finding fossils just to find something like a bird beak or alligator mouth instead of five variations of "Muscly Arm".
- Making allies is completely useless save for them to not kill you.
- No point in NOT being a murderous, genocidal carnivorous cannibal.

I was going to say something else but I forgot. STAY TUNED NEXT WEEK FOR MY REVIEW ON...