the ds game diminishes the point of spore, which is to explore different evolutionary options in open-ended game play.

User Rating: 5 | Spore Creatures DS
By miaowow | Review Date:
spore creatures was a game that i was really looking forward to when it first came out. there was so much hype about it that it just had to be good. right? wrong. i admit that i was hooked for the first few days, but after a while, it just didn't seem worth playing. how can i put this delicately? hmmm.

well... it's cute. that's about it. the story is whimsical, the characters (NPCs and the ones you make) seem to be made for future plushie merchandising profits, and the creature creator is a fun game element. although the play-through is linear (no room for exploration) it's reasonably paced and filled with many different "missions" that keep the game from being too repetitive.

let's be honest, though. this isn't what people expected. spore, this is not; it's not even spore lite. spore creatures is more of a companion game than a ds version; something for your kid sister/brother to muck around with while you play the actual game on the pc. the first thing that got me down was the creature creator. yes, i said that it was fun; but it's really disappointing when you see it for the first time! it's in 2d. the game also forces you to pick certain creature designs depending on what your mission is at the moment (if you don't do it, it becomes difficult or downright impossible to move on to the next objective), which (1) limits player creativity and (2) diminishes the whole point of spore, which is to explore different evolutionary options in open-ended game play.

most other online reviews of this game peg the total playing time at about 10 hours. i couldn't even get past the first 3. that it's not what was expected, i could deal with. but coupled with cramping my style and testing my patience -- some objectives really do just that; sometimes they get you to play "mini-games" or have you do specific actions again and again, and the controls are so specific that it goes from fun to frustrating really fast -- cute just didn't cut it. another annoying little thing about this game is the camera/view. it just zooms in and out and changes as it pleases, at the most inopportune times. probably not a big deal to some people, but when you have no sense of direction like me it can get confusing.

i'm giving this game a 5/10. -0.5 because it led me to believe it was a ds version of spore, -1.5 because of the limited creature creation options, -1 for the linear play and -2 for testing my patience. ugh.


(originally posted on my blog: http://miaowow.blogspot.com/2010/02/spore-creatures-ds.html)

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