Spore

If you have been keeping at least half an eye on the gaming industry over the last year, you probably know that Spore is being released today. Hell, it’s even making headlines on non-gaming sites. Why? Because the game is designed by Will Wright, the brain behind some of the most successful games ever made, like SimCity and The Sims. A new game designed by this genius should probably be interesting enough, but published EA Games has really turned on the hype machine for this release.

The problem with over-hyped games is that they sometimes fail to live up to the hype that has been created. One obvious exception that is Grand Theft Auto IV, a game that was very anticipated and did great, even though it didn’t really bring anything new to the table. It’s basically like any of the other games in the series but with updated graphics. Spore has not received the rave reviews that EA had hoped for, perhaps because it’s not that good a game, perhaps because the hype surrounding the game was too high.

It’s time for me to find out first hand. Spore comes in two editions, a normal plastic hard case, one game DVD edition and an extraordinary Spore Galactic Edition. I’m a sucker for special edition, so that’s the edition I bought. There’s a lot of goodies in the over sized package:

  • Spore Game DVD (PC/Mac compatible)
  • “The Making of Spore” DVD. A behind the scenes documentary on the making of Spore.
  • “How to Build a Better Being” DVD. A 50-minute evolution documentary by the National Geographic
  • Channel featuring Will Wright and Spore.
  • “The Art of Spore.” A 128 page hardback book featuring Spore artwork and stories from Maxis’ artists.
  • Exclusive 100-page Galactic Handbook
  • Exclusive Spore poster

Hours and hours of excellent entertainment! So far it looks like the general mood of the interweb is that the game is too shallow, that it doesn’t live up to the hype (there I said it again) and that the game just a series of mini games that by themselves is not really that entertaining.

Well, we’ll see. My biggest problem right now is to find space to install the game, my hard drive is full. Blast!


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