Mold Spores in the wind

I believe I dabbled on this in my complaint about The Sims. Poor spore, you were going to be so great. I feel that I actually should make this post entirely exclusive from the rest since I actually keep having the same reserve of complaints for it.

First, subject matter. Scientists have actually verified evolutionwise, spore sucks. I could agree, but what was it going to be before hand? If anyone has seen the original demo ('05) from will wright (Which I will embed in it's 36 minute glory below this paragraph) You'd know that he made it so that the evolution (Not the space stage) Was a smooth and flowing process. First you are a cell, then you are a fish, then you grow legs after you can save for them and walk out on land. Okay a bit jittery. But then you grow your nest to a tribal ground as your species brain evolves. Then after that, expanding your tribal ground through various upgrades until it's a cityscape, then eventually the ability to save up enough RTS like resources to buy a spaceship. It would be one continous smooth game, and could take anywhere from hours to something like a full game of Civilization.



Just skip through it. Okay maybe I rawly estimated some bits but Mr. Wright did fastforward over the cell stage to fish part. And the tribe to civ. Anyways, still, much more beautiful and slightly more scientifically accurate than the spore we have now, where from being a small cell, you turn into a creatures with legs. Yeah. Wait-- WTF? Yeah. That's what I'm thinking.

My entire case rests on the whole "Evolution is gradual" proccess. Spore screwed up by being instant. Tribe to civ - BAM! Creature to sentient - BAM! Cell to creature - BAM! Now, is that how evolution worked? Did we just pop out a new extension on a millenia by millenia basis? If you really want to think hard evolution is really the proccess of reproduction and how it sees the world fit. Generation after generation it's just more births. Kind of sporeish. Give or take it'd be speeding up the proccess no mater what but still.

So, what else has the new game done? No strategic placement of body parts. I believe it's Brian Crecente's FruitFucker(TM) (From kotaku.com) would work the same as oh say one of those spore creation contest ones that looks like a nineteenfifties style robot just as long as you put a few horns on it and it'll try to badly animate it versus figure out where it was.

Why you ask? As I pointed out, for the sake of casual gaming. What kind of normal, sims loving, let's play barbie style sims person would ever want to strategize where to put the horns on their monster? Why have to make a butterfly monster and figure out it'd never survive? Exactly. Spore is essentially a dress up barbie kit trying to pretend to be part of a bigger world. It's no original idea, it's all about customization *that doesn't matter* much like the sims. When you think about it, the person who like virtual barbie would make their sim look as nice as they want them too. And does it effect them? No.

Spore has become an essential drain of a good idea into a thing attempting to be the sims. Because EA wants it to. I thought it'd be a cold day in hell before gaming became mainstream, but it is.

I still whine and moan, and since I don't know where to go, I'm ending this blog post.

Adieu,
Dr. Random

(And yet still noone reads this blog)