Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Ooh, just a kind of radar-blip news post for Spore’s expansion pack, Galactic Adventures. No firm release date yet, but we understand it’s not far off. So here’s something: Galactic Adventures delivers a whole load of space-stage stuff to do, mostly with missions on the planet surfaces that you can undertake with your creature and his/her space chums. There’s rescuing of princesses, destroying aliens motherships, and of course loads of that user-generated content pollination. Judging by the trailers post after the jump, the planets themselves are massively more detailed than they were for vanilla Spore, and the “massive battlefields” that the expansion reportedly features could make the unhappy endgame of Spore a little more interesting to get through. Take a look at how Spore will change.
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Much like everyone else, we’ve been thinking far too much about Spore recently. Alex Hutchinson, the game’s lead designer, has been thinking about it for years. With the game released, we grabbed the opportunity to talk candidly and extensively with him about its design choices. From high level decisions like the actual in-game effect of customisation to basic technical elements like the lack of autosave to the question of the sudden difficulty spike in Space (And the lack of difficulty elsewhere), he reveals Maxis’ thinking. Whether you adore or abhor it, after reading this, you’ll understand exactly why Spore is the game it is.
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We’ve all had a go at that Spore game, so it’s time to bang the hammer of judgment and sound great horns across the internet. Spore: What is it good for? Absolutely something.

Jim: Right, shall we discuss Spore? Everyone ready?
Kieron: Well, the trad way to start would be to say how much we’ve played, yeah? I’ve taken two races up into space, and reached the centre of the galaxy with one. A load of minor fiddling too, obviously.
Jim: I’ve played it through to the space stage a twice, and then a third time at the space stage as a start. I’ve probably spent as much time again the various editors.
Alec: I got an achievement the other day saying I’d spent 50 hours in space with a single species. This somewhat horrified me.
Jim: Blimey. Where is John, by the way?
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Apparently the official online embargo starts lifting tomorrow, but a bunch of print scores have already found their way into the realms of webby-land. Most notably, CVG have just posted a slightly bizarre summary of Tom Francis’ print review in PC Gamer UK, which is possibly a cheeky attempt to get a march on tomorrow’s online reviews. The lad scored Will Wright’s new’un a whopping 91%, but delivered a few sharp punches to Spore’s ribs. For the whole review you’ll need to read the mag, but what are, purportedly, the most pertinent comments can be found here.

On the other side of the coin, VG247 is reporting less favourable scores from a couple of German gaming mags.: 79% from Gamestar, and 73% from PC Games. Hmm. Looks like it’s silly season for huge score discrepancies, eh?

Update – Looks like those German mags are in the minority. There are ten reviews in the wild now, most of which are 8s and 9s. This one seems especially trustworthy, for some mysterious reason.

[Brandon Boyer, the author of this piece, is one of Rock, Paper, Shotgun's international agents. In 2006 he visited Spore developers Maxis at their studio on behalf of Edge magazine. The following article is an updated version of the feature that was published in that magazine last year. In it Mr Boyer talks to Wright and his team, and gets the heart of how this game came to be. Read on to discover how Spore was made of people.]

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Via the big K, this latest Spore trailer sees producer Kip Katsarelis and designer Soren Johnson talking about the civilisation stage of Spore, particularly what they themselves enjoy about that planetary-struggle mechanisms of Maxis’ forthcoming evolve ‘em up. Lovely stuff.
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True, we’ve known about the September 7th (5th in Europe) release date for a while now, but it was hard to ever quite believe in it after all those painful years of delays to Maxis’ evolveathon. But Spore has indeed gone gold at last, and the release is mere weeks away – making it perhaps the vanguard for what’s set to be an absolutely epic Autumn for PC gaming. Internet, prepare thyself.

Something Sporian we’ve not mentioned here previously, incidentally, are the fascinating prototypes the official site has been dribbling out over the last few weeks. Early code-experiments for the game, yours to dabble with for free – they provide something of a history to the game’s development, plus chances for an early look at how aspects of the finished thing will work. It’s fairly unprecedented behind the scenes access for such a high-profile game. Grab ‘em from here.

On its influences, on scientific creativity, science as a brand, and on the amazing success of the Creature Creator. Top of the PC charts since it was released, apparently. Plus, why they released it early. Go, Will:

The guys over at 1up were lucky enough to get some time to sit down and talk to Will Wright at the EA3 event, and they’ve posted the video over at Game Videos. We, being repurposing blogger-types, have posted it after the jump. There’s not a whole lot of new Spore information, but it’s nonetheless satisfying to hear Wright wax about his game, and admit that the creature creator has been completely redesigned around ten times to get it to the state we find it in today.

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Now that we’ve all finished scrubbing our dirty, dirty bodies clean after looking at all those obscene Spore creatures, there’s one question on our lascivious lips. What’s EA/Maxis going to do about all these phalluses and buggerers and gaping anuses? Spore is, after all, a family game. It surely wouldn’t do for little Johnny Evolution to discover a vagina-beast has wandered into his game.
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