I’m making a ridiculous statement right out the gates and oddly so because Diablo 3 has not even been released yet. Why say it’s a killer? That’s because Torchlight is exactly what you’d expect the next Diablo to be like.
Our office was lucky enough to have a copy of Spore dropped off here yesterday. I immediately jumped on the grenade and took it home for a test drive. From the get go it’s a do or die game. You start off with a tiny micro-biotic organism swimming around for food quickly evolving and moving your way up the food chain. Soon you pop out out pre-biotic pool and start your journey on land, and keep on evolving, taking on other spores that made it out of the microbial stages.
Making friends of foes, you keep gaining DNA in order to progress you creature, picking up new features, be it for resources control, social gain or straight out combat. Soon you spawn into a creature with a brain big enough to build camps and fight in packs. Then the starts the race for global domination.
You challenge nearby villages to become a ever more dominant force. In no time at all you will be building your own civilization. Literally creating the templates for the building that will go into your city. At this point you will no longer be playing with creatures but with land, sea and air vehicles. And the stakes are high, were talking global domination.
Once the globe is yours, you can start expanding into space. Where there is no boundary. Keeping you busy for hours, maybe even years. At this stellar point in time you friend next door might also be building his civilization, playing online and on one fine day you might bump into each other. As they say: “May the strongest man win”.
Verdict:
What a great game, thought out really well and with tons of stuff to adjust and re-adjust. It is crazy too see the amount of stuff you can do and create for you creature. The concept is really fresh in gaming. I’ve always been a fan of sim games. This game deserved to be played. I would love to replay an see how radically different my creature will turn out.
On the other hand, there is almost too much to do that you really get bored of the unlimited amount of stuff to add and change. I somewhat rushed thought the initial stages that only took me about 6 hours to play thought and when I got to space it seemed like I’m going to be running around doing errands. Things like that I don’t have time for. This is where it ended for me thus far.
The game expands online and then turns into a massive multi-player game. Something that will give it a huge edge and in doing so, create longer life for itself. I have not gone into that part yet and hope to do so soon. The jury is still out on the next chapter of Spore.
