William BagleySpore Review - Tribe Stage
September 8th 2008 14:06
Let's continue with the review. Halfway through now!
Congratulations, you have discovered fire and how to build things. Your chieftan (the fire-starting genius from Creature) and two of your fellow tribemates embark upon the next stage of the game. Set on one continent of your planet, you are soon surrounded by several other tribes of different species. Your goal? To take over the continent by force or charm. As you conquer or ally with the other tribles on the continent, you get to add another piece to your tribe's totem pole, as well as gain access to extra buildings and costumes. Your tribe as well undergoes a facelift to symbolise your advance through the ages and the approach of the next chapter in the game.
Sound familiar to the previous stage? Sadly that's because in terms of your game objectives, it is. I say sadly because there is of course nothing wrong with having the same objectives for a game ("Kill everything" seems to be the basic idea for most games). But you almost follow the exact same formula as Creature in order to achieve your goals, so closely in fact that it feels as though you never left Creature sometimes.
This stage does offer you a different style of gameplay. The RPG elements of Creature have been abandoned for the more RTS-type interface and controls which will come to make up the rest of Spore. Balancing tribe micromanagement with keeping an eye on your neighbours, this stage introduces to the player the idea of how strategy works within Spore, and further emphasies what you will face in the later stages, with resource-gathering and relationship managing coming to the forefront. I hate repeating myself, but the lack of depth is even more painful in this stage. You either rush the other tribe and overpower them with numbers, or you grab a bunch of instruments and play the tribe into submission.
Even within these simple gameplay goals however, I feel like there was so much that could've been done with Tribe to have increased the depth that wouldn't have resulted in the alienation of the casual gamer. After all, between learning to make fire and the rise of the technological era that is the Civ stage... there were a few things that were skipped. While I realise that to have included everything that could've gone into the stage would've risked overshadowing the other stages of the game, I feel there simply isn't enough in this stage to encourage someone to come back and play it again.
There are positives though, as once again the stage is carried almost entirely by the little things it offers to the gamer. That unique Maxis charm oozes throughout, even from the very outset. For example, your tribe has a very small contingent of domesticated animals to begin with. I LOL'd when I saw that my domesticated animals were allies from Creature who I had gotten to join into my pack!
Maxis has found a way to cram an awful lot of personality into our creations. From facial expressions to the activities that idle tribemates will carry out, there is certainly a lot of awareness amongst the sentient creatures on the continent. There were a lot of moments which made me smile while playing this segment.. it's just a little saddening that most of them happened while I just sat there and watched my creatures fill in the time between instructions from me.
Tomorrow will be Civ stage, followed by my impressions of the Space stage and some final comments before we can safely put Spore to bed... I swear I was supposed to be writing a PC upgrade guide. Wonder what happened to that... *shakes fist*
TRIBE STAGE
"This sign means you have 10 seconds until we unleash the spears."
Congratulations, you have discovered fire and how to build things. Your chieftan (the fire-starting genius from Creature) and two of your fellow tribemates embark upon the next stage of the game. Set on one continent of your planet, you are soon surrounded by several other tribes of different species. Your goal? To take over the continent by force or charm. As you conquer or ally with the other tribles on the continent, you get to add another piece to your tribe's totem pole, as well as gain access to extra buildings and costumes. Your tribe as well undergoes a facelift to symbolise your advance through the ages and the approach of the next chapter in the game.
Sound familiar to the previous stage? Sadly that's because in terms of your game objectives, it is. I say sadly because there is of course nothing wrong with having the same objectives for a game ("Kill everything" seems to be the basic idea for most games). But you almost follow the exact same formula as Creature in order to achieve your goals, so closely in fact that it feels as though you never left Creature sometimes.
This stage does offer you a different style of gameplay. The RPG elements of Creature have been abandoned for the more RTS-type interface and controls which will come to make up the rest of Spore. Balancing tribe micromanagement with keeping an eye on your neighbours, this stage introduces to the player the idea of how strategy works within Spore, and further emphasies what you will face in the later stages, with resource-gathering and relationship managing coming to the forefront. I hate repeating myself, but the lack of depth is even more painful in this stage. You either rush the other tribe and overpower them with numbers, or you grab a bunch of instruments and play the tribe into submission.
Even within these simple gameplay goals however, I feel like there was so much that could've been done with Tribe to have increased the depth that wouldn't have resulted in the alienation of the casual gamer. After all, between learning to make fire and the rise of the technological era that is the Civ stage... there were a few things that were skipped. While I realise that to have included everything that could've gone into the stage would've risked overshadowing the other stages of the game, I feel there simply isn't enough in this stage to encourage someone to come back and play it again.
There are positives though, as once again the stage is carried almost entirely by the little things it offers to the gamer. That unique Maxis charm oozes throughout, even from the very outset. For example, your tribe has a very small contingent of domesticated animals to begin with. I LOL'd when I saw that my domesticated animals were allies from Creature who I had gotten to join into my pack!
Maxis has found a way to cram an awful lot of personality into our creations. From facial expressions to the activities that idle tribemates will carry out, there is certainly a lot of awareness amongst the sentient creatures on the continent. There were a lot of moments which made me smile while playing this segment.. it's just a little saddening that most of them happened while I just sat there and watched my creatures fill in the time between instructions from me.
Tomorrow will be Civ stage, followed by my impressions of the Space stage and some final comments before we can safely put Spore to bed... I swear I was supposed to be writing a PC upgrade guide. Wonder what happened to that... *shakes fist*
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