Spore Spreads Onto The Wii
Maxis and Electronic Arts today revealed details on two new games that would bring the popular Spore franchise back onto the DS, and to the Wii for the first time in the fall of this year. Spore Hero is a story-driven action-adventure game made exclusively for the Wii where gamers will create their own hero to embark on an epic quest to save their homeworld from destruction. It sure sounds like your typical adventure game, although there are more than 250 parts unique abilities to collect along the way to use in the Spore Creature Creator, so that's different.
Following the success of Spore Creatures on the DS, Spore Hero Arena features 3D arena-based combat (duh!) where you'll create a unique gladiator Hero creature and guide it from planet to planet fighting dangerous enemies and collecting new parts and abilities as you complete special missions. Spore Hero Arena will also feature multiplayer as you can battle with up to three friends locally or play with one friend over Wi-Fi.
"When Maxis first considered bringing Spore to console players, the Nintendo platforms jumped out as a perfect fit. Whether it is the stylus-driven action of the Nintendo DS or playful controllers of the Wii, the massive Nintendo audience is the ideal home for Spore Hero and Spore Hero Arena," said Lucy Bradshaw, VP and General Manager at Maxis. "Nintendo fans will love the humor, ability to create their own Hero, fun gameplay and immersive storylines we're creating for these two games."
Having never played Spore, I can't say for sure whether creating these kinds of games is going to expand the concept or dilute it, but it's certainly going to bring Spore to a whole new audience!
Wootini
Posted to Video Games on 12 May 2009
· Comments (13)
Other stuff like this: ds, ea, maxis, nintendo, spore, spore hero, spore hero arena, wii
Ugh, forget Spore. It was my biggest disappointment of the year.
As a biologist, I totally think evolution is the coolest thing in the world, and a game based on it sounded totally awesome. I anticipated Spore with bated breath, excited to watch the accelerated evolution of my own little critters as I messed with selection pressures in their environment. That was the game I was expecting.
What I got instead was a five-games-in-one mishmash of fail. Spore, as many people have said, is actually five games that can't stand on their own and can barely stand together.
The worst part, though, is that Spore isn't based on evolution at all. In fact, precisely the opposite, it seems to be totally based on intelligent design, particularly the part where, upon a breeding event, you can completely redesign the entire species, going from a race of spindly-legged fishostriches to a tribe of hulking mammoth-frogs. Lame. I understand that the intelligent design tack was going to be partially unavoidable, since the player has to participate somehow, but they could have at least made their approximation of evolution bear some resemblance to what actually occurs. It also imposes an obnoxious linearity on the species you create - rather than diversifying into multiple species, your little sporecritters march straight on a line of "progress" from single-celled organism to Neil Armstrong.
Then, adding insult to injury, the barely pseudo-evolutionary phase craps out about halfway through the game, and suddenly you're playing a crummy RTS, followed by SimCity+RTS, followed by SimSpace.
I played it for about 5 hours before I finally admitted to myself that I just wasn't having fun. Of course, by then it was too late - I had already bought the iPhone game and the PC game. Moral of the story? Try before you buy, and don't make decisions based on hype, I guess.
(here's an article on the subject from Science)
So, as you might surmise, I don't have very high hopes for the Wii incarnation, and certainly won't be buying it unless the reviews are rabidly ecstatic.
Evolution is a seemingly sensible idea.. but it should be filed alongside other previous "scientific truths" (it's a flat Earth, Leeches as medicine, Earth as centre of the Universe, the inescapability of Newtonian physics, nothing capable of Faster-Than-Light travel, etc etc) of course as a Biologist it's your bread & butter so you would defend it from Intelligent Design and so forth. Just please don't behave as though it were the only acceptable theory.
On topic: yeah Spore is a very poor, wafer-thin game. JD should count himself lucky that he never got the DS version... piss poor. No thanks, EA.
I reviewed Spore a while back and it was quite good, but I don't really see how the WAGGLE! factor of the Wii will help it out.
It is a Wii-ish title though, I think. It'll fit quite well, but I just worry it'll be plagued on that platform by dodgy controls...
@ LorD:
I suppose you can't see how IR Pointing (far superior to clunky old dual-analogue-aiming BTW) could help gaming either, eh? But you'll be all over Alan Wake or GeOW3 with motion-control once E3 rolls around. Pff, hypocrite.
Developing both these games at the same time would seem like an ideal opportunity for Wii-DS connectivity.
Will it happen? Well since Nintendo has not been following through on that, I have little hope for it from other developers.
Whether this has MP or not, the controls is that game are gonna be far superior to any of the HD twins' [or typical PC game controls], so it has that in the bag at least.
And visually it looks pretty good, now as long as they perfect the Creature Creator and the quest is of a reasonable length then this'll be great.
Tis a shame there is no Wii Sporepedia, it seems though...
A Wii Sporepedia could be a Wii Ware application.
@ NonconformityOfThought
See, I would be willing to follow along with that assertion if there were experimental evidence indicating such, but there isn't. ID isn't science, it's the making of outlandish claims with no evidentiary basis and no potential for experimental evaluation.
People often claim that ID and Darwinian natural selection are two perspectives on the same body of evidence, but this is patently incorrect. ID as it is typically taught relies on falsely claiming that a massive swathe of already-collected evidence (transitional fossils like Tiktaalik, observable evolution as seen in viruses and other microbes, adaptive radiation of a single species to multiple species as seen in Darwin's finches) has never been observed.
The examples of debunked theories you have cited (flat earth, geocentrism &c.) were debunked by the emergence of new evidence, not because people unacquainted with the theory could not accept it and decided to construct a new hypothesis to present as fact. That excepts, of course, leeches as medicine, which we still successfully use today to reduce swelling and prevent blood clots. Bloodletting may be out of vogue, but the leeches are back in style.
The discussion of Newtonian physics is particularly interesting, as the discovery of quantum physics occurred when physicists discovered some holes (Faraday's cathode rays &c.) in the usually predictive existing theory. The discoveries made based on this, however, did not debunk and replace the existing body of knowledge, but rather modified it to be more consistent with the world that we see. This same process has occurred with the body of knowledge known collectively as evolutionary theory many times over - Darwin was wrong about many details, but fortunately, Darwin was not the only evolutionary biologist to ever live.
Basically, it all boils down to this. I have seen viruses, I have seen tiktaalik, I have seen the finches, and I have seen many more wonderful things. I have yet to see anything that is "irreducibly complex" and required design. Moreover, my education in statistics and population genetics has shown genetic change in many populations over time to be not merely an observed trend, but a statistical inevitability. ID has none of this support, ergo it simply is not on equal footing with this well-supported and quite predictive body of theory. I am not required to respect unsupported hypotheses as though they were equal to supported ones - that would be like requiring me to respect the miasmatic theory of disease on equal footing with the germ theory of disease. Believe it or not, sometimes the assertion that there are two possible perspectives on an issue entails that one of those perspectives is wrong.
Okay, Spore.
@ LorD, IR_Pointer
If it's going to be "a story-driven action-adventure game", I'm not entirely sure that I see the benefit of using the IR pointer or waggle. I'm reading the article as saying that this will be some kind of cousin of Zelda &c., so unless they introduce some clever gimmicks a la Okami, I'm not seeing much use for the Wiimote either.
@ JD's first comment
Dude, chill out.
I'm quite the devoted follower of evolution and don't believe in ID what-so-ever, BUT this is just a game. I personally enjoy the game very much and play it on a regular basis. Sure I was a little disappointed over the 5-in-1 game mash-up and that the focus wasn't as centered on evolution (since at least half of the game is really in the space stage), but I got over it. When it comes to the total-redesign-at-the-breeding-event thing, I just practice a little self control and tell myself not to make my biped suddenly sprout ten legs and make my changes gradual. Maybe its not the same as introducing selection pressures and such, but I feel like it was a good first try at a game like this.
Also, I do agree with you on the point of waiting before you buy a game. There is no sense in buying into the pre-release hype of a completely new type of game. Just wait for a few reviews and see if it is really your cup of tea.
To the pro-intelligent design-ers: Please, please, please read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. Utterly amazing and more food for thought than you can stomach in one sitting.
Also, do note that this designer, according to most books, abhor homosexuals, despite having clearly designed them. Doy.
WAGGLE!
@ougeoman
I was more disappointed by the fact that so much had been promised and then not delivered (like in this article detailing Spore's initial announcement from 2005). I wouldn't have bought the game at all if I had known that less than half of it would be about evolution. Spore as it sits now could be replaced with flOw, SimLife, Warcraft, and SimCity, all of which I already have. (The space exploration stage might be unique, I don't really play that genre much).
So, it's really not that it was inaccurate about evolution, it was that accurate evolution was supposed to be its hook, and with that pulled out it's got very little that I can't find somewhere else.
@LorD
Good book. I'd recommend The Blind Watchmaker, though.
Way to prove my point guys! Check my first comment, I never said anything remotely pro-Intelligent Design; my point was that "Established Theory" and such are illusory (as has been proven time and again) but are submitted.. no, make that Worshipped, as Fact regardless BY ESTABLISHMENTS WHOSE VERY EXISTENCE RELIES ON THEIR WORLD-VIEW BEING UNIVERSALLY ACCEPTED. My point was that other "Scientific Facts" have been hugely wrong before, Evolution may be eventually disproven too. But feel free to ignore that again.
Suggested reading? V for Vendetta. (the cosy prisons we allow our minds to be contained within)
@Nonconformityofthought
Blah, blah. Extreme epistemological skepticism is the refuge of those too lazy to learn.
Besides, biologists don't owe their careers to the existence of evolution. If I were to disprove it tomorrow in a rigorous study, I'd be filthy rich and famous forever.