Spore Creatures (Nintendo DS)

I am new to the whole Spore thing - don't play games on PC. I didn't have any expectations for this game really.

I have only had it 2 days but have been pretty absorbed in it and wracked up quite a few hours play. As I have seen written in other reviews, I would agree that the gameplay is pretty linear - you don't get any feeling that you can do anything original other than what your creature looks like as the game is full of goals that you have to complete before you can move on.

You start off with a little creature with no arms or legs called Oogie who is stranded on a planet and trying to get off to save his friend. You are then taken to the nest where you can create your creature into anything you want by adding arms and legs and tails, changing colour etc. You can go back to the nest at any point in the game and change your creature. He moves around the planet in the same way as animal crossing, you drag the stylus across the screen, moving him where you want to. Each item or creature you meet gives you various options of what you can do with them. Some creatures you can make friends with by playing simple mini games and some you have to fight - the fighting does not really need any skill, although until you have collected various fighting body parts which you can then add to your creature, you do tend to run out of energy before you can defeat anything.

You basically have free run of the island which is a nice size and you have a list of goals to complete before you can move on in the game. There is always something to do tho and new creatures popping up for you to be friend. I feel I am only at the very beginning of the game, there is the promise of finding the right pair of legs that will allow me to go into deep water and lots of exits blocked - presumably to be unblocked when I finally manage to win a race against a meeper. Can't wait to get back to it and have the same sort of feeling about it as I did when I was playing animal crossing.

If your expectations are too high and you are expecting a game with the depth of sims on pc then you will be disappointed but if you are looking for a fun ds game to fiddle around with that should have a lot of replay value then I would definitely recommend it.

First of all, I've played both "Spore" for PC, and "Spore Creatures" for DS. Spore Creatures wins hands down. Without even taking into account the whole DRM thing, this is much more enjoyable.
It plays similar to any RPG - complete goals, retain health, improve yourself through collecting and improving - but has quite a nice story to go with it, your creature's friend has been kidnapped by an alien and you need to find him. The animations are pretty cute, there are buyable cheats through game points, and it's generally good, clean fun. Anyone from the age of 8 should get on with this just fine, although the fighting isn't explained very well to begin with.
The playtime is also fairly long as well, I've spent more time on this than Spore for PC and I've pretty much finished the latter.#
Buy this if you want a nice, straightforward game for your DS and don't already have Pokemon.

The PC version of Spore is one of the most reviled and criticised games of recent years, possibly of all time. It truly is one of the most disappointing gaming experiences I have ever had - such anticipation, such terrible design!

Spore Creatures on the DS is a very different game, but still fails to reach the giddy heights suggested by the hype.

You can "design" your creature at your nest, which is always available by clicking on a button. It's possible to swap body parts, rotate and size them, but gone are the deep tweaking options of the PC version, and frankly, most of the parts make no sense at all. There are many parts that you will never use, and most make absolutely no difference to the game play - including all the bodies and all the decorative spines and scales. Legs often look like tree branches and mouths and eyes don't join together with a head and are left floating weirdly on one of several available body shapes.

Things don't get any prettier when you venture out to play. Your creature is two dimensional in a three dimensional landscape, so turning through 90 degrees necessitates a moment of paper thin invisibility. It's as if your creature has been cut out of a magazine. If you rotate the camera using the shoulder buttons you will notice that all the landscape decorations such as trees and other creatures are also two-D cut-outs that rotate to stay visible, very much like the fifteen year old Doom engine did.

You can fight or befriend certain creatures, but others will forever be aggressive, meaning that the confusing and frustrating combat system is unavoidable. It isn't so bad that you want to give up, because thankfully getting killed simply means you start again from your nest. Tough groups of enemies might have to be engaged three or four times, but it is possible to triumph, especially if you make sure you have followers.

You can have up to two followers, who will require some looking after. They will not feed themselves, which can get a bit tedious, and there isn't exactly a huge range to choose from at any one time.

Befriending to the point where other creatures will agree to follow you usually requires a music synch game that can be quite satisfying if you get into the groove of the mini songs of the species you are trying to make pals with, or it can be stupidly annoying if you don't!

There is very little sandbox play available here. You need to eat to repair combat damage, and you need to meet certain pre-set goals that the game channels your way, but that's about it. The RPG-lite elements are perfunctory, with levels increasing without your direct control. Achieve an objective and rise a level. It seems somewhat redundant.

The graphics are a step backwards from the likes of Animal Crossing or Metroid Prime Hunters, giving the impression that the DS is really little more than an ancient Atari ST [bonus point if you even remember that machine] in a tiny box. The sounds are poorly related to what's happening on screen.

All in all this is a game that relies utterly on the success of its bigger cousin to attract its audience. I bought it because it was cheap and I was curious to see how the Spore idea could be extended into the portable format. The relative creative and commercial failure of the PC version will relegate this DS iteration to a gaming footnote.

Which is where it properly belongs.