Spore Hero

Developed by Maxis, and published by EA; Spore Hero is the Nintendo Wii’s take on the popular PC series. As a strategy game with combat elements, guide your creature through evolution with unique bodyparts, and take on challenges from battles, and various tasks.

As the game begins, two differently coloured meteors crash land onto a planet and the effects of this are felt immediately as creatures suddenly jump through evolutionary stages as soon as they come in contact with them. Those who come in contact with the blue meteor evolve more peacefully, while the red one infects the creatures’ brains with anger and insanity. You play as the creature that hatches from the egg in the blue meteor. It’s up to you to complete various tasks and collect a wide range of bodyparts so that your creature can evolve and become stronger.

First impressions of the visuals are very encouraging, with cut sequences looking very lush. I know they’re pre-rendered but sometimes, games don’t even try and that’s certainly not the case here. Maxis have done a wonderful job of animating some very nice cut sequences; looking very detailed with fluid motions too. The in-game graphics aren’t bad neither. Worlds are identifiable by unique characteristics and look more expansive than they actually are.

As you emerge from your egg, you will encounter various characters that will set you with different tasks. Scattered throughout the planet are fragments of the meteors. Destroy the red pieces to stop its effects on the surrounding creatures. Collect the blue pieces to use as currency when “buying” bodyparts. If you return to your nest you will not only be able to save your game, but you can “evolve” your creature too. The level of customisation is pretty good. Many bodyparts can be obtained by completing tasks, searching bone piles, or defeating other creatures in a battle.

Every creature has a combat level and naturally; your creature starts at 1. As you evolve your creature with bodyparts that have better attributes, your combat level will increase. Fights are presented in a 3D circular arena, and they remind me of the old-school beat ‘em up games. Where button-bashing won’t win you anything. Careful blocking, well-timed attacks, and evasive dodging are things you should be thinking about. Just make sure you don’t pick on someone with a significantly higher level than you, that’s all. Asides from the main game, there’s also a Battle Mode where you can challenge a friend to a fight using creatures you have created and save in the Sporepedia. The battles were bearable in the main game, but as a separate mode alongside the game, it’s bland and not very fun.

To fully explore the various parts of the world, you’ll have to make use of the different abilities you can learn. To acquire these, you’ll have to make sure your creature has the correct bodypart that carries that skill. These tend to be; swimming, increased jumping power, flying etc.

One of the main selling-points of Spore Hero is the level of customisation. Not only do you have a wide range of parts to combine together with, the anatomy of your creature can also be edited too. Everything from the positions of the joints, the position of limbs, the colour/pattern of the skin, the body shape, and more. This all makes it very easy to create a creature that is completely individual to you. There’s also a convenient “redo” and “undo” button, so any mistakes can be rectified. With all the possibilties though, you mustn’t over-spend your meteor points. Using them to evolve vital parts will help you succeed in defeating tougher opponents, and reach previously unreachable parts of the world.

Controls are fairly straight forward, with a bit of remote-waving to perform specific attacks when in battle. These are pretty precise, leaving you doing what you want to do; instead of pulling off another move that you didn’t intend to. Some quests require you to shake the remote/nunchuk in various ways to a beat; again, these are pretty responsive. Outside of fights, you can enter a first-person view of the game to gain a better understanding of your surroundings. I should point out that there’s no option to invert the controls.

An annoyance I found, was the loading times. When you enter/exit an area, the load screen can take a while. As you progress, you’ll naturally do a bit a back-tracking and when you just want to reach some place to do something, this delay can get slightly irritating. Other than that, once you’re in a particular area of the planet, the game runs pretty smoothly; with only minor drops in frame-rate occuring on a few occasions.

There may be almost 400 bodyparts to collect, but when you’ve got your creature’s combat level to keep in mind, there’s only a handful of parts that you will likely to have equipped. I suppose that’s only true if you want your creature to be as strong as it can be. If you’re willing to sacrifice its level a little, and opt for a more aesthetic approach, then I guess you’ll have more parts to pick from. If you like collecting things in video games, then I guess the quantity of parts serves another purpose. There’s also “secret” items in the game, so the game does encourage a fair bit of exploring.

Overall, Spore Hero feels like it should be more enjoyable than it actually is. At the core of it, it’s about customisation and combat. It’s not suprising that the Spore franchise originated on the PC and I do feel Maxis have tried to utilise the Wii Remote and Nunchuk in a way that works for the console. Don’t expect anything as complicated as some of the popular simulation-type games on the PC, but a more accessible one that the whole family can enjoy. Which isn’t necessarily a negative thing, but there’s simply nothing about this game that stands out and grabs you by the face.

The underlying themes are exploration, customisation, and combat. So why the developers felt the lack of need for any kind of online mode baffles me. The game would have more replay value if you could use your creatures online in some way; even if it was just the half-baked Battle Mode. If you have rankings involved, there’s always a demographic of gamers that want to see themselves on an online leaderboard. But if they were to truely get the most out of Spore Hero, I think the developers could have provided an online world of some sort; where gamers can interact, cooperate to solve new quests, battle each other etc. The game’s remit is to be creative, but ultimately, we are limited by where the game wants that creativity channeled into.

+ Fairly high level of customisation
+ Visuals are nice and crisp
+ Store creatures you create in the Sporepedia and use them in multiplayer battles,…

- …unfortunately the Battle Mode isn’t terrific
- Practical evolution of a creature means less bodyparts you’re likely to use
- Customisation aside, it can get a bit repetitive
- Relatively short game

Score – 5.5/10