Game Stooge

REVIEW: Spore Origins (iPod)

• Scribbled on September 1st, 2008 by Jonah Falcon
• Filed in Action, Casual Gaming, Mobile Gaming, Reviews

Spore is coming out in the next week, but its little brother spinoff, Spore Origins, is already available for the iPod at the iTunes store. The game is compatible with 5th generation iPods, iPod classics, and 3rd generation iPod nanos, and looks much better than the mobile phone version.

Spore Origins is a partial adaptation of the full game coming out for the PC and Mac: it focuses solely on the first stage, the Cell stage, where you’re a tiny multicellular organism trying to survive a hellish body of water filled with aggressive enemies and tasty food. Will Wright three years ago referred to the stage as Pac-Man, and he’s somewhat right, but Origins goes deeper.

The very first thing a player will notice is the look and the sound of the game, both are which are first-rate for an iPod game. The music is particularly sweet, and the graphics are lush and round, and are very similar to the PC Cell Stage, save the lack of true 3D creatures. The player’s creature is a cartoonish cell-shaded animal, in stark contrast to the shaded enemies, but this is due to the customization the player will undergo. The background, like the full game, has large enemies in the distance that will move to the foreground as the creature gets bigger.

The object is of the game is simple: eat, and not be eaten. The player uses the touch wheel to swim in any direction, and feels extremely natural – more natural than the mobile phone’s “ordinal compass keypad” control will probably feel. The player will eat pellets to gain DNA points; eating a few at once activates a additive combo bonus – pressing and holding the center button when the combo bonus appears will cause the creature to automatically eat every pellet nearby. Once the player has filled his DNA meter, he will advance to the next round, as his creature gets bigger and introduces new enemies. The player also gets to edit his creature every few rounds, and this is where the Spore connection kicks in, and how the game shines.

At first, you can only change the cosmetic look of the creature – the shape of its limited body, and the color pattern. After a while you can add spikes, shields, speed, and so forth. Pretty soon you have a unique creature that only you have built. The selection is pretty limited, but not so much as you’ll notice after a while.

The variety of enemies are numerous. Some are creatures that jut spikes like roving mines – if they’re smaller than you, you can eat them when they retract their spikes. Others behave like large brown bears and charge at you when they see you. The game is not easy – sometimes you’ll find yourself restarting a level over and over.

Eventually, you’ll complete the levels – which typically takes an hour – and your score for the game will be posted on the leadboards. You can then engage in other modes, the most entertaining the Arena mode in which you do some virtual cockfighting as you put your favorite Spore into an arena to fight other creature’s Spores. You have no control over your avatar – it’s a battle of the best designed. Survival, as it implies, is just to see how long you can go without dying. Your Spore is constantly moving, and has the ability use superweapons. Aquarium is basically a visualization using the iPod’s music playlists; it also serves as a screensaver when the Spore Origins is idle.

The game in all is perfectly priced at $4.99 from the iTunes Store, and perfect for short bursts of gameplay as most mobile games should be; the fact you can save your game at any time helps (though you start at the beginning of a level if you do.) It’s full of style and intelligence, and also a nice little warmup for the main game.