Spore Origins for the iPhone/iTouch, a beautiful game
It’s nice to see the list of big name games growing for the iPhone/iTouch, not that the independent games aren’t sometimes just as good. Game industry leaders like John Carmack have already said that the device is a very powerful hand held device for gaming.
Today I caved and bought Spore for my iPhone. I almost didn’t want to, given the outrage over the PC version of Spore and it’s draconian DRM protection, it’s just unacceptable and that’s no way to treat your paying customers. Again the legitimate users lose and the pirates get a DRM free version. Anyway, back to Spore for the iPhone.
So far I probably haven’t clocked over an hour of gameplay, but I did manage to take some screenshots. So far I really like it and it really is nice eye candy for your phone or touch. The game uses the iPhone/iTouch accelerometer for gameplay, and touch for editing your creature. To move, you basically tilt the device in four directions and try to eat anything smaller than you and avoid life forms larger than you. In the creation mode you squish and mold your creature along with sticking on appendages as you evolve.
This is the creation screen, you can squish and squeeze your little creature or you can just click the dice for a random one. When you touch your creature he/she will make funny little noises.
This was hard to get a screenshot of since you have to be touching your creature and taking the shot at the same time. When you touch it you can see the vertebrae inside, a nice touch.
As you progress new appendages will be unlocked. Here I have added two big spikes, you can add these anywhere on your creature.
These guys will expode when you spike them, the explosion can hurt you, but if you swim away sometimes edible baby creatures smaller than you will be released when the bigger creature explodes.
Above you can see a purple creature with it’s one big eye closed. This is an enemy.
Quick run away, these are the guys you don’t want eating you.
This is zigging when you should have zagged. It happened quite a lot after passing the first couple of levels.
The graphics throughout the game are pretty incredible, especially when seen them on the iPhone/iTouch screen. The animation is fantastic and the still shots really do lose some of the beauty that is Spore. The colours are also very vivid.
Even the loading screens look great.
Final verdict
Having only played the iPhone version of Spore for an hour I may not be the best judge, but for ten dollars you can’t really can’t go wrong. It’s a bright colourful game, and it’s bound to give you at least a few hours of fun at the very least. I think it’s worth it on art direction alone, it’s very cool to see these little creatures swimming around on your iPhone.
