Oh. . . . Spore. . . .

Oh, Spore.

You were so hyped, you were.

My most elitist friends of the gaming scene loved your hype ever so. They said that, the face of gaming would be changed when we were 'all playing Spore.'

These thoughts stuck in my head. I considered the only real media images I saw of the game. Zooming out from primordial, to planetary, to galaxy, to universe. I was amazed. The thought lingered, for oh so long.

So, release day. I had forgotten about the game to be honest, and I didn't know WHY it was supposed to be good, but I decided, to be a gamer, I needed to buy this game. So, I went to my local video game retailer, and purchased the thin DVD box.

I took it home, installed it, and whilst installing it, IM'd all of my friends, telling them that I was installing Spore. I wanted to be a superhero in their minds. I wanted to be 'that guy', that had it before they did.

Time passes, and the game is installed. I prepare my mind for the steps necessary to unleash my fully evolved mecha-lizards upon the universe.

So, at first I learn, I need to be a bacteria like thing. Ok, that's cool I guess. I play a really stupid game of 'hold down the mouse button, point to small things, avoid big things' for a few minutes. Eventually my soon to be DOMINATING bacteria evolves past the tiny bacteria phase, to the. . . slightly larger than tiny bacteria phase. I repeat this process about 6 times.

SO I EAT A BIGGER BACTERIA FOR THE 400TH TIME, and the game says I've earned legs.

I walk on shore, and proceed to kill anything in my immediate vicinity. I don't care if they're friendly, aggressive, or even attractive for that matter. If they're on the same dirt I walk on, they do not deserve to live. I slaughter everything.

Some of the 'collections' of beasts try to dance with me. I eat their legs so they can never dance again.

So, after eliminating enough of these wanna-be dance-obules. (copyright) Spore tells me, HAY GUESS WHAT, and I'm like "What's that?" It's time to evolve to the tribal stage!!

So the Tribal stage comes, and I do the exact same thing, but with different controls. I kill everything. I win.

TIME TO EVOLVE TO THE CIVILIZATION STAGE.

I do the exact same thing. I kill everything with TANKS this time.

TIME TO EVOLVE

I evolve to the space stage.

TIME TO TRADE WITH ALL OF YOUR NEIGHBORS AND BUILD ALLIANCES.

Wait what? Why the hell would I want to do that? My tribal outfit hit the max of the 'complexity' meter because I filled my reptile's body entirely with protective armor, which I learn at this phase means absolutely nothing.

So, I buck the system. SCREW YOU, ALLIANCES, I scream to myself whilst wearing only my underwear, drinking straight Vodka out of a $9.99 1.75 liter bottle I bought on sale in my underwear.

I prepare my warship. I mount as many guns as humanly possible on it. Guess what. That means nothing.

So, I go in to battle with my ONE torpedo, and go PEW PEW at a city for about 25 minutes to take it over. (Time may/may not be exaggerated by inebriation.)

So I take it over. I learn this city, was part of an empire. An empire with the number '8' next to it. What does that mean? I wonder this, as they send fleets of retaliation fleets to my homeworld.

My homeworld, which by the way, has absolutely NO way to defend itself. They have a machine that will spawn an infinite amount of ME whenever they want to. Yet, when they're under attack, they have to wait for ME.

Hey assholes, why don't you just make me x100 and defend yourself.

So I fly back, and fire my ONE MISSILE at the enemies about a billion times, and they die. Cool, but I took damage, so I open communications to my homeworld station. I need repairs.

My warmongering race opens their communications channel, and begins to hop up and down like some ballerina turned cotton-candy seller.

"IT'S GREAT TO HEAR FROM YOU" they say. They start dancing, flailing madly, and quite FLAMBOYANTLY, might I had.

This, is the race that survived their entire existence by eliminating any who seemed to be too 'fruity' for their desires. They were now dancing, jumping, hopping ABOOT, and being retards. If my people from the past would have seen this, they would have impaled them with spears.

Did I just become the 'old man' of my own civilization? Of my spore-come race? Or, did the game just decide that up until the space stage they were going to be multi-sided.

Because right now, I have one ship. I've conquered 3 empires. I still have one ship. One.

FAST FORWARD.

I made a trading, goodie-two-shoes fruit and just traded / quested with everyone. My army is three times as big, and my technology 10x as advanced.

YOU'D THINK THAT AFTER TAKING OVER THREE ENTIRE EMPIRES, YOU WOULD STEAL AT LEAST A LITTLE BIT OF KNOWLEDGE.

Nope, you only get that via cash, which can be gotten via trade or questing. Sure, you get a BIT of money killing guys, which might I add is the most boring thing in the world (click, hold, hold, hold, hold, dead, click, hold, hold hold, etc)

What happened to the amazing sandbox game that we were promised.

Instead we were given a ton of mini-games that I could have played on POPCAP for much less than what I paid in retail for Spore.

I regret you. I regret every inch of you. I wanted to love you, I really did. The problem was, I was buying an idea, not a game. I bought the game, and it wasn't the idea.