Spore

I am more of a First Person Shooter kind of gamer. You know like, Doom series, Serious Sam series, FEAR, Far Cry and the Tombraider Series which is more of a Third Person. I've also played some classic strategies like Battle Realms, Command and Conquer and many a point and click games. Before buying (or downloading) them I always look for any reviews from Gamespot, IGN and the like. How they rate them, how actual players rate them and of course look at their specs and system requirements. Sometimes, just to play them I ended up upgrading some parts. Most notably graphics card. I mean Doom 3 could be played with a 64 bit 128 Mb graphics card, but playing FEAR with that kind of card is a no-no. Right now I got a 512 MB iChill GPU. Three months from now this will be an antique, right?

Now, Spore which was announced centuries ago just came out on September. To tell you frankly I was intrigued about this game because it was like one of those Cecil B. DeMille films which took years and years in production then coming out with a Big Bang. Spore came out with a Big Bang itself. The DRM Big Bang. DRM just keeps bothering people. They say that it was like buying the game and not actually owning it, it got a built-in spyware and it's a three strike your out installation. Despite that, EA Games sold millions.

I played it over the weekend and I am now on the space age, and "Look Ma, no save!!!". Now I have to ride the spaceship again, and again and again. That's just about it. Gone is you from the hard drive.

But then, my 8 year old daughter, after a long stay in the hospital, played Spore and she just loved it. She likes what she calls the Nemo (Cell) stage and keeps on repeating it, changing her creature with 5 eyes, 2 mouths, 3 thorns, endless I say. What she likes the most is the Creature stage. In fact she never goes any further than this. Roaming the land, picking bits of bones, befriending some creatures. Evolving. When she already finished roaming the land and gaining intelligence and friends and the game's prompting you that you could now evolved to the next level, she just save it, pick another planet and here she goes again.

She now got 5 creatures on 5 planets.

As I watched her play, I've noticed that the mini map only got smiling smileys and no skull and bones smileys. Asked her why. She said it is easier to make friends (3 creatures) than making enemies (5 to 7 creatures) and you die in a fight. Friends could join you on your quest to find new friends. Dead creatures don't.

Simple and primitive reason. Spore stays on the computer. Spore is now on the 8710w Mobile Workstation. 1 strike left.