Spore: Creatures - a really good game; almost Great, but hindered by basic mistakes
I've just finished the main campaign, and I must say this game could have been a real gem. It's close, but feels a tad undercooked and the fact that it's almost great is kind of irritating.
I didn't play the PC version, nor plan to, so this was my only insight into Spore. Making your own character is super cool, and the paper mario perspective isn't as annoying as you might think. The goals on each level are set up in a very Spyro (circa original PSX) with 3-D levels and various goals that you can tackle. Some goals are optional, which is nice, while others can be done out of order.
Collecting parts and planet tokens is fun, and assembling my character, ala Drawn to Life, is a great DS specific mechanic. But sometimes part collecting seemed random. I didn't always know why I had been awarded something, or how to get those elusive last parts or tokens on a given island.
After replaying the first world a second time, I had found 111 of 122 (?!?) parts and 9 out of ten world tokens. But as the level is broken into episodes, you have to play all six episodes in order, complete every goal again, and hope you don't move to the next episode having missed a piece. Some parts can only be found by killing/loving certain creatures, but you never know which missing pieces come from where, so you're just killing/loving everything you see, hoping for some love in return.
Returning to collect said parts and unlockable bonuses would have been more fun if the replay mode had been set up so I could freeplay previously completed lands just to get the parts I needed, and not have to replay each world from scratch.
A lot of bitching, I know, but if you're hard core, collect-em-all, this is an almost busted prospect, as even a bunch of locked features don't give hints as to how they can be unlocked, even after finishing the game. That aside, the game is really amusing, and a throw back to the original Spyro days I miss so much. Still waiting for that one to show up on the DS in its original PSX form.
