You know going back to college hasn't been so bad, most of my classes are pretty good and I have plenty of free time. I've also been playing a bit of Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 and a bit of Rock Band, then there's the game that I was inevtably going to bring up this week...

I picked up Spore on Monday and my first day with the game was mind-blowing. I worked my way all the way up from the Cell Stage to the Civilisation Stage and had a great time doing so. As I expected after the couple of dizzy days of enjoyment that came after my purchase I still had a great time on the game but I began to see what people meant about it. I think the things that got to me most were the repetitivity of the Space Stage missions and the game making a very had attempt to push you onto the next stage after you complete the stage you are on. But the game does need patching, not just as improvement gameplay wise but to tweak loading times for planet textures and to sort out a texturing glitch that occurs with vehicles and so on. I'm also having one problem where no matter if I place a small, medium or large plant on a certain planet it says it's the wrong size for the ecosystem, that's either a bug or me seriously missing something.

Everybody seems to be saying they have a favourite stage in the game, but I'm not sure if I do. Each stage seems to have aspects about it I do and don't like, it's often a mater of the simplicity originally making the stage a delight but slightly losing its charm by the end. If I had to pick one stage at the moment it would be the civilisation stage, it's got RTS style gameplay but unlike the similar Tribal stage it is more complex. Recently I've found myself going directly into same of the editors just so I make something special aside from the main game and I have to say much like with Spore Creature Creator the possibilities with the creators in the full game seem limitless and it is easy to build with them but you get a real sense of satisfaction from creating something really cool looking. I also liked the sheer scale of the space stage, the music of Spore and how well the game transitions from one stage to the next. I'll probably write a review for it but for now I'm going to say that it's not the perfect game but Will Wright has still injected that brilliant creativity and originality into the game that everyone was expecting and with a little patching (or possible expansion packs) I'm sure a lot of the current problems in the game can be fixed.

That kind of brings things full circle, a few years ago when I posted my first two blogs I was talking about Spore and here we are now. Despite being swept up in the craze I'd also like to say that I'm interested in picking up Viva Pinata: Trouble In Paradise, I'm still eagerly awaiting the next Burnout Paradise update (September 18th) and the next Halo 3 update (between September 16th and 25th). This week I'll leave you with a beautiful Halo 3 montage with slightly annoying music, here's Oh So Beautiful. Oh and don't forget September 19th is International Talk Like A Pirate Day.

-Gamer_152