Does the Spore Creature Creator live up to the hype?
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There has been quite a bit of buzz about the upcoming Maxis game Spore and with the release of the Creature Creator this buzz is only going to get louder. Spore is a god game that allows you to guide your creature from a single cell organism right through to a conqueror of planets. To help fuel the hype about the game, Maxis have released a free trial version of their Creature Creator that lets you design your very own creature and put it through its paces.
To run the Creature creator and also the parent game Spore, you are going to need a fairly grunty computer, processor speed wise. The specs needed are;
- Processor - 2.0 GHz P4 processor or equivalent
- Memory - XP: 512 MB RAM / Vista: 768 MB RAM
- Hard Drive - At least 300 MB of hard drive space for installation, plus additional space for created creatures. (190 MB for the Trial Edition)
- Video Card - A 128 MB Video Card, with support for Pixel Shader 2.0*
Fortunately, I have recently purchased a new laptop with 2.4GHz processor, so I was able to download the trial version of the Creature Creator and give it a go. The Creator Creator is a 206MB download, so be prepared for a wait whilst it downloads unless you are fortunate enough to have high speed broadband.
My first impression running the Creature Creator was “Wow“. Really nice crisp graphics but more importantly background music that is not irritating. The Creature Creator is really simple to use, but to get the maximum value out of it I advise you watch the online tutorial first. Armed with the basic techniques you can create much cooler creatures than stumbling around not knowing what you are doing (trust me on this one).
The sky is the limit when designing your creature, but to make sure things don’t get too out of hand, each body part is assigned a DNA dollar value and you only have a 2,000 limit. This can put a damper on some truly extreme designs, but I found it very easy to create a creature and stay well under the limit. However, the trial version only has about 25% of the parts that will be offered in the game, so when given much more choice staying under the limit may become a problem.
When you are happy with your creature’s design, you can then add some colour with the Paint feature. Again, being only the trial version, there is a limited number of designs, but with the design your own section functional in the trial version, you are not going to run out of different colour schemes until well after Spore is released.
Once you are happy with how your creature looks, you can put it through its paces with the Test Drive feature. For me, this was the best part of the game, simply because I am easily amused by a dancing creature. As well as making your creature break out into various dance moves, you can test a variety of emotions, specific actions and of course walking. An extra feature of the Test Drive is the Babies function which lets you see what your creature’s offspring will look like. Just be prepared for your creature not being too impressed with its kids.
One of the most impressive features of the Creature Creator is its integration with You Tube, which is available in the trial version. You can make a movie of your creature and upload it to You Tube directly from the game. If you don’t have a You Tube account, you can create one whilst still in the game. The upload to You Tube does take some time, but it is a perfect excuse to grab a cup of coffee or take a bathroom break.
For those interested, here is a video of my creature being put through its paces. The only downside to it is that when I watch it, the audio is out of sync. However, when viewed on a different computer it played fine. I have no idea what is going on there.
You can also share your creature with the rest of the Spore community and take a peek at what others are creating in the Sporepedia. Some of the creatures that have been created are truly mind blowing and if you want to, you can grab them and place them into your game. You can also create your very own Spore Page, however, this feature does require you to create a free account and register your game, but it is well worth doing.
So, does the Creature Creator live up to the hype? Hell yes! I am more excited about Spore after playing around with the Creature Creator than I was before, and I will admit, I was pretty excited about it beforehand.
The Creature Creator is a fantastic game for for all ages, but would really appeal to both kids and adults who have an interest in computer animation and design. If you have a budding young Pixar animator in your family then this free download is a must.
The game Spore is due for release on 7th September in the US and 5th September in Europe. At this stage, it looks like that Australia is being counted as part of Europe and we will be getting it on the 5th September as well.
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Tags: Creature Creator, Spore, Sporepedia, video games
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