Spore is fun...mostly.

Today, after having already submitted Spore to the pile of games I would never return to, I did a curious thing; I loaded it back up for another spin. What I found was that I was genuinely enjoying my experience; which puzzled me because I distinctly remember being disappointingly underwhelmed upon my first encounter with the highly anticipated and still very popular, if not pirated, title.

What I have determined from my ponderings is that on my initial play through I had ignored facts in exchange for hype and evolutionary fantasy. The facts I'm referring to are the ones that tell me that since Mr. Wright moved from the moderate intricacy of Sim City to the tame "game play" of The Sims, Maxis is yet to produce anything that appealed to my veteran gaming palette.

Despite this, I had convinced myself that Spore would be an awesome, open-ended RTS/RPG hybrid that would redefine the gaming landscape. What I found, however, was something, arguably, much less. Indeed, in many ways I felt downright gypped. I'm not writing this to make some argument about the industry's hype engine or even berate developers for the occasional embellishment about a game's features. No, all I really wanted to note is that being separated by the game's hype and unfulfilled promises for many months now, Spore isn't all that bad.

When taken as it is, a much more docile creature than the media, and my mind, had evolved into being, I had a good time with what I was doing rather than thinking about what I thought I would be doing. For better or for worse, I think the media actually had a lot to do with my disappointment in Spore. Honestly, this is a bit of discomfort to an aspiring games journalist. On the other hand, perhaps the fact that the latest patch causes my system to crash every time I start the game is a sign that Spore is merely an anomaly meant to make me a more observant, if not more open-minded gamer.