Aramation Games

Will Wright’s latest simulation game Spore tackles evolution as you control a single-cell organism, evolve it into a space-faring civilization. Such an expansive journey fits in a single DVD, which is both a blessing and a curse for this game.

It is more accurately described as 5 games tied together into one package. First game “Cell stage”, your goal is to first choose whether your creature is vegetarian or carnivore, then start gobbling others and grow. At pre-defined points, once you have enough DNA points, you can evolve your creature so that it could move faster, or attack better. After the cell stage, your creature will sprout legs and move in-land in the “Creature stage”. Here you will either befriend other animals or eliminate them: most of the customizations are done by this point. After you eliminate others or befriend other animals on your continent, you develop group skills and enter “Tribal stage”.

Starting with tribal stage, you can no longer change the appearance or the different body parts of your creature. Your job as the tribe leader is to direct your tribe to conquer others, or become their friends in order to be the only village surviving. After you complete the task, you enter “Civilization stage” where you control a basic city, produce military vehicles and conquer other cities, or convert them to your side. It is pretty simplistic as you only have 3 vehicles: land, sea and air. Winning a battle is simply a matter of bringing the most vehicles to the fight. In the end, the “Space stage” allows you to visit other planets, collect specimens and abduct other creatures. This is the most open-ended stage of them all, although there is a basic narrative in place (about helping out a distressed civilization).

The problem with the game is that it is very simplistic. In each stage, you only have a few things to do and it gets tedious after awhile. Mostly in the tribal and civilization stages, you will wish that you could just skip those boring parts and move on to the stars. Luckily, after you play through the game once, you can choose to play a specific stage.

Spore’s accomplishment is its creature, vehicle and building designer as this incredibly flexible tools basically allow you to create anything you can imagine. Already a list of designs available online is astounding in its number and creativity. Even though this is a single player game, you can choose to have creatures other people have designed to be downloaded into your game and populate your planets.

In the end, treat Spore as a flexible and fun design tool and you will be rewarded with the best experience available on the market. If you consider it solely as a game, it is repetitive, simple and too boring to sustain hours and hours of repeat enjoyment.

Rating: 80%

SimCity has become increasingly complex as it tried to accurately model a real city environment. Spin-off SimCity Societies has plenty of good intentions, but the end result is too simplistic for fans of the SimCity franchise, and too boring for all others.

Instead of zoning, in SimCity Societies you place individual buildings. This allows you to exercise your creativity as you can finally build a city just the way you want, one building at a time. To develop your metropolis, you need housing, workplaces, venues and services such as police department. The basic relationship between housing and work has not changed: what has changed is the introduction of resource system. Money is used to buy individual buildings, but to make the buildings operational, you need one of 6 resources: productivity, prosperity, creativity, spirituality, authority and knowledge. Each building uses a different combination of resources, and generates specific resources. It is up to you to find the right mix of building to shape your city.

All that sounds good on paper, but execution is incredibly sloppy. Buildings can be anywhere on the map for its effect to kick in, so you can put a powerplant in the middle of nowhere, not connected to your city, and it’ll still function and give you the resources. Same with other buildings: essential services such as police aren’t required and your citizens won’t demand them, this intricate system of resources only affects other buildings which means your residents won’t care whether they live in an industrial dump or a utopian suburban neighborhood.

Unfortunately, great visuals and the name SimCity do not simply make an engaging game. This boring game offers virtually no challenge and no goals. You are in control of a sandbox that you can decorate as you see fit. This may be perfect for some, but any person who finds SimCity even remotely interesting is better off leaving this pale imitation alone.

Rating: 50%

Thrillville: Off the Rails is a theme park simulation game with heavy emphasis on fun instead of management. Rollercoaster Tycoon franchise has made theme park building into a popular (and profitable) game form, and this 2nd Thrillville game further distinguishes from that franchise with a story-mode, varying missions and minigames.

You control a character as you make him move around in your parks and build attractions. Walking around is optional as you can warp to any attraction from the map, but sometimes it is mandatory for finding hidden cash, collecting packages and talking to people. The game allows you to talk to any of your parks’ visitors in order to learn what their needs are, and receive valuable feedbacks on what the park needs to improve.

Building rides is easy as the game removes all road-building: instead you are limited to several areas where you’re allowed to build attractions, coasters and shops. There are just a few ride-types, coasters and shops, but where this game shines is minigames.

Featuring over 20 minigames, Thrillville feels more than just a glorified minigames collection thanks to its campaign and missions. Minigames range from 2D side-scrolling shooters, to stunt motocycle riding, as the diversity is very welcome. None of them are unique and they are inspired by other popular games, but that does not take away from the fun you’ll have.

If you’re looking for a light simulation of theme park building and management, coupled with various, fun minigames, then Thrillville: Off the Rails is a great purchase.

Rating: 75%