The Hype: Maxis' Will Wright did a fantastic job building up Spore to be the God game to end all God games, allowing the player to nurture an organism from the most basic essence of life to building an entire civilisation in the far reaches of space. Who wouldn't want to play that? What Happened?: As it turned out, Spore was so empty and down on its promises it's hard to believe it wasn't made by Peter Molyneux. The final game was essentially four loosely-connected (and incredibly short) mini-games and a half-decent space sim, which had clearly been dumbed down to appeal to a wider player base, but in turn resulted in a game that wasn't really worth playing for more than a few hours. In addition, a lot of the previously-advertised features were cut from the final product, yet despite all this, the game somehow scooped a mind-boggling 84 on Metacritic, disconnected enough from the player consensus that many suspected some corporate money-hatting may have taken place. Either way, it's one of the all-time instances of a video game taking the easy way out rather than striving for greatness.
Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes).
General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.
