Games

Creature features

Spore game keeps it simple

By Shaun Conlin

Name: Spore Creatures
Game type: Puzzle
Publisher: EA
Platform: Nintendo DS
Score: 4 out of 5

Spore Creatures for Nintendo DS is easily the better Spore game when compared to the PC platform. It concentrates on the more playable, creature-creating second level, and does so in a very engaging way that is suitable for players of all ages.

Spore Creatures doesn't try to look glossy and 3-dimensional. Instead, it opts for a whimsical design that might remind players of the coloured paper, glue sticks and scissors that they used in primary school.

SIMPLE AND ENGAGING

The fun with this game lies not win the eye candy, but in the brain candy. You get to create and edit your little mutant baby bird, then take it around a simple, cardboard-like world. There you search through the shrubbery and leave no rock unturned in a quest for body parts to make your creature more attractive, functional or ferocious.

FULL OF FUN

Like its PC counterpart, Spore Creatures is heavily reliant on menus full of sliders and icons to tinker with your creature's attributes and assets. This makes the game a natural for the touch-screen of the Nintendo DS.

Though comparatively limited in size, scope and technical oomph, Spore Creatures engages you from the outset and remains fun throughout. –– Cox News Service

	engaging (adj): interesting or pleasant in a way that attracts your attention glossy (adj): giving an appearance of being important and expensive whimsical (adj): unusual and not serious in a way that is either amusing or annoying ferocious (adj): very fierce, violent or aggressive; very strong reliant (adj): needing something in order to survive, be successful, etc. tinker (v): to make small changes to something in order to repair or improve it oomph (n): a special quality or power