{"id":1051,"date":"2008-09-08T13:06:06","date_gmt":"2008-09-08T17:06:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2008\/09\/08\/spore-aftershocks\/"},"modified":"2008-09-08T13:06:23","modified_gmt":"2008-09-08T17:06:23","slug":"spore-aftershocks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2008\/09\/08\/spore-aftershocks\/","title":{"rendered":"Spore Aftershocks"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was going to write a bit about the confusing world of Spore<\/em> as seen through the gaming media, but, as of this morning, it looks like I’ll be reviewing it. So, I regret reading as much as I have about the game, from Seth Schiesel’s distinction between toy and game<\/a> (a familiar distinction the gaming audience, but novel to their mainstream audience) to Thierry Nguyen’s respectful commentary on Spore as an avenue of expression<\/a> to Tom Chick’s difficulty in finding anything to praise in the game at all<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I had no doubt that Spore<\/em> would be a very divisive game. It’s experimental in a way that few games have been in a long time, and the last game to aspire to such heights, Black & White<\/em>, was critically applauded until a few critics and most fans pointed out that it was innovative but pointless a few hours in. And this year has already seen backlash against the overpraise of Grand Theft Auto 4<\/em> and Metal Gear Solid 4<\/em>. Not that the game journalism beat is all of a sudden immune from hype and overenthusiasm; but people have been waiting to take Will Wright down ever since Spore<\/em> was first delayed. Of course, with a game this Capital I Important – blanket coverage on a number of sites – even an average or good review will seem like a slam by some people. And it may only be good and not great. I haven’t played enough to know who is right.<\/p>\n

One of my friends who’s been playing it for a while has been alternately complaining about how shallow the game was and how he is wondering if he is being too curmudgeonly and thinking that maybe he is missing something. “So mixed, you can’t decide” how you feel is how he put it. So the review will be a challenge.<\/p>\n

Joy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was going to write a bit about the confusing world of Spore as seen through the gaming media, but, as of this morning, it looks like I’ll be reviewing it. So, I regret reading as much as I have about the game, from Seth Schiesel’s distinction between toy and game (a familiar distinction the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[40,86,11],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5GFeQ-gX","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}