EA’s evolution RTS adventure made big waves when it was first announced several years ago, and has built a reputation around it’s customizable characters and unique worlds. I met up with Aaron Karause at E3, marketing Manager for Spore Hero on Wii – he told me that the Wii title offered a very different experience, but retained iconic feel that made Spore a hit.
Spore Hero seems like a pretty simple game with a pretty simple concept: You and an evil counterpart have crash landed on an alien planet, and it’s up to you to save the day. The game features a large, fairly open world with quests to run, enemies to fight, and new skills to learn. Battles are take place in make-shift arenas that appear when you an encounter an enemy, and are reasonably fun, but nothing to write home about in of themselves. It’s the dedicated controls and character customization that makes the game worthwhile.
“What we’ve done is we’ve made an entirely new spore game for the Wii from the ground up, everything for this game is made for the Wii controller.” Aaron jumped right in and showed me the character creation system, which looked very similar to it’s PC counterpart – but it seems that that’s where the similarities end – Spore Heroes is an action platformer with some customizable elements.
Unlike the original spore, where creature evolution happened over simulated eons, body modification is instant on the Wii. Players collect parts by defeating enemies in battle, and affix those parts by spending Meteor Shards collected throughout the game.
Spore Hero will also feature local multiplayer battles, but no wi-fi – and should be available July 21st, 2009