The first thing that hits you about this movie is it’s breathtaking visuals and sounds that puts you in the right atmosphere from the very beginning. I’m not sure words can even describe it so I’ll just let the trailer and photos speak for themselves for now. (The review continues below the pictures.)

Looks refreshing doesn’t it

Even the rocket smoke has a shadow, nice!

Photorealistic visuals throughout the movie.

Beautiful sunrise. I wish I was there.

What is this movie about you say? It’s a 3 part movie going through various stages of life including love, dreams, hope, youth, overcoming obstacles, reality, growing up. That pretty much sums it up I think. All done in a very realistic and honest way, not some cheesy Hollywood stunt that we’ve seen far too many of. It also has a message I’m leaving for you to figure out for yourself :)

If to nitpick on something I have to say that the only thing causing me from not giving this movie a solid 6 out of 6 is that the character details doesn’t match the ones of the environment. I can totally understand it due to the animation process I surely do, however that would have been the little extra extra for me. One other small thing is the abrupt ending. It’s not a bad ending at all without revealing anything. It just happen so fast I didn’t see it coming. It was just… stop.

I have to get a hold of a Blu-ray copy of this movie some day and see the full potential it holds ;)

A highly recommended quick watch!
(Runtime 63 min)

Rating 5 Centimeters Per Second: 5/6
Written and directed by: Makoto Shinkai

There is absolutely nothing resembling the game as I remember it from media besides a very gimped evolution part. It looks like a cheap ripoff of it self in a very bad flat 2D way. (Note that I have not played the PC/Mac version, so I have nothing but media presentation to refer to). When you move for instance, you don’t move straight forward as you would expect. Instead since this is 2D in a kind of 3D world you move in more of a 45 degree angle which looks absolutely ridiculous. You would think they could at least do it better graphic wise in 2008, and we all know that the DS is capable for some rather gorgeus stuff. That’s not all of it. In fact there wasn’t a single thing about the whole game I found to be fun or interesting.

As for the gameplay if to just think of this as any other game than Spore as we know it, it’s not making much sense either. Perhaps I just didn’t understand it, but being thrown off after half an hour because I didn’t find any way to kill my first assigned kill in one of the first missions in the game due to the fact I only had one attacking part available for my creature that hardly could do anything else than to burst a balloon. Maybe I could have gone and socialise pushing one button 400 times, or maybe dance for hours until I gained 20 levels so I’d have enough health to hold on until my little balloon popper could finish him off. Where is the fun in that if so? Some might say that the whole game it self is over hyped, this might be true. However I would go as far as to call it a scam.

If this post is sounding very frustrating and with no order it’s because that’s exactly how this whole game is. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, not even kids. On the bright side I’m still looking forward to get my hands on the proper game. I only hope they don’t intend on doing something different for the Wii as well. If so do it proper or please don’t even release it at all. This version should never had been made. In fact I wonder what they were thinking (besides more money). It could be a dangerous move on their part reputation wise regardless of what they had in mind.

Thoughts? Have you played the DS version? What did you think? Even thoughts about the other Spore versions are much welcome, even if you haven’t played anyone yet.

Rating Spore for DS:
1/6