Spore - Who is getting it?

[pevergreen]

Played about 20 hours so far.

Its not easy to pick it all up. The earlier stages are definately more fun, but space...man that is just crazy.

Feel pity for me, i payed $120. Special Edition though.

Depending on how you feel, you should probably wait for the price to drop down a bit.

The only online stuff I've noticed is that if you choose to link your account with that game, the stuff you make transfers between computers. Im on 64 kb/ps and its playing fine.

Each of the 5 stages is like an entirely new game, its quite good.

[Mikeus Caesar]

I'll probably get it when i have the money to buy it...after i buy a new PSU and fix my computer...after i raise the money to buy aforementioned PSU...which will happen sometime in between next year and before the Sun dies...

[rajpoot]

What's extra in the Special Edition?

[Navaros]

I've been reading a lot of end-user impressions of Spore and the consensus seems to be that it's an incredibly simplistic, repetitive, bare-boned game that can be blown through in a few hours easily. And also one that is marginally entertaining for a few hours, and that's about it. Many end users seem to have said it is suitable for ages 10 and under only.

IMO the 3 install limit is a total scam and should be - and possibly already is (needs to be court challenged) - illegal. That alone is a deal-breaker IMO.

The professional reviews giving it ridiculously high acclaim are IMO bought and paid for just like all other alleged AAA titles which always receive ridiculously high scores no matter how crap of a game they actually are. It infuriates me to see the 'professionals' in the game industry continue to perpetuate this shady trend and thus mislead innocent consumers.

[The_Doctor]

I have just started the Civ stage, and I agree with everything Navaros' post. The Cell stage is fun, but very short, The Creature stage is very repetitive, The Tribal Stage is the most shallow RTS every created. Right now I don't have the will to continue playing the game.

[CountArach]

I have just started the Civ stage, and I agree with everything Navaros' post. The Cell stage is fun, but very short, The Creature stage is very repetitive, The Tribal Stage is the most shallow RTS every created. Right now I don't have the will to continue playing the game.

I agree with your assessment of those three. What is urging me on is wanting to see space...

[The_Doctor]

What is urging me on is wanting to see space...

Same here.

[naut]

What's extra in the Special Edition?

The Special Edition contains a Making of Spore DVD, How to Make a Better Being DVD, The Art of Spore mini-book, a poster and a 100-page "Galactic" handbook.

Wow, the views here make me think I won't get it then. Three install limit!? Holy crap that's a deal breaker, plus SecuROM, and phone-home system. Nu-uh, not my money they'll be getting.

[Veho Nex]

I agree with your assessment of those three. What is urging me on is wanting to see space...

It seems like they put more time into the space stage as it is like its own unique space RPG. I've been playing the space age for a couple hours and I still can't get around at how unique everything is...

But in one of the gameplay videos i saw, you could be a fish and your guy was capable of biting an animal and then dragging it.

[Mailman653]

Too bad you can't rent PC games

[Motep]

Too bad you can't rent PC games

right!

[Zenicetus]

I have just started the Civ stage, and I agree with everything Navaros' post. The Cell stage is fun, but very short, The Creature stage is very repetitive, The Tribal Stage is the most shallow RTS every created. Right now I don't have the will to continue playing the game.

That's the takeaway I got from the review in the New York Times (which is interesting because it's not your typical game review site... seems a bit more independent to me):

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/05/ar...pagewanted=all

The writer basically said that a ton of effort was put into the creature stage, which is fun. But past that stage it's not very well-developed. And of course we can't help but compare those later stages with the best strategy games, where it's bound to fall short. I'll play GalCivII if I want a space conquest game, unless something else is actually better at it. So far, other than the "cute" factor, and the unique aliens, I'm not hearing big enthusiasm for the later game stages. A sandbox game can't be very successful if the beginning is fun, and the end-game isn't.

Something else I've wondered about... given the HUGE scope of the game, they haven't exactly left themselves much room for an expansion pack, or a Spore II. Would people buy this again as a Spore II product, if they just improved the end-game?

Anyway, I'm waiting for more user reviews before thinking about buying it (especially with the DRM issues).

[Kekvit Irae]

Too bad you can't rent PC games

At one point in time, you could. This was during the age of MSDOS games. You could copy the entire game from the CD to your harddrive and then take it back to the video store and play it without ever needing to rent the CD again (I'm looking at you, Cannon Fodder and Lost Eden). Game companies wised up to this and stopped allowing people to rent out PC games.

[Caius]

What's extra in the Special Edition?

More price I'd say.

Not getting it, because I won't be able to get it thanks to the money... and it doesn't interests me.

[The_Doctor]

Something else I've wondered about... given the HUGE scope of the game, they haven't exactly left themselves much room for an expansion pack

The Sims 2 has 18 expansion packs/add-ons, imagine what they could do with Spore.

A sandbox game can't be very successful if the beginning is fun, and the end-game isn't.

Its not a sand box game, its a very thin line of sand game.

[rajpoot]

I had no idea about copy protection used in Spore, read about it here first, and then checked around.......now I'm too turned off to buy it, which is a pity as I really wanted to try this game.

Edit : My thanks to Rythmic and Caius for the info.

[Mailman653]

At one point in time, you could. This was during the age of MSDOS games. You could copy the entire game from the CD to your harddrive and then take it back to the video store and play it without ever needing to rent the CD again (I'm looking at you, Cannon Fodder and Lost Eden). Game companies wised up to this and stopped allowing people to rent out PC games.

I loved Canon Fodder!

[TevashSzat]

Well, I got it when it came out and heres my impressions:

I really like the cell and creature stages mainly because the creature creator toll was awesome and the game just had alot of charm.

Tribal, civ, and space stage, though, are horribly horribly dissapointing given how high expectations were. I just got through tribal and civ as fast as possible since they're essentially oversimplified RTS games. The space stage is better, but IMO just a simplified space empire building game that does not compare to some other space games like Sins of a Solar Empire

I feel that the game's replayability is entirely in the various creators, which unfortunately mean that it probably won't have a terrible amount of replayability for me as compared to some other games from Will Wright like the Sims/Sims 2

[Mikeus Caesar]

My friend (who is actually a reviewer for a few sites) says that Spore aint half bad. He says that the cellular and space stages are excellent, the rest is disappointing. And since we have pretty much the same tastes in games, i'll most definitely get it.

I've also been doing some reading, seems idiot monsters from the planet 4chan are making quite a dint. There was a thread yesterday on /v/, with someone screaming 'god damnit 4chan, this is your doing'. I clicked on the picture and some guy's village was being attacked by a giant creature, shaped into the word 'lolcats'. My friend also told me that he ended up being attacked by a fleet of Emperor Penguins, once again courtesy of 4chan...

[KarlXII]

I've also been doing some reading, seems idiot monsters from the planet 4chan are making quite a dint. There was a thread yesterday on /v/, with someone screaming 'god damnit 4chan, this is your doing'. I clicked on the picture and some guy's village was being attacked by a giant creature, shaped into the word 'lolcats'. My friend also told me that he ended up being attacked by a fleet of Emperor Penguins, once again courtesy of 4chan...

Anon delivers.

[drone]

Let me know when the Dodo starts pwning civilizations.

[pevergreen]

I'd like to see exactley what 4chan could make in the Creature Creater.

[Thermal]

what is this about, is it based on anything, ive seen it advertised, seems like a 4 years olds dream, but not for me thanks...

[Mouzafphaerre]

.
No securomed defecation for me.
.

[Crandaeolon]

antispore.com Ding! Round one.

This entire game is propaganda aimed directly at our children to teach them evolution instead of creationism, or “intelligent design” if you go for stupid PC terms.

The object of the game is to evolve from a “spore” into demon-like intelligent space creatures that violently take over the galaxy.

Well, ok. This kind of phenomenon would be way more interesting if the game was good, or at least decent. Unfortunately, Spore isn't even a coherent game - just a collection of minigames that share similar content. I don't feel that the game merits writing a real review, but here's a quick rundown:

Cell Stage (2D "shoot-em-up")

+ "Charming"
+ Entertaining
+ Easy to play
+ Suitably short for its simplicity
- Too Simple

Creature Stage (3D action game)

+ Some Charm still left
+ Occasionally entertaining
- Repetitive
- Shallow

Tribal stage (RTS)

- Repetitive
- Shallow
- Charm is gone (zoomed-out view, outfit customization is laughable)
- Insufficient controls (no control groups?!)

Civilization stage (RTS)

- Repetitive
- Shallow
- Charm is gone (zoomed-out view)
- Insufficient controls (no control groups)
- Some balance problems

Space stage (Action 4X)

+ Some charm is back (you get to deal with funky aliens and play around with lesser lifeforms)
+ More depth than other stages
- Somewhat repetitive
- Insufficient information (it's a race against other Civs, but your situation is difficult to ascertain)
- AI uses different rules! (compounds with the insufficient information problem)
- Badly paced (it's slow, and you might spend a lot of time in a bad position without knowing it)
- Lack of automation
- Control scheme uses different conventions than Creature Stage

Also, one thing that somewhat bothered me is that there's no evolutionary connection between creature generations. A tiny slug can become a four-armed flying dinosaur in one generation, which feels a bit silly. There's also no real connection with form and function; for example, I made a little pink blob-thing with full scores in all combat abilities and no visible protuberances.

That said, yes, the editors are quite powerful and easy to use. The editors and systems for sharing content are the main draws of this software toy (not game IMO), but even those suffer from the detached perspective of the latter stages.

[TevashSzat]

This entire game is propaganda aimed directly at our children to teach them evolution instead of creationism, or “intelligent design” if you go for stupid PC terms.

The object of the game is to evolve from a “spore” into demon-like intelligent space creatures that violently take over the galaxy.

Wow.....that is just ridiculous. I mean who really actually thinks like that? (Even the fundamentalists) With that logic, the whole government is controlled by the evil left wing because schools teach evolution and that George Bush/ Dick Cheney is actually secretly controlled by Democrats because no responsible Republican can let evolution be taught

[Mikeus Caesar]

I think antispore.com is just a troll. And even if it isn't, they're dumb. As far as i can see, Spore is more of an endorsement for intelligent design.

EDIT: Or in the case of some creatures, un-intelligent design...

[JR-]

Game is good fun, thoroughly enjoying it, but i panned it with a one-star review on amazon.

There is a price to be paid for using Securom.

[rajpoot]

I could not resist it, so I went over to a freinds house, who had the game, and tried it out.
To me, it seemed like a flashy and colourful toy for a kid, that is very expensive, but remians, still, a kid's toy.
Anyway, it's something you can play on a rainy day when all your other games have dissapeared under mysterious circumstances.

[Crandaeolon]

I wonder if people saw these yet:

http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/...ews/#more-8789

When I talked to Wright, I had played deep into the Space Stage, which I was enjoying. But I had seen complaints from hardcore game reviewers and message board posters that all of the stages have less complex gameplay than many gamers had hoped. As wonderful as the content creation and sharing options are, the one consistent complaint I’ve seen is that the gameplay seems to have been “dumbed down” for the sake of appealing to a more casual audience. Was it?

“I’d say that’s quite accurate,” Wright told me. “We were very focused, if anything, on making a game for more casual players. “Spore” has more depth than, let’s say, “The Sims” did. But we looked at the Metacritic scores for “Sims 2″, which was around 90, and something like “Half-Life“, which was 97, and we decided — quite a while back — that we would rather have the Metacritic and sales of “Sims 2″ than the Metacritic and sales of “Half-Life.”

And one way of getting there is to present a narrower range of options than a hardcore player might be expecting?

“Yes,” he said. “Part of this, in some sense was: can we teach a “Sims” player to play an RTS [or Real Time Strategy game]? … I think the complexity we ended up with was toward that group.”

So, basically, Wright is admitting that the game is "dumbed down" to attain better sales.

And here's EA CEO on future plans for Spore:

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/53925

"We've got a clear, obvious and very compelling post-launch monetization opportunity," Ricitello explained during a conference call. "This is a game where basically, the parts are what make the sum of the product work."

"Monetization opportunity." Nice, eh?