Posted by John Walker on May 21st, 2008 at 3:57 pm.
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You know what’s wrong with you? No, not you, the person behind you. Yes, you. You’re not excited about Spore yet.
I understand – the whole thing is so esoteric and fanciful that it’s tempting to assume it will simply be an over-grown character creator, but really, it’s so much more than that. Seriously, look at the video below. And then the latest crop of Cell Phase screenshots. (Click on the for giganticness).
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I must admit, I’m a bit of a Spore skeptic. I’m curious yes, and will be following the reviews and player comments, but its certainly not something I’ll be pre-ordering.
Flint says: Bloody hell it looks beautiful.
capital L says: “hopefully your species will be able to pull itself out of the primordial ooze and come out onto dry land”
What if I want to make an aquatic form of life! This terrestrial bias will not stand! One day we will all go into the water!!
Deuteronomy says: Forget Spore where the hell is Alpha Centauri 2?
hungSolo says: Rook said: Although something bugs me about giving eyes with pupils to the single celled life.
I was more excited about this before the art direction made a left turn into cartoon. Also, EA’s tendrils probing my PC, etc.
Still, I bet it’ll be fun.
capital: EA left that part out so you’ll have to buy the Wacky Water Worlds! expansion. You’ll even get $5 off if you previously ordered the IKEA Furniture Design Fun Stuff Pack, which allows you to glue IKEA furniture parts to your creatures!
The coolest part of the game, the space exploration stage, is rarely featured in previews. At TED, Will Wright flew his creature’s space ship around a galaxy, encountering a black hole (shame he didn’t cross the event horizon).
Spore seems like a novelty game: make funny/weird creatures and then spend time exploring other planets. But even seeing new creatures and buildings will get old if the AI isn’t sufficient to permit meaningful interaction.
I doubt the city building, planetary conquest, and space conquest phases will be as interesting as SimCity, Civ and GalCiv, respectively. Not that I expect Spore’s target audience to want such depth, but my suspicion is that Spore’s stages are merely caricatures of other, more developed games.
The_Archetype says: Look at that humongous critter in the background of the second screenhot!
I’m not sure why that thing makes me so excited about the game, but it does.
andthensobecause says: This is very appealing, yes. Maybe I am a bit exasperated at this point though. It’s hard to maintain excitement for this long.
premise says: >I doubt the city building, planetary conquest, and space conquest phases will be as interesting as SimCity, Civ and GalCiv, respectively.
You know, I’d quite like a Civ-lite game where rounds don’t take me a week to play, maybe I can start a game without that “is this the one that finally gets me fired” feeling. With Civilisation Revolution apparently being console only Spore might do it nicely.
Everything else about the game seems more confusing than exciting.
Bobsy says: Hey look! I’m excited again!
I’m impressed by the lovely colourfulness of it all. I mean, it was always bright and cheery, but now it’s become moreso.
I’ll be more interested in the tribal phase though, because that’s the one that seemed the most oblique back when we first saw it, and the least creative. I’ll be interested if it has remained that way.
Rook says: dammit, kinda fucked up my link to fl0w, but the guy who did that used to work at Maxis so it’s not that surprising.
I can’t wait for this game to come out. This is the first time in a while that I’ve been excited about a game for the PC. While, I think the concept as a whole is cool. I hope it remains fluid and interesting throughout and doesn’t become a tedious bore halfway through.
2ds says: Ring Ring
Hello?
oh fl0w?
you want what?
Okay I’ll tell him.
Hey Will, Fl0w called, he wants his gameplay back.
Mindtrap says: it is just me or are they using simcity 4 background music?
2ds, Will Wright is a big fan of flOW and has expressed his admiration for Jenova many times and he mentioned fl0w as his main source of inspiration for this phase.
Am I the only one that prefers the old style over the “Pixar-ed” edition? Of course, I don’t mind that, can’t wait for this game and for the 24 hours marathon I will get into,
Jahkaivah says: “Ring Ring
Hello?
oh fl0w?
you want what?
Okay I’ll tell him.
Hey Will, Fl0w called, he wants his gameplay back.”
Will: “Hang on a second, I’m nuking another penis town.”
Kadayi says: The cell phase kinda reminds me of flOw.
The guy who did fl0w was working on Spore for Wright, then left and then released fl0w as I understand it. Make of that what you will.
I’m curious as to whether any of the behemoths in the background ever come upto the surface.
Kadayi, I think you are getting your facts wrong. fl0w is part of the thesis Jenova did for his university, and he entered in Maxis because of that work, before creating thatgamecompany.
Jahkaivah says: “I’m curious as to whether any of the behemoths in the background ever come upto the surface”
The pessimist in me reckons it will be when your big enough for it to not matter.
Kadayi: Wright, or some other dev, said that each phase will have its own behemoth-type creature. In the city building stage, it will be as tall as mountains. In the cell stage, it will be a few millimeters across, but that’s comparatively huge, as that awesome pic demonstrates :)
I’m not quite sure what these giant creatures accomplish (bosses?), but they sound pretty awesome.
Is it just me, or does the EA logo in this video actually look like the Death Star exploding?
Big sphere out in space suddenly explodes into other logos … I don’t know. It seems suggestive. As if a clever underling worked a subliminal message into the EA logo.
I like it.
Screw you, Borthwick! ;)
Still not feeling it yet. I like the look of the later phases more than I did earlier. But this video makes me think that the reason I don’t like Spore isn’t because it’s bad, but because I don’t “get” it. The sense of randomness doesn’t do it for me, but I can understand why others are entranced by it.
I think it probably… won’t flop now. The last few press releases have changed my view of the quality of the game itself. But I don’t think I’ll have much fun with it.
eyemessiah says: I still can’t see any game in the sand box.
Maybe in the next preview!
Bob Arctor says: The 2D art reminds me of Creatures.
dr terminus says: @trioptimum
no… its just a recycled SimCity 4 soundtrack
Kadayi says: I think you are getting your facts wrong. fl0w is part of the thesis Jenova did for his university, and he entered in Maxis because of that work, before creating thatgamecompany.
Spore was already well underway before he’d even finished his thesis.
http://www.gamingsteve.com/archives/2005/03/pictures_of_wil.php
Vis says: I want it, I really do! But they’ve annoyed me so much with the DRM thing that I don’t know if I can bear to buy it…
Am I alone in this? :p
Spore was already well underway before he’d even finished his thesis.
http://www.gamingsteve.com/archives/2005/03/pictures_of_wil.php
In that case, he entered Maxis and developed the idea of Cloud, and flOw while working there, influencing that phase of Spore. You don’t think Jenova ripped Wright’s idea for his thesis and then made a game from it, don’t you?
Kommissar Nicko says: Seems like there’s no love for Spore.
I haven’t seen a good (and exciting) “sim” type game for PC like Spore in ages. It’s what brought me to the PC table as a kid, and it’s really what has kept me there. FPS, RTS, even MMO, all just acronyms. Simulation is the name of the game; to me, it’s what makes PC gaming singular and unique, being the only platform capable of handling the genre effectively.
Kadayi says: In that case, he entered Maxis and developed the idea of Cloud, and flOw while working there, influencing that phase of Spore. You don’t think Jenova ripped Wright’s idea for his thesis and then made a game from it, don’t you?
Who can honestly say, I don’t see them competing in terms of what they do though, so the issue is moot tbh. I just think it’s important that the course of events is clear. People are all ‘Wright ripped off fl0w’ but that’s an assumption based off of what got out the gate first, which isn’t necessarily a true reflection of events as they happened. Personally I have to be more than a little skeptical, but as I said, ultimately they are very different games in terms of what’s going on.
Sam says: Coming late to the party – I know it’s superficial, but the eyes kinda spoil it for me.
Cunningbeef says: I’m on the train the dislike of eyes. The early previews (oh GDC 05, how I pine for you) of the cell phase looked amazing in their stylized-but-fairly-realistic way.
Hoping there’ll be an option to turn them off.
Jimi Hendrix says: That stage in the game seems the most interesting
Kadayi says: I must admit the eyes are somewhat overdone it seems. Somewhere in between now and the original footage, someone went crazy in Maxis with the eyes and colour saturation (maybe they need to calibrate their monitors or something). The great problem with everything being near luminous is nothing stands out against the other, and it’s going to be migraine inducing after a couple of hours….
fullere10 says: alright people, you keep complaining that Spore looks like a rip off of other games and yadda yadda yadda
but seriously, what the hell are you guys talking about? i HATE computer games, seriously hate them, however Spore has enthralled me to the point of actually buying a thousand Dollar computer, just for one game
(obviously ill find other games like Civ IV and Empire Earth, RTS games are the shit)
this game is absolutely amazing, from the creature creations to the space age. I see absolutely no reason why not to be excited for a game this complex and unique
Psychopomp says: Oh hindsight, I wish I had you then.
Monkfish 
Forget the game, where can I buy one o’ them baseball caps with the logo blurred out? They look cool.
I still think it will be an overgrown character generator with half assed RTS aspects built in. In fact, I’m actually more interested in the character gen stuff because I’m 99% sure that once you get away from that aspect and into sim city with battles territory it will just not be able to deliver.
I’m also questioning the possible variety. I can almost understand the generated characters but I don’t know how they plan to manage that once you have to build homes for them…
Perhaps I’m pessimistic and the thing will just blow my mind once it’s released. Or perhaps it’ll be crap and I won’t even buy it :P
That scale bar in the fifth picture looks interesting, I wonder what other bit’s of science they’ll be slipping in. Although something bugs me about giving eyes with pupils to the single celled life.
Doctor: “I’m sorry, but you have a Rare form of intestinal parasite – meaning it has big googly eyes and collects things.”
Does look like a slow burner
Mike, I think the first line is addressed to you… :P
Eww!
I’ll never go near water again!
It’s so beautiful, and yet I know it will poison my computer….
“You know what’s wrong with you? No, not you, the person behind you. Yes, you. You’re not excited about Spore yet.”
Win.
I’m still not entirely sold on spore though. It doesn’t look like it will live up to the hype. Or at least, what my friends (who rage about it every once in a while) say.
I was excited about Spore, but now that it has been delayed for so long, I won’t buy it when it comes out.
I feel so incredibly stupid for writing this. Of course I’m going to get it. I’ve never really understood people who hate games because of delays.
it’s very pretty.
i don’t actually see the game part of it, however. i do hope it does well because it’s so odd, but i don’t think i’ll be playing it.
The game part of that first stage is pretty much just