By Kieron Gillen on September 5th, 2008 at 11:38 am.
We’ll be doing a verdict next week, but for now, here’s the three things you should know about Spore.
1) Spore is a four hour character creator for a polished version of Space Rangers 2. It’s neat.
2) Ignore anyone’s opinion who’s played it less than – oooh – eight hours. There’s certainly good reasons to dislike or even dismiss Spore, but it takes that point before you see past your preconceptions.
3) There is no Autosave. I repeat: there is no autosave.
And a load more detail beneath the cut.
For example, I’ve been following the reviews and meta-gaming them a little.
There’s been some talk about it from comment-thread cynics as being another Black and White. As in, a game that recieved enormous scores from confused reviewers – presuming because it was so unusual it was probably good – and down the line pretty much everyone decided it was a load of old tosh. Funnily enough, I’m seeing it in exactly the opposite terms – I think reviewers are afraid of being the Black & White reviewers and are deliberately upping their criticism – which is one reason why even the positive reviews seem to be full of complaints.
In short: I suspect if Spore was released with less hype, it’d have had better scores. I suspect the fact Spore is so unlike anything else – by being a bit like everything else – that reviewers are slightly nervous around giving it too good marks, in case no-one likes it.
But that’s me thinking too much – there’s a second and more profound reason why the reviews read so down, and it’s a direct result of the traditional completely-descriptive feature-list style of reviews meeting Spore’s everything-and-the-kitchen sink design. A review has to describe everything in the game, which means that each of the five stages tend to get the same amount of space in the review. And since the first four of those stages are really sleight, there’s lots of room for slagging.
This is a complete distortion of the game.
The first four stages you’ll play through in four hours tops. The space stage is at least twice that, and probably a lot more. When you play the earlier games, it’s clear there isn’t much more depth there compared to a normal strategy game… but they’re designed to be comprehensible and entertaining for that very brief period of time. The problem with that is, on the first play through, you’re being mildy entertained and wondering “is this it?”. Spore is a big game – in terms of scope – and its actual experience is actually quite intimate. It’s not blowing you away in the way that you’re expecting it too.
But the game fundamentally changes when you reach the Space stage – it’s the one part of the game which is absolutely on par with any other game of its type – which is pretty much Space Rangers and sod all else in recent years (Comparisons to a game like Galactic Civilizations are deeply misplaced – you may as well say that Mount & Blade doesn’t stack up against Age of Wonders). It has a mass of mechanics – many of them introduced in the previous four hours, in a subtle and elegant way – and is a real, proper game, a pop-cute Elite with terraforming.
In fact, it IS the real proper game, and that’s what I mean by point one. You realise that the previous four hours weren’t actually the real game. They were about creating a customised race which you have a degree of affection for, with traits shaped by your actions in four stages. When you downplay the importance of the earlier stages in your mind, they make much more sense.
When I first played through them, I thought I’d never want to do them again. After the realisation, I’ve done the early stages another couple of times – in fact, the shallowness was actually a boon. When you know the mechanics, you can burn through them, with the experience enlivened by the slight change in methodology you’re following as you’re trying to create a different sort of creature (i.e. I’m using Religion to conquer rather than armies in the Civ stage so I can be a more altruistic nice space race). If they were much deeper, the simple process of making a new race for the real game would be extended pointlessly. You’d be far less likely to do it.
In other words, when you stop thinking about the early stages as the real game and something more akin to a character creator, you start having a lot more affection for them. The Cell and Creature levels are the most entertaining of the two (And the cell level, funnily enough, is the one where your creature design skills most actually impacts the game, in terms of you working out where to put your spikes to maximise your killing machine, and where the economics of what to buy next with limited resources bites hardest). The tribe is pretty vacuous, and the one I’m terribly glad doesn’t go on any longer. The World stage is a little more interesting, but carries a relatively heavy weight of demanding you to design most of the buildings and vehicles, which can make it seem to drag a little.
(Spore Anxiety comes into play here. As in, the pressure to actually create something that’s not rubbish, as you know your friends will see it and if it’s not at all interesting they’ll think less of you.)
But – really – I’m spending too much time discussing them. To be actually truthful to the experience, the early stages should be completely minimalised in a review. If there’s a total copy count of 1000, I more truthful division of the writing would be about 300 words on the creators, 500 words on the space stage, a quick 100 words on all four developmental stages and 100 words snarling at the lack of the bloody autosave.
My advice with Spore is just to relax. It’s a novel game that does a lot of things differently from almost everything else, which makes direct comparisons a little misleading. Don’t think of the hype and see if it takes you under its spell.
Oh – one final thing. The game doesn’t really do the fail state thing, but it doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to fuck up. It’s certainly possible to make a big enough mess of a game – the Space Stage is most likely but if you’re really confused I suspect you could do so at the Tribal stage too – that starting from Scratch is just about your only option. Or, at least, the only option if you want to have fun. Its concept of difficulty kind of reminds me of Darwinia’s, oddly enough, but that’s over-digressing. If you’re in a position where you don’t think you can win – normally in Space when you’re being raided constantly with no where near enough resources to forge a peace – you can’t win and should give up and try again.
(At which point, I suppose, you probably should be glad for the lack of autosave, as long as your previous save game was fine, you can load from there.)
But me? When I fucked up space, I just restarted from the beginning with a whole new race, as I decided I fancied being a bit of a space hippy rather than a warrior. Which surprised me. It’s not normally the sort of thing I do.
I suspect Spore will end up surprising many people.
But the question that nobody has answered is has space been populated my hordes of multicoloured penis monsters yet?
report
thanks for swaying my vote, i feel like i really want to go buy the game today now.
i remember watching the first demo’s of spore back in 2005 when will was doing presentations on procedural gaming. i was hugely excited, but its changed alot since then.
report
This really has been quite a strange game reception-wise. I think almost everyone was worried their particular opinion would be wrong as it neared release. It all sort of got mashed up in a peculiar combination of told-you-so press releases and bizzarely-weighted reviews.
One thing I did find odd was the disparity between some reviews and their scores. Some seemed very disparaging, yet gave scores which seemed to correlate with a much more praising review.
Looking forward to my first playthrough sometime early next week. I think the community aspect is enough to make it a worthwhile jaunt.
report
We should probably start listing names – I’m MissAdaLovelace.
KG
report
I’ve been waiting for Spore since….2004
allot changed since then, the hype went away and came back several times. Still, i cant wait to get my galatic edition on the mail. i mean…it’s spore. it’s diferent. and it is so diferent from everything else that most people are not prepared to fully understand the impact of it in the gaming industry. i hope we see more about spore in the future. in the meantime, we have the spore meta-universe to fill up with our creations and big penis thingies.
report
It’s not the first time i see this comparison with Space Rangers 2. Which it is good!
But while it will be more polished, i don’t know if it will be as good as SR2. Is the dynamic economy as complex? and the race relations? and the dynamic war? Do they have awesome text quests? :P
report
Aw, whatever happened to Brem X Jones? I loved that guy.
report
Turin: I was surprised when I saw Gamespot throw a SR2 reference in there. I thought I was going to be alone on drawing that line.
I suspect it’s less complicated, but it’s more robust – the pieces are very clear. Also, you’re working on a more race-scale immediately.
There are no text quests, alas, but there’s quite a bit more exploring, for my money.
Bobsy: He’s saved for special occasions. I am legion. I contain multitudes.
KG
report
The question I’d like to know is whether I’ll actually be able to log in to it this weekend — seems like they’d succumbed to the ‘release-day-server-authentication-blues’ first thing this morning!
report
I think hype has killed a lot of games. Invisible War, Bioshock – both had expectations far beyond what they actually were, and so people hated them for it. People hated Invisible War for being a pale shadow of its predecessor, and Bioshock for not being an arty FPS with RPG elements. Both are good games, but expectations killed them (well, maybe not killed. Both did fairly well, despite the invectives).
I’m interested to find out how much simulation there is in Spore – Sim Earth already did an impressive amount in simulating everything on the planet, and I don’t know whether the desire to be mainstream and fun will have watered down the detail, or whether, like Sim City, the detail of the simulation is part of the charm, maybe even the whole point of the game.
And I guess people who complain that you can’t be an aquatic species, or be an interstellar plague of bacteria should probably just wait for the inevitable cash-in expansions.
report
I’d quite like a BBC Wildlife add-on where David Attenborough narrates the entire life of your species. And sombre music plays.
report
to my shame I got wiped out on my first run through the tribal stage (hint: breed first, meet the neighbours later), the game just wound the clock back to the beginning of the stage and I started over.
At which point I stumbled across a gigantic version of my octopus from the creature creator (sporepedia seems to be down now or I’d link to it) and promptly ran away…
Space is feeling a little like GTAIV for me at the moment though: keeping alliances up means constantly having to entertain your new friends, ignore intersystem phone calls at your own risk as it tends to offend and being invaded is a right pain.
I think I’d prefer for life to be a little more rare in the galaxy so I could take my time exploring, terraforming and uplifting tribes. Right now my corner of the galaxy is pretty busy and I’m seeing evidence of several wars just outside the borders of known space…
I have some hope that some later techs will allow me to keep my relationships up with less intervention (there appears to be an embassy in the tech tree) so this current panic could only be a passing phase.
report
By the way, this is MissAdaLovelace place on the sporepedia.
AND ALL YOUR STUFF SUCKS!
… not really. And there is a reason why I don’t link to my creations. Because they do indeed suck.
report
Space stage really is the meat of Spore idd but there are some missed opportunities: why didn’t the giant monsters from Creature and Civ stages transfer over? Why is interactive combat in space absent (you can’t actually shoot back yourself, only the auto-turret does that)? Why do you have to do with a single ship and some ragtag allied peeps when other empires invade with huge fleets, all at the same time even (of course, also at the same time when ecological disasters, the Grox and pirates pop up all over the place)? I can play the Space stage for hours and hours but it ain’t perfect either, it’s a lot better at what it does than the previous stages though.
Also, there are still many people who can’t register the game (me included).
report
Interesting Spore Anecdote: Made it to the creature stage, happily wandered around making friends with the other animals, noticed a strange shadow on the ground.
I look up. There’s a giant spaceship above me. A GIANT SPACESHIP. Sadly, I couldn’t get myself abducted by it, but a number of the creatures I was attempting to charm found themselves scooped off into space. Nice little touch, that one.
report
@SwiftRanger actually the giant creatures do get carried over, I helped one of my cities fight one off with the UFO, damn thing nearly shot me down by spitting fireballs at me. You don’t get distress calls about them though.
There’s also a ship tool that allows you to gigantify any creature.
report
Swiftranger – the giant beasts do carry over, on some planets at least. Plus you get the ability to make any beast giant later on. Entirely agree with you on the space combat stuff though – darting about the galaxy to deal with multiple invasions/crises is a massive pain given you’ve only the one ship.
report
gypsumfantastic
report
I’m RaisedByPuffins, assuming my Creature Creator profile carries over.
report
While I admit the lack of an autosave feature is annoying, as PC gamers don’t we all generally hit the quicksave hotkey fairly regularly anyway? Additionally, is it that much of a pain to manually save?
report
“Funnily”??
report
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/funnily
report
I knew Spore would be a slow burner.
However one thing I can’t stand in games is when to keep alliances you have to entertain. It always seems convoluted to me. Why can’t you maintain alliance relations through resource sharing for example?! Set up trade routes between worlds and then protecting these routes becomes the game. I don’t want to have to go somewhere and watch my little character dance with the neighbours or whatever…
report
@Tom having a trade route open does help the relationship, but I still get regular messages about them losing interest in the alliance.
report
i thought spore was really good, but it’s true, you will get frustrated with the limitations but it’s for you’re own good, not many people can and do goto the effort to make a fully 3D model never mind animate it, the limitations are there so you can do it easily and to encourage your imagination
report
jamscones
report
I concur wholeheartedly with this article. Though I’m perplexed that you say people will spend at most 4 hours on the first four stages of the game. Personally, I spent at least 6 hours the first time, and just around 4 the second go.
report
From the way it was presented it was logical that everyone expected the creature stages to be the biggest and best when they are actually moderately disappointing due to lack of things-to-do. The cell stage was well paced and meaningful but the others fall down from being too shallow, with few meaningful decisions and poor balance.
But I excuse it for when I was fleeing in terror from an Epic Eyemonkey and a UFO flew past and beamed up a random creature.
report
Nimic: Well, I may be underestimating the time required – it’s not that I’m clockwatching. It’s certainly possible to speed up the process considerably second time around. Depends how much you want to enjoy the view, or power-game through.
KG
report
Has it got the girl gamer joy of the sims? When you say Space stage can I still play doll house dress up?
report
Which flavour of DRM comes along with the final release? That’s the point that will make/break my decission.
report
@Kieron
Yeah, I think it’ll vary a lot. Personally I tried not to rush through anything, preferring to enjoy my first playthrough. Now when I do it, it goes a lot faster. I haven’t actually completed the game, though, I keep starting new planets. I just love the cell phase too much.
report
well colour me dull–spore is just quite a shallow game -with albeit great creator tools and nice art and sound design.the whole procedural design thing seems only to extend to the animation system and textures—the whole game play element is very procedural . What i would like to see is a games journalist-(there are plenty here i believe) stop giving Mr Wright such an easy ride- and ask why he felt the need to wimp out on all the difficult design decisions. They hyped it- and then found it to hard to tackle so concentrated on the content creation asset management etc etc.. this is very much a case of a creator being less than his influences …Mr wright perhaps needs to just knuckle down a little and tackle the difficult stuff….
report
I had my first “Spore Moment” about two minutes into the Creature Phase. I was going up to this little furball creature and singing to it, when out of nowhere a bigass Praying Mantis thing comes in and slashes me down. It was beyond hilarious.
report
“Just knuckle down for the first 4-6 hours, it gets a better after that.” – isn’t terribly encouraging for me. Particularly given that the space stage is something that a lot of people have complained about. I get that the game has some (maybe many) impressive moments, but overall, are people finding the core gameplay to be fun to play? Or is it more of a tour of “oh that’s neat” moments?
Also, if the reviewers should be minimising coverage of everything before the space stage, maybe that’s an indication that these stages should have been handled differently by the game?
report
@ack:
According to all the information so far it’s got the same ‘phone-home-on-install/limited-activations nonsense as Mass Effect.
But if that’s somehow changed then I’d be sorely tempted to buy a copy myself this weekend.
report
My wife and I sat down and played Spore for 2-3 hours last night. I don’t know exactly how long because we had that Civilisation Effect where time just dribbled out of the window. That’s happened to me before but never to my wife. She tends to get lost reading ancient poems about gods raping lesbians, lesbians raping animals and men watching.
We got up to just before the Tribal stage and we’re loving Spore. We’ve made some cute herbivores (left up to me, I’d follow Kieron’s war-death-kill-murder carnivore line) and made friend with loads of other races. Seeing all the new races was great. The Maxis ones tend to look like recognisable creatures whereas player made ones look like liquid mental.
Even at this early stage, I get the tingling feeling that the choices we’re making are going to have a big affect later. You can swap body parts like crazy early on to fit the profile you want but as the points you get to spend on parts dries up, your choices are limited and you can get stuck with decisions you made.
Anyway. I love it and have been looking forward to it since I read about it in PCG. Civ but from The Beginning.
report
Installed it at 1am. Played for what I thought was a short while. Looked at the clock again. 4 am. “I’ll just finish up this building design,” I thought to myself. Time went by. 8 am. Went to bed.
Yeah, there’s definitely a Civilization effect in play there. It’s just a lot of fun. I love playing around with all of the designers (creature, building, vehicle). I actually think I’m at about 40/60 in terms of what I’ve spent time on in-game (playing/designing).
report
Well I’ve hit the center of the galaxy (I actually liked what happend next) It’s a pretty good game, but I think I’ll be bored with it in the next few days.
But it’s one of those game you play once in a while.
I’ve got the same with black&white, I do find those games in some regards similar.
Both great concept and refreshing gameplay, but not enough of it or not deep enough.
They could have done with spore a lot more especially considering how much time went into that game.
(perhaps they already made 10 expansions of content that was suppose to be in the normal game….)
Certain parts (Tribal, Civ) felt really rushed and half-baked, which I don’t get with the amount of time they put into the game.
I find that it lacks a lot of stuff and it can be annoying (Grrr pirated and eco disasters) but it’s still a fun game if you can look past those things.
report
EyeMessiah: Sorry, man, but you’ve completely missed the point.
EDIT: I’ve never said the first levels aren’t fun. I’ve never said they should minimise the coverage – I actually say they should give it coverage on par with its actual status in the game, instead of grossly over-covering it. And the whole point is that Space is both a real game and – for me – enjoyable.
KG
report
Yeah, I got the Space Rangers 2 vibe from the Eurogamer review as well. Even though that game didn’t exactly set my gaming world on fire, Spore still seems crafty enough to be checked out by the end of the year.
report
I was left disappointed so far. I’ve just discovered fire now, so I will see how that unfolds but the first few ‘levels’ are nothing more than uninspiring.
The graphics are nothing like the screens being thrown around. I did lower my expectations for this one and so far, I have had to lower them even further. Can/will it redeem itself?
report
In my mind I’ve got quite a few niggles about Spore that I would like to see improved. Things like autosave, more fleshed out phases, etc. But when I stop to think about things, and from time to time I do, what better way to gauge if I like a game or not than to see how much time went by without ever really feel like doing anything else?
I started playing it right after midnight local time (when it was released, had it pre-loaded already, not that downloading it completely again would have taken very long with the 10.8 MB/s I got with the EA Downloader). I was sitting on Skype with my cousin, who had also gotten the game, and we just played the game while talking about our impressions, giving eachother any useful tips we could discover, etc. Suddenly, I looked at the time, and it was 7 and a half hours later.
Like I said, it’s not a perfect game in every way, but there are preciously few games that I could play for 7+ straight hours. Probably only Football Manager 0x, and World of Warcraft back when I was still playing it. I’m a bit of a pessimist, so I know I’ll keep “telling myself” about the small faults, but as long as I’m enjoying myself playing it I don’t need the perfect game.
That said, I agree with what someone said up there, that it’ll probably, eventually, become the sort of game you play now and again.
report
Well, Jigglybean, maybe if you sit tight long enough someone will write an article talking about the role the early stages play in the game as a whole. (cough)
report
If I have a problem with Spore, it’s most concisely described like this: Spore is a toybox. The toys are earned through exploration. The exploration required to earn those toys is painfully dull, achieved through rote repetition of tasks.
To elaborate; I’d like to wander around the universe exploring. Every time I try to go for a wander I run low on energy and have to engage in what feels like the arbitrary trade of spice, or am called back home to deal with a minor crisis. The ‘game’ interferes with me playing with the toys. I’m aware that I can unlock a bigger energy battery, and that by trundling to different star systems I can unlock an engine with greater range, but I’m going to engage in those tasks *anyway* so why constrain me until I’ve gone through enough pain? Not how I’d chose to open up a toybox for someone to play with.
report
“Swiftranger – the giant beasts do carry over, on some planets at least. Plus you get the ability to make any beast giant later on.”
Aye, I was wrong, just spotted one on my homeplanet even out of the blue for the first time. It would have been cool if the missions were intertwined with their appearances to make things a bit less repetitive (get the artifact from their belly or their nest or something like that).
report
Nice talk though, I found this considerably more useful than most reviews. From reading around the game seems almost forgotten at the “endgame” state in space, as most reviews seem to follow the evolutionary path and end with a short “and then you conquer the great infinite expanse of space” after talking about all the smaller, finite bits at great length.
Still, I wonder how this’ll pass the Girlfriend litmus test, she has a habit of breaking the best games I present with irregular demands, like preferring to play Civ 4 with war turned off as it’s more satisfying to just build up her empire. I can foresee her finding an intermittent stage between pond life and the interstellar empire the most fun and balk at having to run up to, play and restart for that preferred morsel. My money is on tribal phase, in fact I should actually ask her if she’s aware of space ship design tools, or indeed anything beyond getting her creature creator stuff brought to life.
Sadly my dealer has let me down so I may need to wait til tomorrow to get stuck in, but I can’t help but feel the whole thing has been a bit misrepresented by being brilliant at something that’s only a very small part of the whole package.
It raises the question though, when you can have fun making obscene penis monsters, is it unfair that the game then asks you to conquer the universe with them?
report
I spent around 7 hours on the first 4 stages due to exploring for a couple of hours on the creature stage. I was disappointed it was so empty and short because it was clearly the best stage, imo.
Got to space and i think it was all a bit fiddly and more scope on OMG LOOK HOW BIG IT IS rather than filling it out with more and more interesting things/missions to do, instead of the same old crap.
Infact, that’s all Spore really ended up being to me. A game packed to the brim with ‘creations’ but not really much at all to do with them, despite having FIVE stages/games. Space is the only fairly long stage, the others are a joke. Too short.
report
Him – I imagine I’ll feel the same way when I get it, but I don’t anticipate it being a problem. Once the grind annoys me I’ll just download a maxed-out savegame.
report
Anyone played the flash game fl0w? I was a bit disappointed when the supposedly “different” and “unique” gameplay of Spore ripped off the popular flash game, added a little variation and made it their first stage…
Really… the first stage where you swim around finding stuff to eat is exactly like fl0w up to the screen moving upwards as you grow (for fl0w its moving downwards and moves when you eat a red cell), and the unique (for fl0w) environmental music.
Did they actually hire the guy who made fl0w? or did Will Wright ripped him off?
report
I wonder how EA/Maxis will leverage Spore’s content creation/distribution technologies in the future. A proper SimCity 5 could really benefit from easy-to-use building editors and content sharing. Imagine plopping down some commercial zones and having the game pull from a virtually unlimited number of buildings. In fact, I’d be surprised if Maxis wasn’t working on such a thing now…
Haven’t played Spore yet (probably won’t until the DRM goes bye-bye), but these reviews/discussions are great.
report
I’m way more interested after reading this review.
report
So far, I certainly like Spore. Had a seven hour binge yesterday and will start up again from the cell phase today. I want to invest more times in the designs of my creatures and buildings.
But there is a little niggle I have: The bloody connection to the servers does not work. First, it wouldn’t let me connect at all. Then it said that my serial number was wrong. And THEN it said I did not have the required Spore.com privileges to log on.
And right now it seems that I am by far not the only one. Many people in Germany and Austria do seem to have this problem. Interestingly, most of the bought the Galactic Edition of the game.
Costomer support says they are aware of it and working to fix the problem. But I still am pretty pissed. I want my Sporn, damnit!
report
On-topic: This sounds fascinating. Too bad my failing computer probably can’t handle Spore, and I’m unlikely to be able to do the full overhaul needed for a few months :(
Off-topic: I am intrigued by the comparison to Darwinia. I recently picked it up, largely based on kind words from RPSers, and… it’s alright. I’m still not that far (and not likely to get much further until above-mentioned pc upgrade) and kind of confused by the whole thing, but I really think I’m not seeing whatever it is that causes Gillen and co to say such wonderful things about it. So, what am I missing?
report
@KG: Ok, I see what you mean about relating column inches to how much each stage actually features into the “Real Game”, that makes sense.
I’m not so much worried that the negativity in the commentary is getting too much print-space relative to the good parts of the game, rather that knowledgable people are finding so many negative things to say about substantial parts of the game, full stop. I mean its not like we are talking about a slightly duff 15 minute tutorial here!
Even just re-reading the short rps post above, sometimes when you are being ostensibly positive about the early stages it still sounds quite negative, and qualified in odd ways you don’t hear so much when people talk about other games (e.g. like the shallowness being a boon, because you can burn through those stages you thought you’d never want to play again). I don’t mean to pick on the RPS post (or paraphrase so horribly!), I’m more or less just taking this opportunity to respond to ALL the coverage of Spore so far and at the end of the day I’m just clutching suspciously at straws because thats all I have to go on.
Its encouraging though to see people in the comments talking about having plain old fun though!
report
I don’t understand. How is everyone playing Spore? The street date isn’t until Sunday?….
report
Everyone is pirates!
report
No Sporn in my game yet, luckily. Although, its easy enough to hit the ban button. Sporecasts are awesome and help to prevent the problem.
report
Do not rush. Best advice you need for Spore. I am spending more time in creature phase? Why, because I see some delightful things. Meteor shower destroying a nest. Finding a crashed spaceship…and I just saw a spaceship hovering over and abducting one of my pack members… Most of which I wouldn’t have experienced had I rushed. Delightfully fun!
report
Devildog – Not in Europe, it isn’t.
report
No, seriously, I need to know. How are you guys playing it already?
Please. Must. Feed. Addiction.
A $1,000,000.00 to the first person who tells me how to (legitimately) get the game. No pirates, misters!
report
Spore released Sep 4th in Australia.
Today’s regions are: Europe, Japan, South America
Tomorrow’s release regions: North America, Asia Pacific
report
And right now it seems that I am by far not the only one. Many people in Germany and Austria do seem to have this problem. Interestingly, most of the bought the Galactic Edition of the game.
Exactly the same problem here, and I got the Galactic Edition too. I want to play! :(
report
Online retailers were posting it out around Wednesday so a lot of people got it early.
report
This really is Black & White all over again. Just saying you like Spore can get you drowned in ‘How can you possibly enjoy this crap?’ comments in some circles. It’s so tragically uncool to be playing it and having fun (instead of playing it obsessively and complaining all the while) that those who actually do like it seem to be getting more and more timid.
I reckon that in a year or two, as with Black & White, people will actually be able to come out of the woodwork safely and say how much they liked it without getting yelled at.
This backlash was inevitable, though. It’s funny to see it happen. It really does go to show just how reactionary and immature both gaming journalism (as you say, they’re trying not to sound like they enjoy it, just it turns out to be uncool later on) and gamers can be.
report
@Rob Lang: “She tends to get lost reading ancient poems about gods raping lesbians, lesbians raping animals and men watching.”
Can … can I meet your wife?
report
RE: KG Thinking too much & @ Dominic
Aren’t we (comments thread cynics) usually chastised by RPS for supposing that some psychological state affecting a majority of reviewers (i.e. the great tinfoil hat game review conspiracy theory!) can account for the fact that they were negative about our favourite games and positive about Halo?
Personally I’m not convinced that fear of being the uncool Black and White reviewers covers it.
Perhaps the conflicted reviews do have something to do with it being such a big game. I can imagine that if no one had reviewed WOW until they had played it for at least 2 years, they might say something like “Well there was a LOT of grinding which was dire, and I probably spent 50 hours jumping up and down outside the bank in ironforge bored out of my skull, but the 30 hours I spent in the BGs was great, and the 50 hours I spent raiding with my guild was awesome so I’m really sure how to sum up. Uh…”
Edit: Of course those numbers are laughable underestimates, but lets not discuss the frightening truth.
report
Does no autosave mean you can only save and quit, or that you just have to remember to manually save?
report
I do not understand the point of the game really.
is the point to eventually rule the universe?
what is the point for each stage of the game?
report
Mustache – think of it more as a toybox than a game. The thing I’ve found most satisfying is terraforming planets. If only I didn’t have to keep shunting spice around to pay for the tools of my artistry!
report
Space Rangers 2! Ha! I wonder how many Space Rangers 2s could be produced on Spore’s budget? 100? 10000? It’s at least several orders of magnitude…
To be a bit less cynical, I’m still finding room to hope it has the emergent, non-scripted situations of the Sims, which may not be great gameplay but will surprise and impress you. That’d make it worth a purchase when I’m bored enough.
report
They really need to patch in an autosave feature, or make Spore more stable, it’s one of the only games I own that’s actually crashed more than once! (and it’s not like it’s taxing my system either).
report
I know that not all reviewers will have followed the game’s development, but Will Wright has said from the start that the game would be designed like a T. The earlier stages would be fairly linear affairs that would teach players the game’s concepts and tools until they were ready to hit the meta-game.
report
Speaking as someone who never really payed attention to the hype and was never particularly “looking forward” to it, i have to admit I was pretty stunned with it. It’s really good fun. It’s very easy though. Probably my only complaint. But still, great fun.
report
Just a quick question: It cost the same as any FPS you’ve bought recently. Did you have a few experiences you’d never had before? Could you say the same about 80% of those FPS titles? Isn’t finding new experiences what gaming is all about? Remember that Spore is equal parts creation, sharing and playing – the game is only one part of the experience. It’s about making your own universe and telling your own story… not necessarily about ‘winning’.
report
Subscribing to the PC Gamer Sporecast is really worth it, some amazing stuff has been collected there.
If you’ll excuse me, I’m off to continue my titanic life or death struggle with the alpha brocolli.
report
Interestingly, a lot of the people I’ve talked to/seen that hate the game quit the moment they reached the space stage. If that’s where the majority of the game actually is, that’s rather notable.
report
tis genius
report
Space Rangers means SOLD! to me.
report
Been playing for 10 hours now, pretty good!
Also: unclebul
report
after reading this thread I downloaded the Space Rangers 2 demo. now… WHERE CAN I BUY THIS?!
I searched amazon but found only this, unsure as to weather it’s space rangers 2 as it seems to be missing the “2″ part in the name… hmm
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Contact-Sales-Space-Rangers-DVD/dp/B0007A5F0I/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1220666562&sr=8-1
report
Get it from Stardock. It’s fab.
report
MetalCircus: The one I bought from Play.com with the same name and cover contains both the first and the second episode.
A word of warning: it uses StarForce. Unfortunately the DRM-free complete pack on Stardock store is not available for download outside North America.
report
Four hours “at most”?! I’m scared now that the game really does begin in space… my weekend will be one continuous glut once I launch, if these first four levels are merely an entrée.
I’ve been playing/designing in first four stages for well over twenty hours (with six hours kip in between). I’ve been getting all the available unlocks and trying to find as many achievement badges as I can. Also, in a protracted fit of hypocrisy, I admittedly spent time hunting down and exterminating ALL undiplomatic species, despite being strictly herbivorous myself.
Then, of course, there was the sightseeing. (if you didn’t explore you obviously weren’t THAT interested, so don’t start twitching if I leave it at that).
Anyway, my guys are almost ready for space; I just launched ICBMs and saved myself some time chasing out the last two factions, but I’ve still yet to exploit all the spice mines. Once I’ve slept and got that minor goal under my belt, the planet will be conclusively desecrated and I’ma GTFO. All this talk of space being the real playground has me amped.
Coming soon, to a system near you! Literally.
report
But the question that nobody has answered is – has space been populated by hordes of multicoloured vagina monsters yet?
report
It’s interesting, having played Spore for a whole day now (and having had to force myself to go to bed at 1:15am. I know what I’m like with these kinds of games).
Spore has surprised me immensely, because it’s not the game I was expecting, and is all the better for it. In fact, it’s rather more game than anyone really allowed, I think.
My two primary concerns would be that it would be (a) shallow but wide, and (b) all sandbox and no game. Happily, it turns out to be neither of these things.
Cell phase: is a simple minigame, but it doesn’t last long, and is a friendly, casual hook. It also starts you on the path of evolving your species. The creature phase feels like the first few levels of an MMO. Kill or charm neighbouring species, find parts to boost your stats and enable extra skills, level up to increase party size.
It’s less simplistic than cell, and slowly introduces new concepts that will come into play later. Taken as a pair, Cell and Creature, whilst simple, are just an extended creature editor session. They contextualise your animal, and allow you some time for a ‘narrative’ to develop about why your creature behaves and looks as it does.
Then the game starts proper, with tribal, civilization and space. The way each of these layers is essentially a superset of the previous layer, adding in more complexity with each phase, becoming more and more addictive is wonderful.
Tribal phase reminds me a lot of the good parts of Black and White, and makes me wonder what B&W could have been like were Molyneux talented.
Civilization phase plays like a slightly more energetic Sid Meier Civ, more like Civ Revolutions than a main series game. The way that the decisions you took affect this phase start to become obvious, in a way that’s most appreciable.
And then space, which is amazing. The rest of the game has simply been tutorial, warming up for this phase. This part of the game is both deep *and* wide, and is amazingly well developed. Your species ascent into demigodhood makes it all worth the wait.
So Spore: a slow burner, certainly. But engrossingly, a brilliant and semi-hardcore strategy game, and not some girl-friendly dressing up Sim at all.
report
You had me at “pop-cute Elite”.
I thought I wasn’t going to get this game. Damn you, Kieron. Damn you to hell! Why must you reviewers always have such insightful thoughts?
Though I do worry that I’ll go into this expecting it to be Elite, now.
report
Actually, thinking about it, you know what the Civ phase most reminds me of? Mega-lo-Mania on the Amiga.
YES!
report
If it’s any metric, I was in Zavvi yesterday and there were at least three instances of females getting rather-too-excited over Spore, including one girl who threatened to dump her boyfriend if he didn’t buy it for her… Seriously, Spore is destroying relationships even quicker than The Sims managed it!
Me? My partner is apparantly buying it for me for our anniversary… well, that’s her story anyway!
report
I’m Shanuface, and my creations are gloriously rubbish. :)
report
The galactic phase can be tiresome though, fedexing on the missions and having to rush between planets. I can’t rate it on the same level as Space Rangers 2. It’s compelling, but it just isn’t fun enough.
report
If it takes 8 hours for the game to get good then it has some serious issues
You don’t tell someone to read a book for 1000 pages before it gets good
report
That’s not what people are saying though, is it? They’re saying that the first few hours of the game simply set up the endgame, in the same what that the first 1000 pages of a book might set up an incredible final act.
report
Unsurprisngly, my Spore name would be The_B
Fear my creations of doom. And by doom I mean fail.
report
Jesus, I just listened to gametrailer’s invisible walls, and now I understand from where KG’s got point 2 on his list. they actually said that you finish the game in 8 hours. nubs.
btw- kieron’s text about spore is spot on imo. gj
report
I’m quite proud of this: I have sent a bear into space in a cardboard box.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/roburky/2833980671/
Cake for those who get the reference before clicking through to the sporepedia.
report
@Bear in space – am I the only one who thought this was an obtuse reference to the Gnome in Space Achievement?
I think the reference to “cake” threw me off right away.
report
I’m still bored by Spore. The game play is extremely repetitive and I am now on the Civ stage. Personally, I think the game is just too simple and some of the features they promised a long time ago, didn’t make it into the final product.
Ebay here it comes!
report
I’m finding it incredibly dull. And at the same time, I can’t believe i’m saying that…
report
Actually I feel the exact opposite than what Kieron expressed in his post. Spore phase and creature phase was really what I expected from this game. It’s simple, has the “dress-up-like-Sims” feature that is the creature creator, lets you enjoy the view (as opposed to civ stage) and doesn’t mind if you go exploring the world. I had the most fun in the creature stage, especially finding those terrible monster with 1k hp and defeating some of the hard rogue creatures with a pack of 46hp creeps.
These two stages also felt nicely connected as opposed to the rest of the game. It’s just like “here, we hope you enjoyed that part of the game, on a completely unrelated note – here’s another. you might notice the colors are similar”.
Tribe stage is just a joke, no exploring, very very restricted creator and the animations of tribes happily bringing you gifts are nice, but they kill, cook and eat for breakfast the hardcore-gamer in me. Civilization stage on the over hand is much more interesting. It’s simple, sure, just like the rest of spore, but no more niceties of the tribe stage – even the religious conversion doesn’t like a very peaceful matter and there are no more mimic your opponnent mini-games. It does feel quite short and it completely hates you for wanting to look at your created vehicles and buildings in action – bird’s eye view is the only way to play it and you can’t make out any detail in them. However, it’s fun. Too short, but fun.
I can still see why some would call these 4 stages as shallow and I myself feel that after a few more replays the creature and civilization stages will no longer be fun due to restrictions and limitations. So I was hoping for the best in space stage.
And I was sadly disappointed. Don’t get me wrong it’s ok for what it wants to do. Exploring space, looking for those artifacts, discovering civilizations, tribes or planets with wild-life, terraforming them. Shooting some space pirates. It’s fun. BUT.
When a game decides to rape you, your planet, your colonies, your allies and doesn’t let you wander in space for more than a few minutes after which you must return promptly to your homeworld and watch your cities destroyed, die a couple of times and don’t get a proper reward after that… I mean, sure, games should be cruel if you screw up. Computer isn’t suppossed to wait you until you have enough troops to defend yourself in rts or it should shoot you in the head even if you were unable to notice it in fps. But what I know very clearly is what it shouldn‘t do, that is punish you in a single player game, when you didn‘t have any other way to act in a given situation. I mean, swarming you with 3-4 ships every few minutes, while you can shoot back with only 1 and this whole lot happening as you try to get access to more than basic tools by completing their space mini-tutorial-missions, dude, that‘s too harsh. After being fairly easy (but still fun) spore decided that in the final stage I need some butt-sex. :( I was demolished in my 10 hour straight game, my race of creatures I was starting to feel some connection to is no longer and I can’t load and try again from, for example, civ stage, because there is only 1 savegame. I feel dissappointed.
report
I see a lot of similiar complaints on the Spore forums regarding getting a total trouncing on the Space stage. I understand the criticism, there’s definitely a change of pace from the previous stages, and if you’re getting a kicking it seems like there’s very little you can do about it.
I took a warlike approach all the way through previous stages, and pretty soon in the space stage I was at war with two or three civilisations. I lost all my external colonies, and was pressed back to my home world with almost constant attacks – I couldn’t collect or trade any spice with my allies, I had literally about 1 minute between attacks on my homeworld, each of which I was barely beating off, constantly losing buildings and occasionally a homeworld city. I was starting to believe all the forum talk about the space stage being completely unbalanced. BUT…
I persevered. I ground out money from the defeated foes (who drop loot), and slowly started upgrading my UFO. Slowly but surely I started getting powerful enough to rebuff attacks more easily, and occasionally I would nip off for a lightning raid on my opponents T1 colonies, not attempting to take them, just weaken them.
Gradually, the attacks lessened and I got on my feet. I colonised and terraformed planets in my home system, so I wouldn’t have far to go to protect them. I increased spice production as best I could, and traded amongst the home systems, gradually building up cash.
Eventually, my UFO got to the point where I could really go on the offensive. My laser, autocannon, missiles and bombs made really light work of any opposition. I purchased one-off city-destroyer bombs. I made terraforming attacks on enemy planets, screwing their ecology.
Soon enough, I had completely destroyed all the hostile neighbouring empires, the attacks stopped, and I had the breathing space to explore as I wanted.
The key, I think, is holding on long enough to unlock the later technologies, which totally change the balance of power in your favour – at that point, the game becomes more of the sandbox it promised to be. Since becoming the local galactic powehouse I’ve spent a lot of time just sculpting my planets.
In all, I’m hugely impressed with Spore. I never had huge expectations, though, but those that I did have have been vastly exceeded.
report
Nick – I’m bloody glad you’ve said that about the space stage, as it gives me hope. I’m finding the game hugely entertaining, but in my first space playthrough I got so trounced and so frustrated that, rather than persevering, I started a whole new game and took the herbivore route to see if it would prove any easier.
Sadly, Kieron’s Oranginas are not my close allies in my second game.
The_B – OMG! Next you need to make Spotty. :)
report
@roBurky
Where’s the owl?
I had almost forgotten about that book.
report
word of advice – use your friends to your advantage. it cost only 54-56k to provoke an attack on selected colony. cheap and effective, and if you attack with you ally (I dont mean their ships in fleet, just general attack) you can actually snatch the planet, before they get to conqer cities. I persisted through initial “carnage phase” (that would be 6th stage in spore ;) ) thanks to diplomacy (and cunning use of flags :D ). also – check out what achievments unlock what upgrades. its wise just to click on as many systems as possible, since each click is counted towards journeyman mastery, which unlocks better engines. same with terraforming (unlocks better tools), fighting (better weapons) and so on.
diplomacy in spore is like everything else – seems to be simple and useless, and in fact its quite effective
report
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8dvMDFOFnA
Spore could, should, have been great. Watching the GDC demonstration made me realise just how far short the finished product fell from what I led to expect.
report
As soon as the theme song from M.U.L.E. made it’s appearance, it had me.
report
I still think that the game on a whole is a great feat of designing. However, I wish that the creature stage would’ve lasted a bit longer. Cell stage is a glorified (but fun) flash game, Tribal and Civ stages are just plain meh in terms of gameplay variety. Space stage has a lot of things to do, but I’m just not the creative type who likes to craft beautiful planets.
I think I’ll just stick with Galactic Civilizations II instead for my space fix, or like Kieron said: Space Rangers 2. Seriously, what kind of bloodthirsty militaristic race depends on their allies for a fleet? Why can’t I still build aircraft and tanks to protect my colonies? Why do I always fly past enemy craft while trying to hit them instead of blowing up my ally’s ships?
Also save save save people! I had the game crash at the end of Space Stage after a 7 hours bout. That was fun enough to uninstall it, although I’m already tempted to start over again.
report
Sure. I agree you probably can hold your ground and fight back, with some practice and patience. but that makes spore lose all it’s meaning. It was presented as a game which everyone can play through differently and experience different stories. It’s not really fun if you always have to go all-out militaristic in Space. That’s a linear single-player, not an open-world creative type of game…
report
This is definetly a review I can accept. I’m having a ton of fun taking my time and enjoying this game. Everyone calling this game a toy have really disappointed me. I can imagine that reviewers have to speed through games in order to get out their opinions so they don’t have the time to “bond” with their creations. Also: I managed to domesticate a human (Charles Darwin) in Tribal Phase. He laid eggs… and my creatures ate them. Freaky.
report
I’m sorry, I can’t hear you as I’m too busy sabotaging this game’s amazon score over SecuROM idiocy. :P
report
Hey I’ve subscribed to the PCG sporecast but somehow deleted the content! Any idea how I force it to download them again? I’m still subscribed to it… Do I need to delete a file off my drive maybe?
report
much, much later… It’s definitely worth taking some time to look at the details. Some charming things I’ve noticed so far:
- make your tribal village celebrate (at least I’ve not found any effect on this) by selecting some villagers and right-clicking on the central fire.
- incidental details of city life in civ stage: go into the city planner (get rid of the coloured lines by switching to plant mode) and zoom right in on the main plaza. The citizens rotate through activities pursuant to the city type, the wheel of fortune and pay day ones are especially funny (economic city).
- Protect your cities from giant monster attacks in space mode, or just watch the population try to fight them off. Beware, giant creatures have range attacks and can take down space ships eventually.
Also, like Nick and PJ, I too found space stage to get easier after a few ship powerups, don’t neglect colony turrets and AOE repair kits keep your allies alive a lot longer.
report
I’ve been burned so many times by the hype and after GTA4 (not a terrible game, but the idea of it being one of the best ever or having an Oscar quality script is just wrong) I think I just got tired of it. So I have been very careful about Spore. And I think, too, so have reviewers, fresh off the GTA4 liquid explosion. Still in spite of it all it looks to be worth playing. I am kind of wary of buying the game only to see it fleshed out with 10 expansion packs next year, but, well, the devil you know and all…
report
I’ve played the game for over 8 hours, and there’s one thing that’s inarguable– Spore is not as impressive as the hype the Wright was feeding us 2 to 3 years ago.
Just in terms of the creation system, there is a ton of work that was done in the procedural creature creation system that many people probably don’t appreciate. However, I just don’t think that the other creation systems for buildings and the like are nearly as good.
In some ways, it’s a shame that the first 4 stages really do just lead the player through creation of the their creature and civilization since I think they could have been more, and frankly Will Wright did promise us more. Still, if the space stage is deep and satisfying, then this can be overlooked.
However, I just don’t think there really is quite enough gameplay in the space stage. At first, I felt like it was going to be the deep experience that I would hope for, but unfortunately it got repetitive way too quickly. And as others have rightly pointed out, the graphics for creatures and vehicles are so tiny it’s hard to appreciate them.
Spore really is something else and hopefully will set a precedent for other, better implementations of similar mechanics for games to follow. There just isn’t nearly enough depth to it. I still might fiddle with its creation systems, play a couple of the stages every so often, and try to get to the center of the galaxy (easier than it’s made out to be, apparently), but I’m really hoping expansion packs will add the necessary meat to the experience.
report
I too was utterly trounced in my first go at the space stage, alien civilizations don’t have to deal with warping back home every 5 minutes to fight off pirates / aliens / eco-disasters so they have plenty of time to expand into massive empires that don’t really care if you nuke 5 of their worlds, and meanwhile they’re going to conquer 3 or 4 of yours no matter what you do because they’ll attack several of them at the exact same time.
Actually, that was pretty much my experience with the fifth play-through as well, except eventually I managed to get back on top of things through sheer grind. After about six hours of fighting off one raid, then blitz-bombing a couple enemy worlds into the stone age, I finally beat the three alien empires that were picking on the mighty Thraddash into submission, two by genocide and one by submission followed by grooming them for an alliance. I also found out if I drop enough of my colonists into a tribal village, they can beat the tar out of the natives— harharhar!
Then I fortified my homeworld and the five worlds that bordered it as much as the game would allow, and set off to actually explore. Once you can just tell your colonies to slag off because you don’t need them anymore, the game is a lot less of a fricking hassle. The journey to get to this state was frankly an absolute chore that I never want to repeat, but I feel a certain pride for getting through it; I guess Spore’s space stage is kind of like a Korean MMO.
Though actually if you go out and make best-friends with everybody as soon as you meet them, the likelihood of constant planetary invasion is less likely. (Speaking of, I’m very disappointed I can’t put my own ships in my fleet; you get to do this in creature phase by having your own critters back you up, I don’t know why in space phase all of a sudden it requires you to make friends with others and have their crappy worthless ships as your wingmen)
report
I am heartily disappointed with the game in general. I hope to get some entertainment in the space stage, but was hoping for a lot more game in the earlier stages. I’ve not read a lot about the AI in the earlier stages. Apart from the creature you are physically controlling (and any allies tagging along) every other creature on your world just seems to hang about around their nesting sites. There seems to be little or no attempt to simulate any complex behaviour.
The whole concept of gaining “parts” by eating? finding? investigating piles of bones is also deeply flawed. Who thought that one up?
Was the creature stage mechanic designed to keep whacky US creationist types semi-happy? Why not have some element of random mutation and evolution beyond the players control. It would have been far more rewarding to attempt to breed characteristics into ones creatures… selecting and rewarding a creature with larger teeth for example rather than finding a pile of bones and buying a new mouth.
There’s also no real sense of a functioning eco-system… another wasted opportunity. Your creatures ALWAYS migrate for no apparent reason…. forcing you to trudge after them. Species never diverge. All creatures lay eggs? There appear to be no scavenger niche creatures… nor any species that remain in the sea… nor any mammals that return to the sea.
I realise I’m asking for a lot…. some kinda Sim Evolution… but that’s pretty much what we’ve been promised. Your creatures can either eat meat or fruit or both…. everything else is just eye candy. Increasing or decreasing the size and bulk of the creature seems to have no effect on game mechanics for example.
report
John, don’t you know Maxis under EA’s wing?
There’s going to be like 20 expansion packs with those add-ons.
Just wait for the H&M gatherer vest expansion pack, or the IKEA hut furnishing pack.
I wish that was a joke, but the Sims actually has those two brands if I recall my horrific trip to the computer store accurately.
Ah, I love the edit function – I can nod with bemusement at this:
“Millseconds until the Spore backlash: 442″
report
Okay, I’ve totalled up a bunch of comments to various users as I have read through the comments. But first, to the reviewer- my own name on Spore is coroloro. I’ve friended you and some of your creations are quite nice actually! I don’t think you have to do complex layering and intricate stuff to make ‘great creatures’. In fact, the whole point of Spore is that you can, with very little skill, make realistic and intelligent looking creatures- and you can go as advanced as you want to, but either way they still look nice. Take a look at my few creatures- I haven’t made a ton, because I tend to like starting from cell stage (I REALLY like the eyes cells have, and the only way to get big cell eyes on your creature in Creature stage is to start from a cell- not sure if creature editor even lets you use Cell eyes/parts).
I love how Spore, through the evolution process, not just lets you get attached to your creature- it adds a roleplaying aspect to it. If, instead of thinking “how can I max the game out and play the best” or “what whacky thing can I do to my creature?”, but think “how can I make my creature evolve and grow?”… it gets really cool. I think of my game as a ‘story’, and I start from the cell stage and make each new ‘model’ of creature look like an evolutionary step. I think up a little mini-story for why each step is taken and what the creature is like, or their culture is, at that point and how they got there. I particularly love my Chesni species- I made my first buildings and space ships for them. They are my first omnivores, and once they evolved to land they never evolved graspers or arms- rather, just legs- and they retained three pairs of eyes, though all but one pair slowly evolved in look and position. Their ‘middle’ eyes combined with the shape looked a lot like they evolved from an aquatic mamalian species like a whale- but they eventually evolved a dinosaur type structure with two heads… one at the top, one at the tail where the eyes were. Finally the bottom head, the herbivore one, moved to the top and the middle pair (in the middle body, near the one set of dino-legs) got the second mouth, a carnivorous hole of teeth with personality. Most of the time, the species unique trait was 360 degree vision- which I thought was rather neat. I even closed my eyes and imagined what it would be like to see all around me at the same time- and got a good impression of it. The Chesni, rather than developing hands, managed to use tools and eventually interface with technology using… their carnivorous mouths, in conjuction with their main herbivore mouths for assistance. THeir ‘keyboards’ basically were interfaces that let their toothy, well controlled lower mouth connect up and use their mobile teeth to interact far faster than ten digits ever could.
Okay, now for all my replies:
@Mike- You gave me a great idea for a youtube video, now if I just knew how to make movies to the point of documenting bits of gameplay outside the creature creator and add my voice narrative to it. “The galactic journey of the Celioflop: from tadpole to terror”. :P
@Commando – I think that there is no doubt the Creature stage is wanting of an expansion pack. There’s a ton of room for growth of all the earlier stages, really- I think their size now is a combination of, as the reviewer said, both intelligence in enabling a quick creation and smooth play experience… and also, feasibility. You’re paying for one game, which already took millions and years to make… it only makes sense that if they are going to flesh out the earlier stages into more full, stand-alone levels they’d do it in expansions. A company that gives away too much will die, that’s capitalism- or, in Spore-speak, that’s what happens to a cell that is all propulsion and no spines. :P
@Him – The ‘unlocking’ of toys allows for a better feeling of accomplishment, and for you to work up to something. I’ve played the game from start to ‘finish’ (reaching centre of galaxy, and highest rank, and unlocking most all the tools)… once you reach that point, it is easy to loose interest. The fact there are so many toys and you have to work to get each, makes it fun. If you started Space stage with access to all the ‘toys’, you’d play it… ohh, maybe two to six hours and get bored. Space Stage has kept me going for far more than six hours, and I’ve enjoyed the growth. I’m playing through again on “normal” mode, and even starting one game on “hard” mode, and finding that the higher difficulty makes it enjoyable (gosh, it took me at least an hour to beat Cell stage on hard mode. Gah, I died OVER and over and OVER again).
@Cubic- I just played fl0w after reading your post… while it indeed uses the same kind of style, the fact is they are both ‘cell’ type games and the cell stage of Spore is a TON more fun than fl0w. Fl0w gets boring fast, and is very bland looking. Plus, you can’t choose and select parts, and the cell stage only lasts a relatively short time- fl0w goes on and on, and its only point IS to go on and on (or so it seems). The cell stage in Spore actually goes somewhere: to setting the stage for your creature in the Creature stage. There is no such thing as a truly original idea- only an original IMPLEMENTATION of it! Spore implements these ideas, taking types and styles of games that already exist (and some of which are rather overdone), and mixes them up. Cell stage actually mixes some of fl0w, but also other elements of some other 2D mouse-oriented games I have played. I for one think I would enjoy playing through more levels of Stage 1 myself- it got old a lot slower than fl0w did. I also certainly wish more people would actually play through the end of Space stage before giving their ‘complete overview’ of how the game is. You don’t really know what Spore is about until you’ve played all the stages.
Hope you like my creatures- and feel free to drop me a line and let me know about your creatures and their ‘history’. :)
report
This game is fucked, it totally sucks, and it is NOTHING like Black and White, Black and White was actually good.
report
I enjoyed it until about 4/5 hours in to space. Could deal with pirates, ally missions and ecological disasters till the cows came home. Could not deal with the grox. They broke the game for me and that was unforgivable.
I found that hours of persevering counted for squat against them and i found that even with money cheats (used them as a test) the grox would continue to be a javelin in my side with no “until I’m bigger” situation even hinting at presenting it’s self.
Investing so much time and effort in to something only to have a single decision ruin the game for you and not even make you fully aware the game is ruined until hours later is simply unforgivable. I do not want to learn a lesson from that mistake and take what i have learned with me on the next ten hour jaunt through the game. I do not want to re-do all that hard work so i can get back to that turning point (if I’m lucky enough to know where that is) and go in a different direction. I would have liked the ten hours i spent playing to have been more than an extended tutorial.
By all accounts you can either deal with the grox as enemies or ally with them and pretty much be thier lap dog with a bonus of the rest of the galaxy hating you for helping them.
This game has been confined to my “might play again if i’m really bored and it’s a game drought” pile.
If you are so curious that you are scouring forums and review sites for opinions of the games various facets i recommend you buy the standard edition game and see for your self. There is a devide on this game and you really wont know or even have a good idea of which side of that devide you will find yourself on until you’ve played it. If you don’t have the funds to buy this and have it be a waste of money i suggest you stick to what you know and buy “Run-of-the-mill-3:A mediocre adventure”
report