Spore: Things To Know…

Written by Kieron Gillen on September 5, 2008 at 11:38 am.

SPACE!!!!

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.

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Gravatar AbyssUK says:

But the question that nobody has answered is has space been populated my hordes of multicoloured penis monsters yet?

September 5th, 2008 at 11:50 am

Gravatar duel says:

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.

September 5th, 2008 at 11:52 am

Gravatar Mike says:

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.

September 5th, 2008 at 11:52 am

Gravatar Kieron Gillen says:

We should probably start listing names - I’m MissAdaLovelace.

KG

September 5th, 2008 at 11:55 am

Gravatar Mindtrap says:

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.

September 5th, 2008 at 11:59 am

Gravatar Turin Turambar says:

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

September 5th, 2008 at 11:59 am

Gravatar Bobsy says:

Aw, whatever happened to Brem X Jones? I loved that guy.

September 5th, 2008 at 12:03 pm

Gravatar Kieron Gillen says:

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

September 5th, 2008 at 12:04 pm

Gravatar Ian says:

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!

September 5th, 2008 at 12:06 pm

Gravatar Gap Gen says:

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.

September 5th, 2008 at 12:07 pm

Gravatar Mike says:

I’d quite like a BBC Wildlife add-on where David Attenborough narrates the entire life of your species. And sombre music plays.

September 5th, 2008 at 12:09 pm

Gravatar Yargh says:

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.

September 5th, 2008 at 12:16 pm

Gravatar Buckermann says:

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.

September 5th, 2008 at 12:20 pm

Gravatar SwiftRanger says:

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).

September 5th, 2008 at 12:29 pm

Gravatar Him says:

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.

September 5th, 2008 at 12:30 pm

Gravatar Yargh says:

@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.

September 5th, 2008 at 12:39 pm

Gravatar Alec Meer says:

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.

September 5th, 2008 at 12:40 pm

Gravatar Meat Circus says:

gypsumfantastic

September 5th, 2008 at 12:41 pm

Gravatar Man Raised By Puffins says:

I’m RaisedByPuffins, assuming my Creature Creator profile carries over.

September 5th, 2008 at 12:50 pm

Gravatar Josh says:

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?

September 5th, 2008 at 12:51 pm

Gravatar wut says:

“Funnily”??

September 5th, 2008 at 12:52 pm

Gravatar Jim Rossignol says:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/funnily

September 5th, 2008 at 12:54 pm

Gravatar Tom says:

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…

September 5th, 2008 at 12:56 pm

Gravatar Yargh says:

@Tom having a trade route open does help the relationship, but I still get regular messages about them losing interest in the alliance.

September 5th, 2008 at 12:59 pm

Gravatar The Sombrero Kid says:

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

September 5th, 2008 at 1:02 pm

Gravatar jamscones says:

jamscones

September 5th, 2008 at 1:05 pm

Gravatar Nimic says:

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.

September 5th, 2008 at 1:13 pm

Gravatar Commando says:

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.

September 5th, 2008 at 1:19 pm

Gravatar Kieron Gillen says:

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

September 5th, 2008 at 1:21 pm

Gravatar Paul Barnett says:

Has it got the girl gamer joy of the sims? When you say Space stage can I still play doll house dress up?

September 5th, 2008 at 1:28 pm

Gravatar ack says:

Which flavour of DRM comes along with the final release? That’s the point that will make/break my decission.

September 5th, 2008 at 1:30 pm

Gravatar Nimic says:

@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.

September 5th, 2008 at 1:34 pm

Gravatar framstick says:

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….

September 5th, 2008 at 1:41 pm

Gravatar Zeno says:

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.

September 5th, 2008 at 1:41 pm

Gravatar EyeMessiah says:

“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?

September 5th, 2008 at 1:43 pm

Gravatar Colthor says:

@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.

September 5th, 2008 at 1:44 pm

Gravatar Rob Lang says:

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.

September 5th, 2008 at 1:50 pm

Gravatar Razerious says:

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).

September 5th, 2008 at 1:59 pm

Gravatar CakeAddict says:

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.

September 5th, 2008 at 2:04 pm

Gravatar Kieron Gillen says:

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

September 5th, 2008 at 2:08 pm

Gravatar ILR says:

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.

September 5th, 2008 at 2:21 pm

Gravatar Jigglybean says:

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?

September 5th, 2008 at 2:22 pm

Gravatar Nimic says:

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.

September 5th, 2008 at 2:41 pm

Gravatar Noc says:

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)

September 5th, 2008 at 2:45 pm

Gravatar Him says:

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.

September 5th, 2008 at 4:26 pm

Gravatar SwiftRanger says:

“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).

September 5th, 2008 at 4:28 pm

Gravatar BKG says:

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?

September 5th, 2008 at 4:33 pm

Gravatar Fat says:

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.

September 5th, 2008 at 4:36 pm

Gravatar crisis says:

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.

September 5th, 2008 at 4:59 pm

Gravatar CubicU07 says:

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?

September 5th, 2008 at 5:08 pm

Gravatar RichPowers says:

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.

September 5th, 2008 at 5:24 pm

Gravatar A-Scale says:

I’m way more interested after reading this review.

September 5th, 2008 at 5:30 pm

Gravatar Baltech says:

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!

September 5th, 2008 at 5:56 pm

Gravatar chesh says:

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?

September 5th, 2008 at 6:02 pm

Gravatar EyeMessiah says:

@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!

September 5th, 2008 at 6:09 pm

Gravatar Devildog says:

I don’t understand. How is everyone playing Spore? The street date isn’t until Sunday?….

September 5th, 2008 at 6:45 pm

Gravatar EyeMessiah says:

Everyone is pirates!

September 5th, 2008 at 6:47 pm

Gravatar RC-1290 says:

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.

September 5th, 2008 at 6:50 pm

Gravatar Ranbir says:

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!

September 5th, 2008 at 6:52 pm

Gravatar Him says:

Devildog - Not in Europe, it isn’t.

September 5th, 2008 at 6:57 pm

Gravatar Devildog says:

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!

September 5th, 2008 at 6:59 pm

Gravatar Kirrus says:

Spore released Sep 4th in Australia.
Today’s regions are: Europe, Japan, South America
Tomorrow’s release regions: North America, Asia Pacific

September 5th, 2008 at 7:04 pm

Gravatar Shadman says:

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.

Exactly the same problem here, and I got the Galactic Edition too. I want to play! :(

September 5th, 2008 at 7:20 pm

Gravatar Commando says:

Online retailers were posting it out around Wednesday so a lot of people got it early.

September 5th, 2008 at 7:22 pm

Gravatar Dominic White says:

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.

September 5th, 2008 at 7:26 pm

Gravatar Gloria says:

@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?

September 5th, 2008 at 7:32 pm

Gravatar EyeMessiah says:

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.

September 5th, 2008 at 8:13 pm

Gravatar BobJustBob says:

Does no autosave mean you can only save and quit, or that you just have to remember to manually save?

September 5th, 2008 at 8:18 pm

Gravatar Mustache says:

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?

September 5th, 2008 at 8:33 pm

Gravatar Him says:

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!

September 5th, 2008 at 8:54 pm

Gravatar Benjamin Barker says:

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.

September 5th, 2008 at 8:57 pm

Gravatar Riotpoll says:

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).

September 5th, 2008 at 9:43 pm

Gravatar Alex says:

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.

September 5th, 2008 at 10:31 pm

Gravatar MetalCircus says:

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.

September 5th, 2008 at 11:14 pm

Gravatar SomeGuy says:

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’.

September 5th, 2008 at 11:56 pm

Gravatar MisterBritish says:

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.

September 6th, 2008 at 12:36 am

Gravatar Dominic White says:

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.

September 6th, 2008 at 12:46 am

Gravatar joesyze says:

tis genius

September 6th, 2008 at 12:52 am

Gravatar Pidesco says:

Space Rangers means SOLD! to me.

September 6th, 2008 at 1:07 am

Gravatar unclebulgaria says:

Been playing for 10 hours now, pretty good!

Also: unclebul

September 6th, 2008 at 2:58 am

Gravatar MetalCircus says:

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

September 6th, 2008 at 3:04 am

Gravatar MCHN says:

Get it from Stardock. It’s fab.

September 6th, 2008 at 6:41 am

Gravatar Kismet says:

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.

September 6th, 2008 at 7:28 am

Gravatar specky spore-eyes says:

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.

September 6th, 2008 at 8:09 am

Gravatar itsonlydanny says:

But the question that nobody has answered is - has space been populated by hordes of multicoloured vagina monsters yet?

September 6th, 2008 at 9:13 am

Gravatar Meat Circus says:

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.

September 6th, 2008 at 9:56 am

Gravatar Esha says:

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.

September 6th, 2008 at 10:26 am

Gravatar Meat Circus says:

Actually, thinking about it, you know what the Civ phase most reminds me of? Mega-lo-Mania on the Amiga.

YES!

September 6th, 2008 at 10:37 am

Gravatar Optimaximal says:

Has it got the girl gamer joy of the sims? When you say Space stage can I still play doll house dress up?

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!

September 6th, 2008 at 12:05 pm

Gravatar Shanucore says:

I’m Shanuface, and my creations are gloriously rubbish. :)

September 6th, 2008 at 4:19 pm

Gravatar Orange says:

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.

September 6th, 2008 at 7:06 pm

Gravatar teo says:

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

September 6th, 2008 at 9:29 pm

Gravatar Jim Rossignol says:

You don’t tell someone to read a book for 1000 pages before it gets good

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.

September 6th, 2008 at 9:31 pm

Gravatar The_B says:

Unsurprisngly, my Spore name would be The_B

Fear my creations of doom. And by doom I mean fail.

September 6th, 2008 at 10:27 pm

Gravatar PJ says:

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

September 7th, 2008 at 12:44 am

Gravatar roBurky says:

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.

September 7th, 2008 at 3:54 am

Gravatar Krupo says:

@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.

September 7th, 2008 at 8:10 am

Gravatar jigglybean says:

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!

September 7th, 2008 at 8:26 am

Gravatar Butler` says:

I’m finding it incredibly dull. And at the same time, I can’t believe i’m saying that…

September 7th, 2008 at 12:57 pm

Gravatar Koldun(as) says:

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.

September 7th, 2008 at 3:37 pm

Gravatar Nick says:

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.

September 7th, 2008 at 4:55 pm