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.
Related Stories:
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.
I’m way more interested after reading this review.
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!
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?
@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!
I don’t understand. How is everyone playing Spore? The street date isn’t until Sunday?….
Everyone is pirates!
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.
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!
Devildog – Not in Europe, it isn’t.
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!
Spore released Sep 4th in Australia.
Today’s regions are: Europe, Japan, South America
Tomorrow’s release regions: North America, Asia Pacific
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! :(
Online retailers were posting it out around Wednesday so a lot of people got it early.
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.
@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?
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.
Does no autosave mean you can only save and quit, or that you just have to remember to manually save?
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?
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!
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.
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).
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.
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.
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’.
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.
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.
tis genius
Space Rangers means SOLD! to me.
Been playing for 10 hours now, pretty good!
Also: unclebul
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
Get it from Stardock. It’s fab.
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.
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.
But the question that nobody has answered is – has space been populated by hordes of multicoloured vagina monsters yet?
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.
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.
Actually, thinking about it, you know what the Civ phase most reminds me of? Mega-lo-Mania on the Amiga.
YES!
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!
I’m Shanuface, and my creations are gloriously rubbish. :)
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.
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
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.
Unsurprisngly, my Spore name would be The_B
Fear my creations of doom. And by doom I mean fail.
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
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.
@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.
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!
I’m finding it incredibly dull. And at the same time, I can’t believe i’m saying that…
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.