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 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.
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. :)
@roBurky
Where’s the owl?
I had almost forgotten about that book.
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
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.
As soon as the theme song from M.U.L.E. made it’s appearance, it had me.
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.
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…
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.
I’m sorry, I can’t hear you as I’m too busy sabotaging this game’s amazon score over SecuROM idiocy. :P
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?
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.
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…
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.
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)
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.
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″
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’. :)
This game is fucked, it totally sucks, and it is NOTHING like Black and White, Black and White was actually good.
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”