By Kieron Gillen on October 20th, 2008 at 12:33 pm.
The newly released v1.02 patch of Spore has actually caused a minor furore with one of its changes. Is it that you can hold down control in sporepedia to select multiple things? Nay. Is it the improved gait for two legged creatures? Nope. Is it the fact that there’s an occasional cubic planet thrown in? Why, yes, that’s it entirely. Here’s an enbiggened image of the planet. What do you make of it? A poll and my own thoughts on this clearly crucial PC gaming issue beneath the cut…
The argument against it is that its thrown all the laws of physics out the window. Which is true, but that’s not really why people are angry with it. The game’s already well divorced from any real scientific underpinings. What this is really about is its symbolic nature. First real content added to the game, and it’s something that is from the cute rather than simulator side of the issue. This means that they can take this as evidence of where Maxis’ priorities lie.
Perhaps more importantly though is the fact it’s an easy, obvious thing to go for. When a fanbase is angry at a game, they choose an aspect of it and magnify it so it encompasses everything that’s wrong. If they’d just slipped in cuboid planets without bringing attention to it in a patch, it’d have probably just been a fun occasional Easter Egg that fits in with the fabric of the general cartoon-heavy approach of the game. Since they’ve trumpeted it, it’s a flashpoint. As loot-glint was to Thief: Deadly Shadows and scaleable enemies was to Oblivion, I suspect Cube Planets will be to the disappointed parts of Spore fans.
They’ll be an added “n” here, but there’s nowt we can do about it. Some manner of bug in our poll system. Man! RPS so needs a patch too.
My take? Option 3. Of course, this is all based upon it not being a gag from Maxis, as the only screenshot I can find online is one a Maxis chap lobbed up online. That’d be very mean.
So – your take? And obvious subtleties in your position can be explained below…
20/10/2008 at 12:36 Gap Gen says:
Until they add magnetohydrodynamics to the space stage, I refuse to buy this game.
20/10/2008 at 12:37 Adam Hepton says:
I’m more bothered about being bored senseless by the game itself, to be honest.
20/10/2008 at 12:39 Urael says:
Oh no you don’t, Maxis! We’ll take this fight to the four corners of the Earth!
(sorry)
20/10/2008 at 12:47 Gap Gen says:
Eight, I guess.
20/10/2008 at 12:51 Sideath says:
I am relatively bored of Spore already, so I guess, I don’t really care?
20/10/2008 at 12:52 Cataclysm says:
I don’t mind particularly, its more content, as such. But I think they could of spent their time on something a little more important for this patch.
It kinda bugs me a bit that they started off with an idea of a game that was very scientific and very deep and over the years of development, strayed to a rather cartoony – not so scientific game.
When they put the release date off time and time again I imagined it must be getting fine tuned with the amazing mechanics and instead it felt like it was only half of what they intended on creating.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the game and find it fun to create new creatures and play them through the ages, but it was rather dumbed down from its original idea.
20/10/2008 at 12:54 Surlyben says:
Cube planets seem to be pretty rare in-game… I certainly haven’t seen one yet.
20/10/2008 at 12:54 Harmen says:
It looks like a dice. A we know god’s view about those :)
20/10/2008 at 12:57 Dinger says:
It would be cool, if Spore had any sort of notion of how environment affects the life it produces. I mean, wouldn’t a flat, cubic planet produce interesting right-angled critters, who built spherical cities and flew around in blocky spaceships? That’d be cool.
But Spore doesn’t allow for that sort of meaning. So the net result is: what difference does it make?
(Scaled enemies in Oblivion, on the other hand, make it one of the few games that rewards you for not going up levels).
20/10/2008 at 12:58 The Sombrero Kid says:
give me money and i’ll turn all the stuff in your favorite game into crates!!!!!! Time to Crate reduction is never a good thing damn you, even if they are the biggest crates ever seen!
20/10/2008 at 13:00 The Sombrero Kid says:
@Cataclysm
believe me they didn’t spend any time on this whatsoever! that i imagine is what people take offence to ‘you’re charging me for this????!!!!????’
20/10/2008 at 13:04 Seniath says:
Where’s the “I stopped caring about Spore ages ago” option?
20/10/2008 at 13:06 Man Raised by Puffins says:
Looks like they still haven’t fixed the planet transition crash bug which is currently stopping me from playing the bally thing. :sadface:
Also, yay for cubes!
20/10/2008 at 13:12 futage says:
*collects up all the yawns and builds a yawnocopter*
20/10/2008 at 13:13 Heliocentric says:
Spore is to science what lolcats are to art. Spore is a display of scientific concepts. Not all concepts, not properly. But lolcats are not the benchmark of artistic application. In short, STFU*! Spore has terrible problems, this is not one of them. The meaninglessness of design past the bacterial stage. The limited topology of the game, the digital wrongs management. Square planets are funny, go make some square people in square houses who drive square cars!
*directed at the complainers.
20/10/2008 at 13:14 StalinsGhost says:
Voted Playful Content. Though I think it would be better implemented as some kind of “Cuboidization Array” – an item you place on the planet (ala’ Spice Stores) that allows for this dramatic physics reconfiguration.
20/10/2008 at 13:16 Dizet Sma says:
Will there be a d4 world as well? Perhaps filled with Gygaxians?
20/10/2008 at 13:17 Meat Circus says:
The Sporelash is so last month.
But we haven’t had the Sporelashlash renaissance yet.
20/10/2008 at 13:26 Rob Lang says:
I don’t mind the square planet, it’s a bit of fun. I’m with StalinsGhost in that it should be a nice terraforming thing.
I’d perferred that they put some game engine changes out but they tend to take longer to test and check balance before throwing it out there. Imagine the irate fans if they rushed out a series of poorly tested engine changed to find that they aren’t ideal.
Still enjoying Spore, although the Mrs lost interest after Tribal. She just starts again and has fun with a new utterly unlikely creature.
I’d still like to see some assistance in keeping a small empire running. After you have only small number of colonies, you seem to be battered with things you need to do, often with time limits. If they could reduce the rate of that, it would be fab or give me planet improvements that stop those things altogether, then it would allow me to explore and trade more, which I what I like doing.
20/10/2008 at 13:32 Jerricho says:
How long before someone terraforms a cube to be their giant space companion? I wuv my cube!
COMPANION CUBE 4EVA!
Seriously though, there is so much wrong in Spore that this is a bit galling. Trivial game tweaks are of little use to a player unable to play past game breaking bugs lke memory leaks causing the planet transition bug. I have several planets in a savegame that I can’t land on now. Luckily I save before I land on a planet.
20/10/2008 at 13:36 Drakkheim says:
Man, I was hoping they would add ‘Fun and / or Compelling reason to play’ to this patch.. maybe we’ll get it. Oh well.. back to X3:TC for me.. at least that’s a universe worth exploring.
20/10/2008 at 13:36 Ginger Yellow says:
“First real content added to the game, and it’s something that is from the cute rather than simulator side of the issue. This means that they can take this as evidence of where Maxis’ priorities lie. ”
For fuck’s sake, this is Maxis we’re talking about. We’re lucky they didn’t charge us £15 for the privilege of having cubic planets. Anyone who didn’t think Spore was going to be a vehicle for endless content packs is a fool.
20/10/2008 at 13:39 Morph says:
Aren’t options 1 and 3 on the poll kind of the same? I want to vote for both.
20/10/2008 at 13:43 MacBeth says:
At this point I’m feeling vaguely justified in never getting that interested in Spore… however my main reason for commenting is…
MORMON CHURCH BANNER ADVERTISING WTF!??!?!?
20/10/2008 at 13:43 Richard Beer says:
The most critical update Spore needs is a way for people who ordered the game through EA’s digital download service to get their money back for being fooled into thinking this was a deep, rewarding and enjoyable GAME, rather than a child’s toy.
Bitter? Pint of Old Peculiar, please barman.
20/10/2008 at 13:45 MacBeth says:
Without the editing facility I am compelled to add:
MORMON CHURCH BANNER ADVERTISING ON RPS WTF!??!?!?
in case anyone thought I meant ads within Spore.
20/10/2008 at 13:45 ChaosSmurf says:
I agree with all the statements asking for a “Spore is shit” option >.>
20/10/2008 at 13:49 Bobsy says:
Eh.
If it’s one cube to every thousand spheres it’s fine. If it’s any more it’s an unnecessary Silly.
20/10/2008 at 13:52 Bobsy says:
Oh, and to everyone who’s decided that this is an appropriate place to assault Spore as a game, it isn’t.
If people continue to like something that you don’t like, it’s not good behaviour to keep moaning about it as if it’s an affront to you.
People like Spore. This is not a problem.
20/10/2008 at 14:06 Turin Turambar says:
Yeah sure, as if there are spore fans in the first place to have a fanbase angry at the game who dislike cubic planets.
:P
20/10/2008 at 14:08 Ben Abraham says:
ALL HAIL THE ADDED ‘n’!!!!!
20/10/2008 at 14:14 Heliocentric says:
World of goo adds square goo!
20/10/2008 at 14:21 simonkaye says:
I’m not sure I’d compare the silly fun of cuboid planets to the INTRINSIC AND FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM that is scaling difficulty in Oblivion.
20/10/2008 at 14:34 George says:
I didn’t get the impression they were moving in a particular direction on the cute/gameplay conflict yet. The two announced expansion packs seem to focus on the different sides of the struggle, and I’d imagine comparative sales figures will determine where they go from there.
20/10/2008 at 14:39 rocketman71 says:
As long as it’s free and not one of those BS packs they’re going to start shoveling…
Spore is stupid anyway. And so is Riccitiello.
20/10/2008 at 14:47 Tom says:
This has got to be one of the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I can’t believe this is even considered news.
In the famous words of what’s-his-face “IT’S A PUPPET!!!”
20/10/2008 at 14:56 Leon Lederman's Weenie Shrinker says:
Gag from Maxis? As I recall, Maxis was originally making a game that would have been a groundbreaking simulation engine with at least one foot in the realm of possibility (you know, to keep it interesting). This stinks of EA, not Maxis, and is just more salt in the sucking wound.
Oh well, as long as the rest of the game turned out to have little or nothing to do with science, what the hell?
We are not as amused as one might think. This is a cool-whip moustache on a smirking quasar. Here we have EA mocking the people it suckered into a big fat bait-and-switch, just as they now mock their entire customer base, claiming that only a handful know what DRM might actually be.
By the way, this is the same Electronic Arts that turned the potential title of the decade into “Peggle: God Did It.”
20/10/2008 at 14:57 Theoban says:
Ech it’s a free update. I’m quite ambivalent about this. (Although not so ambivalent that I’m not willing to comment on the matter.)
20/10/2008 at 14:58 Ergates says:
[-INSERT WEIGHTED COMPANION CUBE JOKE HERE-]
20/10/2008 at 15:01 AbyssUK says:
Do you like Phil Collins ?
20/10/2008 at 15:02 yhancik says:
I’m slightly more annoyed by the fact that the game keeps crashing with every released patch. I really don’t know what the heck they’re doing here..
20/10/2008 at 15:02 yhancik says:
*crashing more
(my galactic empire for an edit button :p)
20/10/2008 at 15:04 Joe Average says:
Firebomb Maxis!!
20/10/2008 at 15:06 AbyssUK says:
ignore my comment above…. replace with
Do you like Huey Lewis and the news?
and then it makes sense…
20/10/2008 at 15:12 Zuffox says:
Almost 50 comments and no Borg reference?
Your community sucks, RPS.
20/10/2008 at 15:14 Leon Lederman's Weenie Shrinker says:
By the way, after wasting a quarter ounce of fairly nice cannabis during the fortnight following the release of spore, I’ve found myself reinstalling Sims 2. Guess what I found?
Sims 2 (and all the Maxis games prior to Societies) have infinitely more depth and replayability than the puddle of piss that Spore turned out to be. Now they want to give us cubic plants with a wry grin? Why not cylindrical or toroid heavenly bodies then? Why stop there? Where are all the flatworlds? You know, the 6,000 year-old varieties.
This is EA openly mocking us, because they believe they paid out enough for the surprisingly positive mainstream reviews to keep the spin spinning, while in the same breath they’re just as likely to introduce something cutesey and pretend gravity works sideways 50% of the time as well.
They’re just mocking us because they believe they’ve gotten away with it. No remorse whatsoever after fooling us all into paying perhaps a billion dollars for pokemon when we were promised something completely different.
Sure, I wanted to believe, even after getting the shaft. I waited long enough to insist on giving it the benefit of the doubt, but a month later I must admit there’s nothing beneath the surface but more surface. There are fan-boys out there, legion in number, who still refuse to admit they got screwed. EA is simply capitalizing on that, and they’ll stop at nothing to maintain the momentum of their false positive spin, so long as they think they can get away with it.
Every respectable game critic on the planet should re-review spore now that it’s perfectly clear what EA is doing with it, and give it the marks it deserves, before more suckers (RPS’s readers especially) waste another dime on those cubical snake-oil swindlers.
What’s wrong with you?
20/10/2008 at 15:15 Ergates says:
It does?
20/10/2008 at 15:21 Gap Gen says:
I can just imagine an EA exec, cackling in his oak-paneled office “If we sell products, then people will give us their money! BWUHAHAHACAPITALISM!” and then they have to have a lie down.
20/10/2008 at 15:22 Leon Lederman's Tinfoil Hat says:
Everywhere I’ve looked, editor reviews have been mysteriously positive, while player/viewer/reader reviews have been invariably weighted toward the conclusion that the game barely qualifies as a game at all.
How do you account for this cognitive dissonance? Payola. That’s the only reasonable answer. Nobody liked it but the reviewers and a handful of delusional customers who are still trying their damnedest to get their money’s worth, and anyone who’s played this load of dingo’s kidneys knows they never will. Every mainstream review was far too kind to be true.
You, the professional reviewers, are all complicit in the theft of countless dollars wasted by gamers on this steaming pile of beta demo. I hope you can sleep at night.
20/10/2008 at 15:29 Theory says:
I’m not mad! You’re all mad!
20/10/2008 at 15:30 Gabanski83 says:
I’m a little disappointed they haven’t added other comedy planets in really. Where are the giant discworlds on the backs of turtles? Huge Dyson Spheres? Exploded planets held together with travel tubes? Sentient planets, like the Galactic Bank? I’m bored of the traditional planets. I want to go out and stumble over some really bloody wierd planets.
20/10/2008 at 15:34 noom says:
That anybody could get angry about this is due to nothing more than the knives-out-for-EA attitude everybody has over the DRM thingum. Such a minor addition barely even warrants a reaction as far as I can see.
To be honest I find this aggressive consumer rights shit to be a ridiculous result of silly Americanised capitalist ideals. The kinda bullshit that gives everybody this wanting-their-slice-of-the-pie mentality that contributes to our culture being the cess pool that it is.
Hrm, got a little carried away there. I do apologize…
20/10/2008 at 15:37 Leon Lederman's Tinfoil Hat says:
During these times of economic crisis, many hardcore gamers can’t afford more than one or two games in a decidedly busy release season. All the money wasted on spore because of the waffling reviews from the sites we tend to trust have left the cupboards bare, and denied real developers such as Stardock and 2D Boy and the team behind Multiwinia empty-handed for their genuine efforts.
Any professional reviewer who gave spore positive marks despite what you knew in your hearts after playing it should be ashamed. How much did they pay you?
As potentially interesting as Sims 3 promises to be, there’s no way in hell I will pre-order it after SC:Societies and now this mirror-polished turd.
I’m sorry to admit that common-sense dictates that I should necessarily pirate Sims 3 and decide for myself, if our most trusted reviewers can no longer be taken at their word.
Yes, I’m done ranting. But you still have a chance to recant your reviews and come clean regarding Spore. Tell the truth. Reader trust is not an easy thing to come by, and pretty much impossible to regain once it’s lost.
20/10/2008 at 15:38 Leon Lederman's Weenie Shrinker says:
@Gabanski83,
That’s right! It’s turtles, all the way down…
20/10/2008 at 15:43 PHeMoX says:
Cubic planets? They can’t be serious…
20/10/2008 at 15:46 Leon Lederman's Weenie Shrinker says:
I should point out for posterity that Zero Punctuation didn’t whitewash us in his review of this hyper-hyped non-title. Is Ben really the only game reviewer with any integrity left?
20/10/2008 at 15:46 Ergates says:
“There are fan-boys out there, legion in number, who still refuse to admit they got screwed”.
Or maybe they just like it? I mean, call me crazy, but is that not at least a possibility?
“Everywhere I’ve looked, editor reviews have been mysteriously positive, while player/viewer/reader reviews have been invariably weighted toward the conclusion that the game barely qualifies as a game at all.”
Apart from the previously mentioned legion presumably. The only way you could reach the conclusion that all player/reader reviews are negative is if you have dismissed all the positive feedback as being from delusioned “fan-boys” who’s opnions don’t matter. Which is hardly fair.
20/10/2008 at 15:56 Gap Gen says:
Also, much of the negative hype about Spore is from people who didn’t play it because of the DRM thing.
20/10/2008 at 15:57 Leon Lederman's Weenie Shrinker says:
The headline should read:
“Again, EA shows open contempt for the hand that feeds it.”
20/10/2008 at 16:02 Leon Lederman's Weenie Shrinker says:
Hmmm, ok, better headline:
“Let Them Eat Spore”
Goodnight.
20/10/2008 at 16:07 RPS says:
Greetings, non-hivemind. Further comments consisting of abuse or crazed, baseless conspiracy theories will suffer THE BUTTON OF A THOUSAND DOOMS (wot says ‘delete’ on it), as a few have already. Go do your general Spore-bashing in the forum if you must (though still expect the banhammer if you behave like a screaming meanie).
20/10/2008 at 16:09 The Hammer says:
ROFL.
Leon. I think it is time you settled down now, okay? You think a game isn’t very good, and others do not agree. These are opinions, and opinions aren’t to be attacked in such angry way.
20/10/2008 at 16:14 caramelcarrot says:
I fully support examples of non-isotropic laws of physics.
So there.
20/10/2008 at 16:14 Leon Lederman's Weenie Shrinker says:
@Ergates
I didn’t suggest that “all player/reader reviews are negative”.
I’m comparing editor reviews of the game, scores in particular, with player review scores, each presumably averaged.
There is an obvious discrepancy between what paid reviewers awarded to Spore, and the scores compiled from reader reviews have awarded it, on every site I’ve yet found with a professional spore review.
You seem to be the one jumping to the conclusion that the vast majority are people who like the game. In fact, most paid reviews are positive, and most customer reviews are negative.
Perhaps you can invent a plausible explanation for that. Good luck.
20/10/2008 at 16:17 datter says:
If nothing else, this is pretty damned weak.
20/10/2008 at 16:18 caramelcarrot says:
Obvious reasons:
- Online player reviews are biased towards hardcore players who have certain expectations about depth and complexity
- Reviews are targeted with the younger market in mind
- Reviewers don’t get to test replayability quite so much, given the amount of time they have to play with
20/10/2008 at 16:26 Alec Meer says:
- and reviewers aren’t as highly-strung as your average AIM.
20/10/2008 at 16:29 Ergates says:
Additional potential reason:
People are more likely to rant about a game online if they don’t like it than if they do like it. More specifically – readers are more likely to post a suggested score on a review site if they disagree with a review than if they agree with it. E.g. “that’s never an 8, more like a 4″ kind of thing.
I didn’t jump to a conclusions either way. I honestly don’t know if the vast majority like the game or dislike the game. I was merely pointing out an aparant contradiction in your posts: If there are legion fan-boys (who presumably, being fan-boys, like the title), then reader feedback cannot be invariably negative.
20/10/2008 at 16:29 Ian says:
Anybody who bought Spore expecting depth and then hated the game for lacking it frankly deserve what they got. I bought Spore as an amusing distraction (which it was and still is, for me) but anybody who even had half an eye on coverage before release surely realised it was never going to be some defining moment in gaming?
I don’t buy into what your average gamer thinks of a game any more than I automatically assume your average professional review is correct because too many gamers judge a game by their pre-release expectation, not by what’s actually in front of them.
20/10/2008 at 16:30 Ian says:
Oh, incidentally I think the cubic planets are pretty daft but I’m not sure why it bothers me in a game such as this.
20/10/2008 at 16:31 Leon Lederman's Weenie Shrinker says:
@RPS:
I didn’t write a positive review of a shallow rubbish game. You did.
If your knee-jerk response to free speech is to play the “conspiracy theory card” rather than honest response to the accusation, you may as well use the big, red, candy-like button of censorship on us all. Fat lot of good that will do RPS or the readers whose best interests it’s meant to serve.
I’ve merely asked, in a roundabout way, for a plausible explanation for the review score discrepancy we’ve all observed both here and on other review sites.
Obviously you’re under no obligation to explain yourself, but I’m not the only one wondering about it. We’re here right now, so here’s where I’m inquiring.
Other reviewers elsewhere would serve their readership well to answer the same question, but again, they’re not obliged to justify their strangely positive reviews of a crappy game any more than RPS is.
However, that doesn’t change the fact that the question begs itself, and failure to answer provides a slightly more satisfying answer than no answer at all, or worse, censorship.
I would simply very much like to know whether or not the RPS editors would write the same review again, or if in retrospect the review would not be quite so forgiving if it had to be written again today. And if not, why not?
We’ve all still got some measure of nasty taste in our mouths nearly two months after Spore’s release to disappointed crowds. I’d just like to know why paid reviewers seem to have almost invariably painted such a different picture of this objective truth.
Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy RPS. It’s been in my daily reading for about a year. I would like to think I can trust RPS for objective game reviews before I spend what little money I have these days to spare on games. Isn’t that why we’re all here?
20/10/2008 at 16:34 Heiocentric says:
As videogaiden put it, paid reviewers are the publishers girlfriends, bad mouth them too much? No early game access*.
Give a 10, and you might well get the exclusive on the sequel. Its an unhealthy relationship.
*see Ubisoft and 1up
20/10/2008 at 16:34 futage says:
@Leon
While I agree that Spore was rubbish as both a game and/or a ‘software toy’ I disagree that there is anything sinister behind any discrepancy between ‘player’ and critic review scores.
Critics and just-players are looking for different things. you might see that as a problem but it’s what pushes ‘the art’ forwards. As a player, I hated Spore. It bored me to tears during every single phase and I only continued playing because I thought the good bit must be just around the next corner.
If I was critiquing it, though, I’d admire the way it challenges notions of what a game (particularly a big budget, big selling game) can be, what form it can take. I’d admire all the procedural stuff and the way it turns consumers into creators via its online stuff. As a whole, I think it’s unsuccessful when taken on its own terms and what someone said about it being a bait and switch hits the nail squarely on the head – but that’s just (good) marketing for you. But inspecting the components, there’s some clever and important stuff in there and that’s what the better critics were liking, I think.
I do agree that the bulk of professional reviews were too positive on the whole. And those second wave reviews along the lines of “give it a chance, space is where it’s at!” were bollocks. Digging themselves deeper, like. But that’s hype, innit. EA don’t spend money on hype for the sake of it, they do it because it skews reviews and generates consumer interest. To suggest that reviewers were (en masse) directly paid to give overly positive reviews is unnecessarily insulting to those reviewers and really warrants an apology. It’s a systemic thing and it’s been like this forever.
20/10/2008 at 16:41 ImperialCreed says:
A cubed planet here or there is a welcome addition I’d argue, in keeping with the theme of Spore (cutesy semi-sim/experimental mad house). I mean, you can already spray paint planets a desired colour, so being having to have a few different shapes doesn’t seem all that strange.
I just wish they’d focused a bit more on patching up the game’s problems, like they did in the previous patch (tweaking the difficulty for example). There’s a lot about it that still needs fixing or improving, especially in the Space Stage.
Ship to ship combat is woeful, as is the diplomacy system and some of the enemy AI, and the trading system… I could go on and on.
20/10/2008 at 16:43 Ergates says:
There is a difference between asking for an explanation of a perceived discrepancy and making an accusation of corruption.
20/10/2008 at 16:43 Theoban says:
I enjoyed Spore. It wasn’t hugely deep, nor the ‘greatest game of all time’ but it was fun. At least for me. Can’t games just be fun?
And can’t we respect other people’s opinions anymore?
I’m reminded of this xkcd comic.
20/10/2008 at 16:44 Bobby says:
@Cataclysm
It kinda bugs me a bit that they started off with an idea of a game that was very scientific and very deep and over the years of development, strayed to a rather cartoony – not so scientific game
Uh, from the initial 2005 GDC demo it was more or less an animated clay modeler, I don’t think it ever aimed to be very scientific. The one point Wright immediately emphasized during the presentation was giving the user means to express himself.
20/10/2008 at 16:44 Jim Rossignol says:
I’ve enjoyed Spore immensely. It was actually the space bit I had problems with, as mentioned in our positive review. I’d say precisely the same thing again, because my experiences with it have not changed.
Spore is an excellent game, and I’d recommend anyone to play it.
Probably worth mentioning, actually, that our verdict included me saying how much the space part infuriated me, and John saying he didn’t even get past the tribal bit. All in all not exactly in need of explanation. An ambitious game that we mostly liked, but with some flaws? Not out of the norm for half the games we talk about, I’d say.
We definitely don’t do those, so can’t be trusted.
20/10/2008 at 16:46 Alec Meer says:
Ergates speaks the truth. The former merits a response, the latter is just an insult.
20/10/2008 at 16:46 shon says:
I feel like the only person who actually enjoys the game. It’s the definition of casual in that I pick it up, play for awhile and put it back down. It is so low pressure that it is almost a sedative. I appreciate that without feeling the need to condemn it.
Know what game I really hate? I can’t remember the name of it because I got over it.
I have to say though, when I had the option to patch my game last night I resisted because of how badly the last patch broke the game. When I saw the Cube listed in the patch notes I assumed it was another terraforming category like crystals and tentacles. I might have tried it if I knew it was Cube planets.
20/10/2008 at 16:49 dhex says:
/david icke
it’s really quite simple, you see…spore…spore…spores come from mushrooms…mushrooms are a symbol of many ancient pagan societies which practiced human sacrifice…the game allows you to play as a “god” but what is a god in this context? one that creates little creatures to jump around. so the global reptoid elite expects us to be hypnotized by this fiendish update of the thomist universe, thus keeping us in slavery.
their servants in the mainstream media play along, bribed with mind-erased sex slaves, and we follow blindly, like sheep.
[...]
that will be $30 please.
20/10/2008 at 16:54 Leon Lederman's Weenie Shrinker says:
@futage
I appreciate your honesty. If only more reviewers had said what they meant the first time, I might have cash on-hand for Fallout 3 when the bomb drops next week.
But gamers in general are not morons. Even the dullards who make up the bulk of our ranks *must* be getting wise to EA’s marketing scams by now, having watched so many of their favorite franchises blatantly and unapologetically disappoint in this manner over the past few years. The trend is getting obvious to the point where the publisher doesn’t even deny it once they’re caught. They just smile, and pony up the next fake product.
Surely someone at EA must realize that gamers are getting wise to the “unfaithful girlfriend” role that EA seems to think they’ve mastered. *sigh*
When a company’s bottom line is their only concern, and they burn the customer again and again and again, surely they don’t believe they will survive the reputation for shameless deceit they’re actively building.
Then again, the evidence points to a publisher who is willing lie and steal until the very last moment. It sort of reminds me of standard operating procedure for any number of today’s governments.
Perhaps they *will* continue to get away with it for some time yet, but “pushing the art forward” it is not.
20/10/2008 at 16:55 Noc says:
On the issue of reviewer/player score discrepancies . . . could it, possibly, be because a player who is angry and disgusted with a game is more likely to run out to the internet and vent his ire in a player review than one who thought it was pretty alright?
Your argument would have more weight if there was any evidence at all that the player review scores are in any way representative of the median reaction of players, as opposed to the reaction of the most vocal fraction of the minority.
20/10/2008 at 17:03 Gap Gen says:
I think the space bit suffered from Viva Pinata-itis, and the patch went some way towards fixing it. Basically, it’s not a proper strategy game a-la Imperium Galactica or Gal Civ 2, but it’s too stressful, what with all the events, that it doesn’t feel like a toy either. I mean, you put a million turrets on your planet but if you don’t deign to grace them with your presence when someone attacks, you still lose.
20/10/2008 at 17:07 Kieron Gillen says:
I wish someone would give RPS some payola. That’d be awesome.
Leon: We’re not talking to you seriously because you’ve basically got two points…
i) Why is there a discrepancy between user and critic’s reviews?
ii) It’s because we’re all bribed. It has to be. There is no other possibility.
The first one is worth talking about. Saying the latter means that we don’t feel the need to debate it with you. You’ve just insulted me in as about as grievous a fashion as you can.
It’s especially ludicrous when applied to RPS. For all the money we’ve made off in RPS, in the whole year we’ve ran it, we could have earned by ourselves in a month by doing real work. Do you think if money was a motivation any of us would be doing this?
KG
20/10/2008 at 17:13 ZenArcade says:
I think it looks nice!
20/10/2008 at 17:15 Ian says:
@ Kieron: Sounds like something somebody who’s trying to hide the bribes they accept would say!
Whaddya say to that, eh? EH?
Case closed, methinks.
20/10/2008 at 17:17 Kieron Gillen says:
This made me wonder a bit, actually. I can’t get to Spore’s metacritic page now, but the Gamespot scores are 8.6 Average for Critics and 7.7 average for users, with close to 4,500 users voting.
EDIT: Actually, it’s working again. Metacritic’s user score is waayyyyy lower. Critic’s 85 and user’s 45. That’s a much more significant difference. That said, MC has only 1100 votes compared to the 4500 of GameSpot’s system.
KG
20/10/2008 at 17:17 fearian says:
*reads pages of review discusion*
I… Don’t mind cube planets vOv
20/10/2008 at 17:18 Noc says:
@Kieron: Well, the “income” you get from RPS clearly isn’t taking into account all the corporate bribes you receive to masquerade transparent corporate advertising as independent journalism.
Unless they’ve been docking you for, umm, pointing out all the things you didn’t like about the game. You guys really should try harder; there’s no money in being corporate tools if you aren’t even going to make an effort at delivering unanimous and unequivocal praise.
Rock Paper Shotgun: They’re not just duplicitous tools of the Man, they’re not even very good at it.
20/10/2008 at 17:19 Kieron Gillen says:
We’d love to sell out! IF ONLY WE COULD FIND SOMEONE WHO’D BUY.
KG
20/10/2008 at 17:19 Flappybat says:
Waiting for ring worlds.
20/10/2008 at 17:23 Gap Gen says:
Again, I metacritic is being slow, but if the user reviews are weighted by a huge number who gave it 1% or whatever solely due to the DRM, it’s not really statistically significant in terms of the actual game itself.
20/10/2008 at 17:27 Gap Gen says:
EDIT: Looking at a few negative comments this doesn’t seem to be the case. There may still be selection effects for people who are unhappy being more likely to post user reviews, or possibly that its target audience (i.e. not the hardcore crowd) not being so likely to post reviews.
20/10/2008 at 17:28 Flappybat says:
I think when critical reviews are better than user reviews is always down to hype. The title was overhyped, not as badly as Black And White but it’s comparable.
Journos go in, world weary blokes that they are and look at what’s there, maybe they tut tut at the lack of 4D Toast Racks that the developers promised but mostly only deal with what the game has in relation to other games.
Users go in after months of hype and compare it to wonderful imaginary games in their mind and then cry on forums that the real world is never as good as your imagination.
The motto of the story is that you should put yourself in a coma and live in the magical world of your imagination.
20/10/2008 at 17:30 Ian says:
@KG: Perhaps as part of eventual subscription stuff you can charge an optional extra fiver for those who wish to vote on what score/reception RPS should give games?
20/10/2008 at 17:30 roBurky says:
I… don’t understand how someone would complain about this? Or why you think people would? It’s a cube planet! Awesome!
20/10/2008 at 17:32 Acosta says:
Aaah, the awesome world of videogame journalism: brabes, expensive cars, bitches, coke and the terrific feeling of being rich with the mountains of money producers gave us for our writing. Dolce Vita.
In other news, Spore was liked by certain persons, disliked by others. Go figure. Funny to see that even in a blog like RPS there are review crybabies “why did you like this game!, WHY!?”.
20/10/2008 at 17:35 Noc says:
Still, Gap Gen, I’m looking at the Metacritic player reviews too, and I’m seeing a lot (even just on the first page) of 0s, 2s and 3s for “I really didn’t like the game.”
It may just be a matter of players defaulting to grading on the 10 point spread (0 for “I didn’t like it” and 10 for “I really liked it”) and reviewers using the three-point spread (6 for “mediocre,” 10 for “near perfect,” and 1-5 for “Unplayable or otherwise broken.”) So a player who’s really disappointed with a game will give it a 2, while a reviewer who’s really disappointed with it will give it a 6.
With this logic, actually, the score discrepancy is a lot closer; 8.5 is a slightly above average score on the three-point spread, and 4.5 is slightly below average on the 10-point spread. It would be interesting to see how prevalent this logic is on Metacritic. I’ll have to check it out sometime when I’ve more time on my hands and Metacritic is being less slow.
20/10/2008 at 17:38 Ian says:
@ Noc: Exactly, it bugs me when so many people won’t buy a game that [Their Preferred Review Site] gives a 7/10 or less or something like it even though that sort of review is usually saying, “This is a decent game.”
20/10/2008 at 17:39 Acosta says:
Ian, what an awesome idea!. Mini-bribes from users are the new hot thing. Actually, it could be an auction, the one with the higher bid decides the score and tone.
20/10/2008 at 17:53 futage says:
@Leon
I think in any field there are those who do it primarily for the love of [the end product] and those who want to make as much money as possible. Expecting EA to be at the love end of that spectrum would be naive in the extreme.
@Theoban
The whole act of critiquing/reviewing kinda implies that a thing (game in this case) can be judged, at least to a to a degree, objectively. That’s part of the purpose of a review, really – to intelligently assess how successful a thing is in terms of what it set out to do. There’ll be subjectivity in there, of course, but I think the intent is for reviews to move towards an objective appraisal.
Something being enjoyable isn’t the same as something being good (there are some terrible films which I enjoy enormously and some brilliant films I intensely dislike) and a critic will (where appropriate) tend to separate these things where an average user will not.
20/10/2008 at 19:14 Duoae says:
@ Macbeth – You’re getting mormon ads…. i’m getting busty girls screensaver ads.
Now, i’m not going to say that the advertising overlords are scanning our browser history but…. you’ve got to stop watching that Mormon pr0n. It’s ruining your eyesight!
On topic! I don’t care about Spore one way or the other since on the one hand i have friends who say it’s a boring, empty game and on the other i can’t abide the limited installs, online authentication crap either. But just for the sake of argument, if i did care about the game i might be a little peeved that they’re adding in square planets and harping on about them when there are unfixed bugs in the game.
20/10/2008 at 19:26 Matt N says:
Not to offend anyone, but if cubic planets in Spore is the kind of thing that seriously upsets you, you’re insane and it’s time to get help.
20/10/2008 at 19:35 Xilnold says:
But games are children’s toys. If oblivion is the hard to follow book that you make your kid read so that he grows up anti-social and smart, spore is the play-doh.
20/10/2008 at 19:47 Buemba says:
The only thing that annoys me about cubic planets in Spore is that I haven’t been able to find one yet.
20/10/2008 at 19:48 tmp says:
Poll needs “Yawn, still a bore” option. This is all.
20/10/2008 at 20:30 Koalabaerchen says:
It looks like cheese.
I like cheese.
20/10/2008 at 21:01 Nick says:
Kieron, don’t tell me my $2 a month hasn’t paid off your Ferrari yet?
20/10/2008 at 21:25 Kieron Gillen says:
Nick: It keeps me sweet. Or, at least, in sweeties.
KG
20/10/2008 at 22:11 Cunningbeef says:
Eh. Based on Will Wright’s ramblings (I’ve probably listened to Will talk for longer than I played spore), I’d expected a much more sciencey game. I was a little disappointed at how it turned out, but at the end of the day it’s a business and they want to make money. I doubt a pure-science version of Spore would have so much as broke even, what with how fecking long they spent developing the game.
That said, I emitted a small squeal the first time I saw a binary system, and some of the other astronomical anomalies. And I’m very glad that children will get to see them and understand how this stuff happens.
20/10/2008 at 22:15 RC-1290'Dreadnought' says:
RPS FOR SALE! €2 per word!
20/10/2008 at 23:14 ACS says:
As an Angry Internet Man, I prefer my giant sentient cockbeasts in their bewinged cockships to live on round planets.
I’m taking my money and going home.
20/10/2008 at 23:29 Yhancik says:
At the end of the year we gotta make a list of the 2008 Top 10 Gamer’s Moot Points.
A list that will include the words “pirates”, “fallout”, “brown”, “WAR”, “gay rainbows” and “cubic planet”.
:D
21/10/2008 at 01:07 matte_k says:
I wonder if they had a similar outpouring of rage when human civilisation realised the earth wasn’t flat, many, many (cubic) moons ago… :D
For my penny’s worth- I like spore, it’s fun. Creating and sharing is just as much fun, if not more than the “game” part-it’s interesting to see what people do given SDK’s, level editors and character creators. Can we not appreciate that aspect of the game as being quite useful and interesting? A streamlined way of exchanging personal content from within the game is a bonus, I feel.
@ Yhancik: awesome list sir, i salute you.
21/10/2008 at 09:08 Fomorian says:
Next patch, there’ll be a disc-shaped planet on the backs of four elephants, which are standing on the shell of the giant turtle.
21/10/2008 at 14:25 Thermal Ions says:
Never happen Fomorian. EA would have to hand over some money to Terry first – like they’d ever do that.
That said it’d be a hell of a lot easier to navigate around a planet surface if it was flat. So maybe cubes would be better – don’t know how it would fit in the flattened surface scanner though.
21/10/2008 at 21:31 Rob Lang says:
The reason gamers have different views to gamer reviewers is that gamer reviewers (especially the PC Gamer tainted types here) play A LOT of games. Not just the ones they know they are going to love but even those donkeys most would avoid. Gamers get to cherry pick and tend to obsess over a few. Reviewers need to move on. Thus gamers have a comparatively narrow point of view, which is fine. We need reviewers to be experts and have a broad POV, that’s how they earn their living.
29/10/2008 at 21:22 Tei says:
He guys, you must check Framsticks. Is a old game, but is real artificial life emulation.
http://www.framsticks.com/
27/11/2008 at 03:52 Carbo says:
Since Sim Ant I have enjoyed Maxis games because of the sense of free-will I get from them. Spore is no different. You have to approach the game with an attitude that this is gonna be sand box gameplay so really the level of “fun” is up to you. Spore has more positives than negatives for me so I like it.
26/02/2010 at 18:18 Joe Thompson says:
Huh Duh Morons.It’s the Bizzaro Cube from DC Comics