Spore!

[newc0253]

I'm not sure why you take the gaming industry and the gaming press so seriously.

why not? indeed, why don't you?

 

It's a bit of a silly industry. Who is making serious games? Why do you expect serious reviews?

silly how?

 

sillier than the music industry? sillier than the movie business? because those are some pretty silly industries right there.

 

they also have a turnover in the billions and involve more than mere craft. i think a lot of folk in the games industry take their work as seriously as musicians or film directors, and i think a lot of gamers take games every bit as seriously as music or film. certainly most of the folk on these boards seem to?

 

Is Will Wright going to address the Holocaust now that Spore is out?

 

so the games industry has to address the Holocaust, otherwise it ain't serious? that's a pretty frivolous pov.

 

These are games, every title that comes out is designed to be fun (even if they fail.)

so? books are meant to be entertaining. so is music and film. we take criticism of those seriously, why not games?

 

It just doesn't lend itself to serious review.

really? then why do so many non-professional reviewers do such a good job of serious criticism?

 

don't that negate your earlier point that magazines can't afford to do proper reviews, because they'd compromise their relationship with publishers?

 

now you're saying that serious review is impossible?

 

bizarre how far you're willing to bend over to defend professional game reviewers for doing such a sloppy, lazy job.

[I want teh kotor 3]

to the degree that this game could have been made by the great Peter Molyneux, master of nonexistant game design.

 

I generally like his games. And by that I mean Fable, which is one of my favorite games.

 

But anyway, I'll buy it, because I need something modern to play on PC.

[Tigranes]

So um... has anybody else played Spore?

 

I'm seeing enough "its shallow and theres not much to each stage" argument crop up from individual players all over the place - in that case I'm pretty sure that's not just something a potential buyer (i.e. me) can ignore. After all, I didn't get a huge amount of playing time out of B&W or the Sims (although, now Sim City, that was a different cookie). I mean, wasn't it always the big main worry about Spore - whether they'd be able to fill out each of those 5 stages?

[Moatilliatta]

I mean, wasn't it always the big main worry about Spore - whether they'd be able to fill out each of those 5 stages?

Spore has never been about filling out each of the five stages. At least not the last three years.

 

Spore is about designing your creature through tutorial phases until you reach space. Each phase is about designing specific aspects of your creature and aren't supposed to be a whole game in themselves. Whether space is large and good enough to be a game isn't something that I can say.

[Tigranes]

I mean fill out with stuff to do. There's really no point making a creature and then playing with it if you're severely limited in what you can do with them or how they can develop, and with 5 stages that was alwyas going to be a problem.

 

I do agree that it's silly to expect 5 full games in the mix, but I'm waiting for opinions on whether its too gimmicky and limited.

[Rosbjerg]

I spent my entire day yesterday (I was sick) playing Spore..

 

-Gameplay Spoilers-

 

And within 8-10 hours I was in space.

 

The stages were somewhat boring at first, but after playing I started liking the style of the game.. It tries to be funny, in a "heh-heh" kinda way.

 

When you get out of the water you have to design your creature, with legs arms or whatever you feel you need. Depending on how well you did in the water you'll have more options open for you - more parts and more DNA (each piece costs an amount depending on how advanced it is).

 

In the land face you need to decide wether you want to kill/hunt animals (destroying them completly), socialize with them (become allies) or a combination - like killing X species and allying with Y species. You're brain grows whenever you kill or ally with a certain amount (can't remember), but when your brain has gown to the right size, you move on to the tribal stage. You get DNA and parts whenever you kill or befriend creatures and DNA for eating and following objectives. You'll find skeletal scattered all over the world, each of which will give you a new part. If you want to edit your creature you need to mate with another one of your species.

The only thing I found a little wierd here, is that each creature has a little nest area where they hang out - and that's it - you don't see the various creature roam around. Except for some truely epic ones - if you see them you need to get out of the way! trust me..

 

I had a fun experience - I don't know if it's scriptet, but I was hunting a pack of creatures with some of my bloodthirsty bretheren, when suddenly a space ship flew in and abducted one of our prey. It flew around for 10 minutes or so and then suddenly crashed. The wreck is still there, even in to the space age - and still looks like a "fresh" crash, even though it's over a million years since it's crashed.

 

When you're done with this stage evolution stops and you can't edit your creature again. You can only put clothes on them and customize their superficial apperance afterwards.

 

You now have a small village and then you need to conquer or ally with other tribes or other species - they'll have weapons and building upgrades, so each time you take over a tribe you'll get their tech. You also need to gather food and keep animals and other tribes away from your people and food stocks.

 

When you conquer your continent you move on to the civilization stage.

 

Here you need to design a vehicle, townhall, house, factory and entertainment building. Also a ship, if you have a city near water. This age is like the early 20th century. You design buildings like creatures, except you get alot of predefined blocks that you can then manipulate with and add more on to. It's ok fun, but it's still very cartoony like every thing else in the game. If you appriciate that by now (I did), then you'll probably like the game all in all. Otherwise the design will probably tire you eventually.

 

you then need to harvest Spice (a tribute to Dune I imagine) which will be your income. After conquering, religiously converting or trading/making diplomatic alliences, you get to have airplanes. After that you either need to conquer, convert or ally yourself with the entire planet. I went with warfare through the entire game and that was quite fun. If you have enough money you can fire nukes and/or missles and devastate other nations - everyone will hate you for it though.

 

When you conquer everything, one way or the other, you go to space. Where you need to colonize other planets - abduct and analyze alien life and contact advanced alien nations. Here the same patters emerges - kill, ally or convert. But I haven't gotten that far yet.

 

All in all I thought it was fun - the humor is typical Sim'ish like when you're designing your spacecraft and it says "the only thing between you and space in 2 meters of solid style".

 

-Spoiler end-

 

I'll give it a 7/10 so far.

[Blarghagh]

All the criticism here is moot, really. Everybody here is a obviously a hardcore or semi-hardcore gamer (otherwise we would not even BE on this forum) whereas Spore is obviously a game designed to be part of the new wave of games aimed at casual gamers.

[Monte Carlo]

^ TrueNeutral, I understand where you're coming from and I genuinely agree to a large extent with what you're saying...

 

but...

 

If you look at the sheer breadth of games enjoyed on this forum, many of them are utterly mainstream. Posters here like sports sims (which leave me cold) that are best-sellers. Others dig the wildly successful GTA games (which, incidentally, I find repugnant) which are uber best-sellers. Others, like me, like twitchy crack-games like Diablo 2 or best selling strategy games like the Total War series.

 

People here are, by and large, hardcore enough to see and appreciate games for what they are and what they are trying to achieve. In much the same way that I am an exceptionally nerdy movie buff who loves 1970's and 80's crime movies, sci-fi and horror, I can also appreciate popcorn stuff if it's done well.

 

So although I'm unlikely to pick up Spore, I definitely don't dismiss the opinions of the people here just because they are 'hardcore' gamers. Sure, I take it into account, but look at the sympathetic account above by a regular here, which I think rather proves my point.

 

Cheers

MC

[Moatilliatta]

Oh hey look an actually interesting analysis of Spore by one the obviously bought out reviewers writing about it in his free time and explaining what I (attempted to) explain a few posts ago: Take it away Kieron Gillen

 

[/thread]

 

Edit: I really wish I had a way with words. But like so many other things it takes too much practice.

Edited September 5, 2008 by Moatilliatta

[Nick_i_am]

Oh him, he used to write for PCGamer UK ages ago when I still read it (like, 6 years). Awsome guy.

[Moatilliatta]

Many of the RPS guys still write for them from time to time. And yes they are all awesome.

 

Edit: This post is incredibly not 'top of the page' worthy.

Edited September 5, 2008 by Moatilliatta

[Deadly_Nightshade]

It looks like Amazon customers do not like the DRM used by Spore...

At time of writing, there were over 100 "reviews" of the game, nearly 90 of them giving the game a single, damning star.

http://kotaku.com/5046552/amazon-reviewers...y-to-spores-drm

Edited September 8, 2008 by Deadly_Nightshade

[Nick_i_am]

Oh hey look an actually interesting analysis of Spore by one the obviously bought out reviewers writing about it in his free time and explaining what I (attempted to) explain a few posts ago: Take it away Kieron Gillen

 

[/thread]

 

Now that i've played the game more I can say that this man is utterly correct.

[Pop]

It looks like Amazon customers do not like the DRM used by Spore...

At time of writing, there were over 100 "reviews" of the game, nearly 90 of them giving the game a single, damning star.

http://kotaku.com/5046552/amazon-reviewers...y-to-spores-drm

That seems more like nerd rage poll flooding more than anything else. With The Dark Knight you had the phenomenon in reverse - the inhabitants of IMDB went about artificially juking the movie's score to Best Evar levels even before the movie was released. It just goes to show you how people on the internet will get stupidly and pointlessly enthusiastic about trivial things. One wonders how many of those "reviewers" actually played the game.

Edited September 8, 2008 by Pop

[Azure79]

Wait, how does the gameplay in Spore actually work? Is it mainly a single player game where you nudge the evolutionary process of your species in certain ways and eventually take over the galaxy?

 

I was kinda under the impression that it would be on a persistent server of some sort where your creations would engage in some kind of survival of the fittest battle with other people's creation. I thought this was what got people so excited.

 

I haven't really been keeping up though I have been looking forward to the game just for the hype alone. If its the former, I'm not really interested.

[Rosbjerg]

It's a single player experience.. but other players creatures and creations are imported into your game via the Sporemedia, which downloads content from a massive server onto your computer (probably a series of servers, but you get the point).

 

So you might be hunting another players herbivore in your game - and being squashed later by another player created civilization. The AI will run it though. So it is "the former".

 

The universe you enter in the Space stage of the game is truely massive and you'll encounter hundreds of worlds filled with different creatures - created by other players and/or Maxis.

[Moatilliatta]

Now that i've played the game more I can say that this man is utterly correct.

Of course he is, I linked to him.

 

So you like the game?

[Bokishi]

Kaftan must be on crack or something, as I think this game is awesome so far. I just reached space btw

[Nick_i_am]

So you like the game?

 

Yeah, and what's strange is that i'm enjoying it in ways I didn't even expect.

 

There are flaws, things I was hoping would be a lot stronger, but the space stage is pretty much redemption for almost all of the complaints about the weakness of the stages before it.

[Azure79]

It's a single player experience.. but other players creatures and creations are imported into your game via the Sporemedia, which downloads content from a massive server onto your computer (probably a series of servers, but you get the point).

 

So you might be hunting another players herbivore in your game - and being squashed later by another player created civilization. The AI will run it though. So it is "the former".

 

The universe you enter in the Space stage of the game is truely massive and you'll encounter hundreds of worlds filled with different creatures - created by other players and/or Maxis.

 

Ahh, that sounds a lot more interesting. Might pick it up.

[Rosbjerg]

most fun is to fly down on a world which have reached the Civilization Stage, but not space - and mess with them in your space ship.. like terraforming their planet (some awesome looking effects - although they don't destroy cities), abducting their citizens, painting their world and making crop circles.

[Tigranes]

Ok, I managed to borrow from a friend, & played through the cell and creature stages so far. Cute and interesting with lots of nice animations, and the creature stage was quite fun, but I don't see much replyability value yet. But pretty eager to see the latter stages.

[Nick_i_am]

A buddy of mine had the same problem I almost had. He plays all the way through to the space stage then simply can't be bothered any more.

 

Problem is, space stage is where the real game starts, so this is pretty much the biggest mistake one can make when it comes to enjoying Spore.

[Oerwinde]

I was VERY disappointed in the tribal and civ stages. The rest is fun.

[Pop]

Tribal stage was just awful. Civ was marginally better. Space is much better. But if I'm going to be forced to go through the first 4 stages to get to space again, I'll be done with this game after the first playthrough.