Spore- Reviews (Cell and Creature, Tribal coming soon)

[Antilogic]

(Important note, if ANYONE gets this thread locked, I will find you..and..well...lets not go there. I already waited a few days before posting this as requested by the mods, and are putting some decent effort into it, so dont get it locked)

Ok, I wanted to write a review about spore, as it gave me a excuse to start a blogging site at last, and because I have been waiting for ages for Spore to come out and now want to talk about it. Ive reviewed games part/time professionally before, but now im not, so I dont give a rats ass about any misspellings or grammer, thou it has been though a spellcheck

Its on my new blogging site (Seriously, need a new word for that, blogging sounds like something people do, alone, in the dark, while surfing for porn), and im not copy/pasting as It ruins my nice shiny formatting with the screenshots. And Rapier will have my ass on a platter if it ends up showing full screen

Cell: http://feelingsmarter.blogspot.com/2008 ... eview.html

Creature: http://feelingsmarter.blogspot.com/2008 ... eview.html

Anyway, spore comments please (any stage or whatever), dont get the thread locked by moaning/going near illegal/DRM stuff for crying out loud.....

[Raven112]

Brilliant, just been through a marathon five or so hour session as well And it's not my first!

So far, the Tribal stage has bee the one I've enjoyed the most, though I like them all. The best advice I can give to anyone is TAKE IT SLOW! Especially on the latter stages, it's so much fun just watching what your little guys do sometimes, plus keeping a good balance between war and trade/allies is the best way.

Oooh yah, screenshots, first one is my current desktop background atm:

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[Artemis404]

As a biology student Spore piqued my interest, despite things, but I've a question:

One criticizm that I've heard levelled at it a few times it that it's not so much a game as a series of Flash-esque mini-games taped together.

Do you get that feeling?

I've also heard it's rather "dumbed-down", though I've never heard anyone explain exactly why. Any thoughts?

I'm in two minds about whether or not to try it.

Maybe I'll just buy Multiwinia instead... Too many options!

[Antilogic]

As a biology student Spore piqued my interest, despite things, but I've a question:

One criticizm that I've heard levelled at it a few times it that it's not so much a game as a series of Flash-esque mini-games taped together.

Do you get that feeling?

I've also heard it's rather "dumbed-down", though I've never heard anyone explain exactly why. Any thoughts?

I'm in two minds about whether or not to try it.

Maybe I'll just buy Multiwinia instead... Too many options!

To the first one, no. Its more detailed then that. Cell is like the best flash game ever, others are not no.

And yes, its been dumbed down. I go into more detailed in this in later reviews, but needless to say so much has been cut out of the game it feels as if you are playing a basic shell of what was promised at times.

[Artemis404]

And yes, its been dumbed down. I go into more detailed in this in later reviews, but needless to say so much has been cut out of the game it feels as if you are playing a basic shell of what was promised at times.

Tsk. Typical. They promise the Universe and fail to deliver...

I might hold out a bit longer then.

Thanks for the advice.

[RegisterMe]

And yes, its been dumbed down. I go into more detailed in this in later reviews, but needless to say so much has been cut out of the game it feels as if you are playing a basic shell of what was promised at times.

Tsk. Typical. They promise the Universe and fail to deliver...

I might hold out a bit longer then.

Thanks for the advice.

Likewise. I was quite taken by the videos / previews I saw or read but held off thanks to a few comments I saw on this forum. Then I got stuck into HOI II...... Though I think I will finish my current Russian campaign before X3 TC arrives, but not have enough time to start another one and finish it so.......

Anyway, nice blog .

[Dragoongfa]

Well my comment is:

Wait for the price to fall.

It literally is a collection of mini games, with not much depth in the gameplay area, while graphically it goes to the Sims area, cute and not complex.

Each of the until the space stage take about 20 to 40 minutes, sure your creatures are fun to look at but after a while it becomes boring.

The space stage seems deep at first but when you actually go in it only reaches the thigh, too simple with some genre standards chopped off.

While the difficulty level is laughable at its best, simply put the game offers no challenge.

The only plus side of the game are the creation tools but they only get it that far.

Recommended for Sims fans or people who really like its concept of evolution.

[Lorien]

Recommended for Sims fans or people who really like its concept of evolution.

That's me.

I was never expecting an uber-complex game and I'm glad you don't have to spend what would seem like 3 days just to get to grips with the game's mechanics before you get the enjoyment out of the game that you want.

[Drainy]

The space age is my favourite but it really could be expanded on a huge amount.
Every part of the game just seems to be basic, especially the painful spice trade. Why not a few extra trade items, why the different colour spices??

[Bunny]

I have conquered half a galactic arm on "difficult" level, ironicly it is now far more peaceful than it was on easy mode. Which is fine as I can terraform to my hearts content.

It is said it has taken something like 10 years to develop this game. Get the feeling that the real game won't actually show its head until expansion pack 5 appears. Pity I will not be mooing and buying them (or anything by EA in this life).

There comes a point when a stand must be taken.

[Dragoongfa]

Ok since no-one will discuss that particular subject anymore, could we go back to spore?

Thank you.

Now i am about to write a a very emotional review about Spore and i will send it at a magazine which advertised it as:

"The game that will change gaming".

Anyone wishes to chip in?

EDIT:Respect the OP opinion, since he said no such talk at least open a new thread about said issue.

[Bunny]

I get the feeling that spore heralds an extinction level event in the gaming industry - much like happened with ET all the years ago when Atari was the man.

Things grew streadily worse all through 1983. The market was glutted with product, much of it junk. Atari was just as guilty as everybody else. Their E.T. cartridge was a piece of crap thrown together in six weeks by a programmer who boasted to Stephen Speilberg, "This is the game that will make the movie famous!" Ray Kassar, Atari's CEO, had paid $20 million for the license. In the end, hundreds of thousands of unsold E.T. cartridges were bulldozed in a landfill in Albuquerque.

[Antilogic]

Incidentally, Titan, I looked at your latest blog post. Spore is a lot deeper than I thought - I didn't know the civilisation stage had councils and housing associations. Wink

Its a normal blog, I just post reviews as well

Anyway, in current opinion about them is spore players could manage this much better then they could....hack 5 year olds could...

Titan explicitly asked for this thread not to become about DRM. This is about the game Spore and reviews and content of. Not The Game Spore And EA.

Correct. Thanks.

It's true, though. No-one has ever released a collection of flash games for full price before. Wink

Cell is very much like a flash game. Space seems kinda like it as well. But mixed all together its not a flash game, I havent yet decided if its a "good game". there are some amazing bits, and there are some totally rubbish sections.

I get the feeling that spore heralds an extinction level event in the gaming industry

I think spore has tried to do something completely new, but dumbed it down so much that its become a squashed together bits of lots of other games. If that =great, ive yet to decided.

(p.s Please spilt pretty please mods) Also thanks for support all *hug*

[Geggo]

Cell stage was as simple as you can expect, always something that's bigger than you to eat you there, mostly fun and simple.

Creature stage was somewhat fun though repetitive, since I went the kill anything that moves way (partially unsuccessfully there since I found couple epic creatures that resisted my efforts). I played this stage extra long time to get most of the parts. (to maximize the creatures abilities with little to no regard on the looks)

Tribal stage is trivial, I couldn't figure out the point of this so I just killed everyone and moved on to the next one.

Civilization stage might have been more fun have not one of the others (religious) neighbors gone on the offensive which I was forced to counter by annexing my own neighbors just to keep up with his expansion. it ended up in almost total air war since they had only religious units that couldn't do any damage to my air units. absolutely 0 trading with neighbors occurred on my part....I opted not to nuke him though that was possible for a long time.

Space stage, now it gets really annoying....everyone else can muster up fleets of ships and attack dozen planets each with tens of ships at the same time and you got one ship and none of your planets can defend them selfs even with full turrets in colonies and uber turret, not even against pirates.

So expect to do absolutely nothing else but babysit your empire, if you manege to get 5 mins of no alerts time consider your self lucky.

Oh and it's not just attacks you have to attend to, every 10 mins or so one of your or your allies colonies has a ecological disaster that you have to fix or suffer damage to your standing with that empire.

And then we get to the spice trade, only way to make serious credits. again only you can do it, no one else touches it (well except the pirates). so you will find your self going back and forth between your colonies collecting spice from them and every single time you have to zoom in and out which takes forever (even with ctrl+ or ctrl-) and then you have to find a place that pays good money for that particular color spice, or you can save and load since the price is random. oh and don't bother trying to stockpile since your ship can only hold 99 units of each and planets 30 max (except "home worlds" that have more than 3 colonies)

Only thing you can do to ease your play is NOT to be in war, if you want some one elses world, either make sure you can wipe the whole race out quickly or use other means. (like buying a whole planet or raising an epic creature right next to a town then teasing it until it attacks the town )

Editors were great though I'm not exactly a creative person so they don't appeal to me so much, I always went the maximized potential way or pure simplicity.

I guess this is EA's next milking cow, expect hordes of addons to start appearing any day now. maybe one of them will eventually evolve this zombie simulation to something entertaining.

[Carlo the Curious]

I'd say it was over-ambitious. It promised a great deal, but seems to have become rather dumbed down in the development process.

It's still mostly fun, although I think statements about it changing the gaming industry are more than a little OTT .

Space stage can get tedious due to the frequent emergencies you have to deal with. Side note: If you played military in Civ stage you get an attribute that reduces pirate attacks, I think.

The frequent crashes I seem to get in space stage are rather annoying as well .

[kethalpak]

The thing that bugged me the most was the lack of an aquatic stage, I just go from a little tiny cell to this creature walking around on land.

[Asmayus]

It was in the original plan, but I have a hunch it'll be the first or second of about twenty expansion packs.

It's by EA and Will Wright, so it's Sims all over again.

I played the Cell stage in my friends house the other night. I thought it was a pretty simplistic, though fun stage. (After sinking about 30 mins into it). The 'follow the cursor' approach was a little annoying initially but you get used to it soon enough.

The one gripe I came up it is that at the very start, you're asked to name your planet before you name your species. Both my friends and I assumed we were naming our creatures, not the world we lived on.

I spent a happy half hour traipsing around the planet in the creature stage, joyfully exterminating everything that moved in the vicinity of my nest.

At some point I triggered a migration; The rest of my species upped and shipped off to a new, larger nest; cue the extinction of several more hapless locals.

I really shouldn't be doing this.

In real life, I'm a vegetarian.

[Bunny]

Well, I finished the plot game last night and I am scratching my head over who this game is aimed at. There are bits that are too repetitive/ tough for the casual player. But, at the same time, it lacks enough depth to capture the imagination of the hardcore gaming crowd.

Playing the game on difficult mode only seems to make a big difference on the cell and creature levels. The civilisation level just required sitting back for 30 mins in my one remaining city and amassing enough credits to run a blitzkrieg. The space level was pretty much the same regardless of difficulty level.

Empire building is not really an option in this game since automated spice collection is not included and planetary defence is relatively ineffective. Maybe the game is better played by wandering around putting the galaxy to rights by beating bad guys, terraforming,
dropping monoliths and then vanishing off to a new destination like a sort of cosmic A-team.

I liked the terraforming (but it was way too simplistic). However, although a terraformed planet is graphically rather nice, there is not that much to do with it after that other than paint it.

Maybe the fleet of expansion packs will help make this game a gem. But to be honest, this goes against my quaint old fashioned viewpoint of expecting to buy a finished product - you know, like expecting a new car to have wheels and an engine.

Oh well, I’ll put this one down to experience.

[Carlo the Curious]

...and then vanishing off to a new destination like a sort of cosmic A-team.

I'm not sure about the difficulty levels. Cell seemed much harder on hard, creature & tribe about the same, and on civ I crashed once when I was doing ok, and on a restart (from my last save, in creature ) I got slaughtered (probably due to premature attacking issues!). Crashed again so I deleted that planet.

[Carlo the Curious]

It was in the original plan, but I have a hunch it'll be the first or second of about twenty expansion packs.

It's by EA and Will Wright, so it's Sims all over again.

I thought that as well, but it seems it was for usability reasons.