Spore is here!

[Arátoeldar]

Sitherino, he's RIGHT. The DRM in Spore is ridiculous. If I recall correctly, you can only install it three times EVER, uninstalling does not reset it, it has to check in every ten days and on initial install, so if you don't have Internet you're screwed. I THINK that's all, but I'm not entirely certain.

 

Bioshock and other games had this restriction until the game had been out for a while. It has always been patched out before.

[Corinthian]

First of all, Spore is not Bioshock. They're going to farm the hell out of Spore. Secondly, just because the DRM MIGHT be removed is no excuse for them treating their customers like criminals.

[Arcesious]

Well now my high hopes about spore seem to have been gone down to low expectations... It seems useless to have bought the creature creator and not buy spore, now. So I guess I have to get it.

[Corinthian]

Actually, the Creature Creator is more fun than the game itself.

 

Funny how that works.

[Astor]

Don't like big business? Ironic that you are posting on a Lucas forum.[/Quote]

 

I don't think he's opposed to big business, but EA does have a pretty shabby track record when it comes to business practices...

[Inyri]

Don't forget the developers. They tend to get lost in the cloud of the bad press of their publishers. Maxis made the game.

[Astor]

Don't forget the developers. They tend to get lost in the cloud of the bad press of their publishers. Maxis made the game.

 

Well Maxis isn't much better sometimes - let's see -

 

Make a game.

Release a quarter of it initially.

Release another part (for more money)

Rinse and repeat till done.

 

[Inyri]

That's good business practice. A good one that apparently works for them, judging from the success of The Sims.

 

Besides, you can't say Spore or The Sims were released unfinished. They were very much both complete games. I think some people just expect the world when it's not been promised to them. Er, well, in Spore's case they do get the world -- the galaxy even -- and still aren't impressed. C'est la vie.

[Corinthian]

Because the Galaxy turns out to really actually suck. Seriously, the game becomes Tedious McTedium after you get to the Space Stage, and it's not like you can really stick around in any of the stages, there's nothing to do.

[Inyri]

I like the space stage so far.

[El Sitherino]

Sitherino, he's RIGHT. The DRM in Spore is ridiculous.

 

I don't believe that was the argument. He stated he won't purchase it because of DRM, not because of the level. What has been stated later is after the fact.

[swphreak]

I had nothing to do Sunday, so I picked up a copy. Ended up playing it nonstop all day.

 

Here's the first creature I started with.

 

And that fella ended up as a futuristic alien predator with mech wings and a futuristic helmet.

 

 

I'm still in the space stage on my first planet, but I really wanted to give herbivores a try. So I started a second planet. My herbivore cell ended up kicking all the carnivore cells' asses when it came to fighting.

 

Creature stage. Made lots of cuddly friends and even got those rogue creatures to like him.

 

What's cool is that this guy actually flies in the Tribal Stage.

 

And I got to the Tribal stage with this guy before wanting to make an Omnivore. He just popped out of the ocean so no pictures yet.

 

 

At the moment, I have Spore set to only download stuff from Buddies (don't need a million space penis monsters in my galaxy).

 

 

If you have Spore, join the Intelligent Designers social group.

[Jeff]

I'm probably like a lot of people in this thread, because of other games coming out I'll be waiting for a bit to pick this one up. It does look fun though.

[Corinthian]

Playing as a Herbivore is seriously the most tedious and boring thing ever. I tried it last night. The whole game centers around you walking up to other creatures and playing a retarded minigame where you CLICK ON THEM WHILE THEY'RE DOING SOMETHING, and if you have a high enough rating in whatever stat you're using at the time, you win. Otherwise, you lose.

 

Further proof that Will Wright has spent the entirety of Spore's development cycle on a permanent LSD trip.

 

Also, Sitherino, it was perfectly obvious that he was referring to the ridiculously draconian policy. Taking him literally is kind of ridiculous. I'm sure he's ashamed he didn't use the correct terminology.

[Arcesious]

Well I think I'll just play omnivore so that I can do anything... I hope I can get it soon...

[Serpentine Cougar]

I'm waiting for a price drop on this one.

Me too, I'm a bit broke at the moment. Reading reviews may change my mind about this game, though.

[Corinthian]

I'm surprised, considering it's got a 1-star rating on Amazon.com with nearly 1900 1-star ratings out of a total of 2043 reviews.

[Great Scott!]

I'm surprised, considering it's got a 1-star rating on Amazon.com with nearly 1900 1-star ratings out of a total of 2043 reviews.

Wait, what? You mean one out of five? What the hell?

 

My friend's obsessed with it, and from what I've seen, surely it isn't awful...

[Corinthian]

It deserves every 1-star rating it gets.

[Great Scott!]

Is it really that bad?

[Corinthian]

Between the DRM and the lackluster gameplay, yes.

[mimartin]

I'm surprised, considering it's got a 1-star rating on Amazon.com with nearly 1900 1-star ratings out of a total of 2043 reviews.

Well considering most of the 1-star reviews posted on Amazon did not even purchase the game, I can assure you they will have nothing to do with my decision to purchase the game. Neither will any of the reviews posted before the game was released. Most of those reviews have to do with the DRM (which is fair), but nothing to do with game play itself. I'll more likely to be swayed by your and other members here reviews than anything I’d read on Amazon.

[Corinthian]

Alright, let me review it one more time, just for good measure.

 

Cell Stage: Oh, look, it's Fishy! Okay, Fishy was kind of fun, and this is a little more intense because there's health meters and I can add spikes or fins to make my fish move faster.

 

Creature Stage: As Carnivore: Okay, cool, I run around slaughtering stuff, killing babies in front of their parents and eating them (No joke) and the parents don't seem to care until I start beating the everloving Hell out of them. Still, it's morbidly amusing, mostly because I'm a horrible person. As Herbivore: Man, the Cell Stage was kind of fun. What the hell is this stupid singing crap? Seriously, this is the most boring thing EVER. The four different things don't even DO anything different, it's just that certain creatures like it better if you pose or dance than if you sing or charm.

 

Tribal Stage: As Carnivore: MAIM KILL BURN. MAIM KILL BURN. Seriously, it's like playing Dawn of War with a bunch of Choppa Boyz only with less strategy, less funny, less totally awesome fighting, and I have to go kill a bunch of animals every five minutes so my tribe doesn't starve to death. And furthermore, there's no real point in getting anything except the Stone Axes. As Herbivore: I quit halfway through the creature stage, so I really can't say.

 

Civilization Stage: And here the game goes to jolly Hell. The world map is actually smaller than an average game of StarCraft or Warcraft 3, despite the fact that we're fighting over an ENTIRE PLANET, but that's okay, because you'll never field more than like, twenty or thirty units anyway and the cities only have room for any combination of three buildings over like ten squares. And you never escape from that particular part of game design. I designed a vehicle that was capable of horrifically slaughtering everything else on the planet in a 2 on 1 fight (Their favor, not mine) on my first try, and my Sea and Air vehicles weren't any less overpowered.

 

Space Stage: It was apparent after I finished the Creature Stage that we were rushing to get somewhere. This is where. We're introduced to a grand plotline involving some guys who try to take over the center of the Galaxy, but I haven't gotten my Interstellar Drive powerful enough to get anywhere close to the center of the galaxy and they won't give me the stupid badge that will allow me to upgrade my Interstellar Drive to the final level. Combat is repetitive and tedious - at first, it's bloody impossible, and then it suddenly becomes incredibly easy unless you're fighting the Grox, in which case, you'll probably get drowned under sheer weight of numbers. Apparently, everyone else in the Galaxy except your race figures out how to build more than one ship at a time. Huh? Why is it that I have to crib a fleet off my pathetic excuses for allies? Terraforming is the only point where the Space Stage shows some real genius, and it's quite nice. Very intuitive. The downside is, there are really only two things you can do with Terraforming - Make or improve a world for your Empire, or do some planetary-scale terrorism and send some other planet into an ice age, which is, admittedly, hilarious to do on an enemy homeworld. I'm going to play it a little bit more, see if I can't get access to some of the really high end crap, but frankly, I am not impressed.

 

To summarize Spore in a line, Spore is to the Simulation Genre what Fable was to the RPG Genre.

[True_Avery]

Yes, we get it Corinthian. This is not a hardcore game.

 

Has it ever advertised itself to be? Not to my knowledge. I assumed this was a Maxis game. The same company that gave us The Sims. The same company that gave us SimCity Societies.

 

You got your hopes up about the game and fell for the hype. Bad idea. You set yourself up for disappointment. And if you didn't, what are you doing playing Spore in the first place?

 

Yeah, the game was a disappointment compared to its hype. What isn't? Its 5 short games all clumped together to be casual friendly. That is all it is. That is all it ever was. Comparing it to games like Dawn of War is useless because Spore set out to be Sims Evolution, not a complex RTS.

 

I'll give you that it is, in fact, a very short game. Pathetically short in my opinion. I had a lot of fun in the cell stage and was disappointed to hit that growth barrier. I almost wish there was an ocean stage where you run around as fish before going to land.

 

But hey, this is Maxis. Odds are the game will triple in size within a year or so.

 

Wait, what? You mean one out of five? What the hell?

 

My friend's obsessed with it, and from what I've seen, surely it isn't awful...

It has had a 1 star rating for months because of the DRM. People saw it, and instantly decided it needed a 1 star rating. While it gets a point across to EA about its DRM and what people think of it, it places a bad shadow on a great -casual- game.

 

Is it really that bad?

No, it is not. Corinthian is just angry that this game isn't Fallout. Many people are also angry with the DRM, which has been appearing in more games lately (Which is a legitimate reason to dislike it).

 

But, if you listen to Star and number ratings to determine if you are going to try a game or not, then you are losing out.

 

To summarize Spore in a line, Spore is to the Simulation Genre what Fable was to the RPG Genre.

Honestly, what else were you expecting? I can't imagine you were looking for Fallout quality game play here. If you hated it, then you wasted your money or torrenting time on something you didn't properly look into.

 

It is a Maxis level casual game. You seem to me to be the hardcore, into the ultimate part of the game type of guy, which is fine. But, again, why did you even consider getting Spore from the get go? Every review I've read on Spore so far has repeated what you've said already days before release.

[Corinthian]

It's not just that it's not a hardcore game - EVERYTHING the game does has been done before and better in every way. I hardly see why it being a Casual Game excuses it from being crap.

 

And it's not a 'great' casual game. The game is stupid. The first four stages are easy as hell, and then you hit the Space Stage and, oh, surprise, the game suddenly halfway impossible, even without the stupid limitations on your jump drive. I'M CHEATING and I still can't get past the Grox.

 

Actually, I was kind of hoping for something like Fallout, a game that would define Simulation games for it's time. Instead, what I got was a game that can't even hold up it's own gimmick.