Spore, my Impressions...

[Sylvanas]

Originally posted by: fatpat268

Originally posted by: coloumb
I think the most fun anyone will have with this game is creating your creature and seeing what kind of creatures other people have created.

In that case, the creature creator will be fine.

At any rate, after a little while playing this game, I'm extremely disappointed, especially for all the hype this game has received for the better part of three years. All the reviews so far have been extremely generous IMO, and the game deserves closer to 7/10.

I'll keep it brief. Essentially the game is a mixture between Pacman, a Hack & Slash, RTS, Civilization, and something else (I dunno how you'd classify the last mode... Sins of a Solar Empire perhaps?). But instead of doing any one of these very well, instead everything is incredibly watered down and boring. There's no risk/reward to do anything, and unlike what the game suggests, your actions really don't alter anything.

Also annoying, you pretty much lose any progress farming for spice/food/money/whatever everytime you change stages. There's no point but to do the bare minimum here.

In Stage two and three, your only objectives are to attack or ally with other tribes. There's no point in doing either, but to advance the game. It would be better if there were some time of food chain in effect in the second stage (you know some animals being vastly superior/inferior than others) but there's none in effect. Pretty much everyone is equal, save for a few traits

But the some of the most fun I had was using the vehicle creator, just so much fun stuff you can create. If EA repackaged the Creature Creator with the Vehicle Creator, I'd be all set. Otherwise, I'm pretty disappointed in this game. It's a fairly linear game for what was supposed to be very open ended.

I bolded some things you said which I have found aswell, unfortunate- it could have been better than what it is.

 

[TallBill]

Yeah, I'm out in space now. Yey?

 

[minmaster]

those that want more stages, do you think they would give you everything in the form of vanilla version? they surely thought about this and held it back for expansion packs. i'm pretty confident on that matter.

 

[Pepsei]

when you find those parts, do they apply to new creatures that you want to make? or do you have to rediscover them again?

 

[fatpat268]

Originally posted by: minmaster
those that want more stages, do you think they would give you everything in the form of vanilla version? they surely thought about this and held it back for expansion packs. i'm pretty confident on that matter.

We'll see, it's a little early to be talking about expansions though. Spore will inevitable have an expansion, and hopefully that expansion will give you something to actually do in the game instead of hopelessly running around and attacking other creatures.

 

[lozina]

A Jack of all Trades is a Master of None

 

[Malladine]

Originally posted by: gorcorps
I'm pretty disappointed in this as well. I've only played up to stage 3, but those were the stages I was most interested in. The 1st stage was pretty much what I expected, but the creature stage is so damn boring. Creating your creatures is the best part BUT you have to run your ass off around the area finding parts to grab so you can put them on your character. The main game is just a complete waste of time when you realize you could be playing the same game elsewhere but having more fun.

heh...I knew it.

 

[wanderer27]

The impression I get from what everyone's said on this thread so far, is that this game almost plays by itself.

If your actions have no impact on anything, WTF is the point of this game.

Damn, if this is really the case with this game it sounds like it's more deserving of a 3.

What the heck happened here, why all the delays and why the need for Draconian DRM to "protect" this?

I am majorly disappointed from what I'm hearing about this. I expected this to be much better.

I guess the hype really did it's job with this one

 

[Malladine]

Originally posted by: wanderer27
The impression I get from what everyone's said on this thread so far, is that this game almost plays by itself.

If your actions have no impact on anything, WTF is the point of this game.

Damn, if this is really the case with this game it sounds like it's more deserving of a 3.

What the heck happened here, why all the delays and why the need for Draconian DRM to "protect" this?

I am majorly disappointed from what I'm hearing about this. I expected this to be much better.

I guess the hype really did it's job with this one

Dude how could you not see this coming? They were going for WAY too much for any of it to be even close to decent. Probably deserves something for the attempt, but meh!

 

[Xavier434]

Originally posted by: wanderer27
The impression I get from what everyone's said on this thread so far, is that this game almost plays by itself.

If your actions have no impact on anything, WTF is the point of this game.

Damn, if this is really the case with this game it sounds like it's more deserving of a 3.

What the heck happened here, why all the delays and why the need for Draconian DRM to "protect" this?

I am majorly disappointed from what I'm hearing about this. I expected this to be much better.

I guess the hype really did it's job with this one

Technically, The Sims games almost played by themselves too. You could walk away from your computer with the game running for hours and your Sims would still manage themselves in many cases. It just might not be optimized and they may not lead their lives in a direction that you wanted to them to go in. A lot of Sims fans do not mind that though. They do not play the game because it is a challenge.

 

[wanderer27]

Originally posted by: Malladine

Originally posted by: wanderer27
The impression I get from what everyone's said on this thread so far, is that this game almost plays by itself.

If your actions have no impact on anything, WTF is the point of this game.

Damn, if this is really the case with this game it sounds like it's more deserving of a 3.

What the heck happened here, why all the delays and why the need for Draconian DRM to "protect" this?

I am majorly disappointed from what I'm hearing about this. I expected this to be much better.

I guess the hype really did it's job with this one

Dude how could you not see this coming? They were going for WAY too much for any of it to be even close to decent. Probably deserves something for the attempt, but meh!

Well, I sure expected something a lot more interesting with Will Wright involved in it - guess he's lost his touch on this one.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I get the impression that you can basically "finish" this game in about three hours.
How do you "finish" an open-ended Simulation in three hours?

So is there anything fun/good about this game?

 

[warcrow]

Originally posted by: wanderer27I get the impression that you can basically "finish" this game in about three hours.
How do you "finish" an open-ended Simulation in three hours?

Who "basically finished the game in about three hours"?

 

[wanderer27]

Originally posted by: warcrow

Originally posted by: wanderer27I get the impression that you can basically "finish" this game in about three hours.
How do you "finish" an open-ended Simulation in three hours?

Who "basically finished the game in about three hours"?

I read it on one of the Gamespot Forum threads. Some guy had already been through all the stages several times - gave a quick synopsis of what you did in each stage to progress to the next.

 

[ViviTheMage]

so many flops lately...warhammer is next.

 

[Maximilian]

Wonder what the zero punctuation guys gonna say about spore. Should be funny as usualy though

So warcrow, was spore worth your money? In fact anyone who owns it, was it worth the money? Last game i bought on hype alone was FEAR and i was a miffed, so im not doing that again.

 

[Xavier434]

Originally posted by: Soviet
Wonder what the zero punctuation guys gonna say about spore. Should be funny as usualy though

He will say that it is not Portal so it sucks beyond all levels of sucking in ways that you have never seen before.

 

[Malladine]

Originally posted by: ViviTheMage
so many flops lately...warhammer is next.

Have you played it?

 

[Skott]

My opinion (from a never played it before perspective) of Spore has always been its going to be one of those niche segment games. Some will like it but most wont. Something to do for fun now and then type of thing. How much replayability will be a big factor in a game of this type. Rumors of 'played it all the way through in a few hours' popping up so its not a long game in of itself sounds like. It'll be interesting to see what the gaming community can do with it and what new extra features the developers come up with as well.

 

[KeithTalent]

Originally posted by: Soviet
So warcrow, was spore worth your money? In fact anyone who owns it, was it worth the money? Last game i bought on hype alone was FEAR and i was a miffed, so im not doing that again.

His copy was free, so I'd say it was probably worth what he paid.

Anyway, I'll still be buying it once it finally comes out here.

KT

 

[CottonRabbit]

I got my package from Newegg today. The Sept. 7 release date seems to be really loose...

After an hour, my impressions are good. I'm not sure what some people were expecting, this is the guy that made SimCity and the Sims, of course there's no endgame "goal" and you can't "beat" the game either. I also think the game will get better in the later stages as more people start adding weird creatures online.

 

[Auryg]

I found the Cell/Spore(?) stage to be decent fun, but too flash game-y...the creature phase was the most fun for me, but I can't see myself doing it more than twice. The next two stages are just SEVERRREELY dumbed down RTSes. For anyone reading this forum..it's like comparing calculus to elementary grade math. It's so dumbed down it's ridiculously boring.

The tribal stage has one resource, which you can get three different ways, none of them interesting. You can either kill an animal, have one of your guys go fishing, or steal food from a tribe. The fighting part involves 3 weapons, an axe which is good against other creatures, a torch which is good against buildings, and a long-range spear which I can't really figure out what it was good for. I can't speak for the diplomacy parts but..meh.

The next (civilization?) stage, I let myself get down to one city on purpose to see if I could come back and still win, and sure enough, I did. You can have a military, religious, or economic city/civilization, and I had a mix of military and religious from taking over religious cities. They don't really vary that much though, except religious is good against cities that are sad. I don't know anything about economic. Either way..it's basically the simplest RTS anyone could make, and not fun for any seasoned gamer. Making vehicles is sort of fun, but there's not much of a point other than asthetics...put on as many things as possible to make it strong/fast, and you're set.

The space stage I just started, but honestly, I'm already completely bored with the game, and I have no motivation to boot it up again. Maybe my girlfriend will like it..hopefully.

 

[Maximilian]

Originally posted by: Auryg
I found the Cell/Spore(?) stage to be decent fun, but too flash game-y...the creature phase was the most fun for me, but I can't see myself doing it more than twice. The next two stages are just SEVERRREELY dumbed down RTSes. For anyone reading this forum..it's like comparing calculus to elementary grade math. It's so dumbed down it's ridiculously boring.

The tribal stage has one resource, which you can get three different ways, none of them interesting. You can either kill an animal, have one of your guys go fishing, or steal food from a tribe. The fighting part involves 3 weapons, an axe which is good against other creatures, a torch which is good against buildings, and a long-range spear which I can't really figure out what it was good for. I can't speak for the diplomacy parts but..meh.

The next (civilization?) stage, I let myself get down to one city on purpose to see if I could come back and still win, and sure enough, I did. You can have a military, religious, or economic city/civilization, and I had a mix of military and religious from taking over religious cities. They don't really vary that much though, except religious is good against cities that are sad. I don't know anything about economic. Either way..it's basically the simplest RTS anyone could make, and not fun for any seasoned gamer. Making vehicles is sort of fun, but there's not much of a point other than asthetics...put on as many things as possible to make it strong/fast, and you're set.

The space stage I just started, but honestly, I'm already completely bored with the game, and I have no motivation to boot it up again. Maybe my girlfriend will like it..hopefully.

So its not really like pac-man combined with the sims mixed with company of heros with a dab of imperium galactica II then?

 

[Malladine]

All those games have separate goals and are designed to be played standalone, Spore is a game with the goal of...um...being several half made games IMO of course

I imagine it'd be a great game for someone who's never played any game before...beyond that...?

 

[fatpat268]

Originally posted by: wanderer27
The impression I get from what everyone's said on this thread so far, is that this game almost plays by itself.

If your actions have no impact on anything, WTF is the point of this game.

Damn, if this is really the case with this game it sounds like it's more deserving of a 3.

What the heck happened here, why all the delays and why the need for Draconian DRM to "protect" this?

I am majorly disappointed from what I'm hearing about this. I expected this to be much better.

I guess the hype really did it's job with this one

I'm not going to lie, I did have a little bit of fun with the game, but not the amount of fun three years of hype would get you.

All these reviews that you see... 9/10, 9.5/10, 88/100, 4.5/5 are waaay too generous. Instead, this is a mediocre subset of games that deserve closer to 7/10. Which isn't a bad score by any means, but to suggest that it deserves a 9/10 is ludicrous.

 

[fatpat268]

Originally posted by: wanderer27

Originally posted by: Malladine

Originally posted by: wanderer27
The impression I get from what everyone's said on this thread so far, is that this game almost plays by itself.

If your actions have no impact on anything, WTF is the point of this game.

Damn, if this is really the case with this game it sounds like it's more deserving of a 3.

What the heck happened here, why all the delays and why the need for Draconian DRM to "protect" this?

I am majorly disappointed from what I'm hearing about this. I expected this to be much better.

I guess the hype really did it's job with this one

Dude how could you not see this coming? They were going for WAY too much for any of it to be even close to decent. Probably deserves something for the attempt, but meh!

Well, I sure expected something a lot more interesting with Will Wright involved in it - guess he's lost his touch on this one.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I get the impression that you can basically "finish" this game in about three hours.
How do you "finish" an open-ended Simulation in three hours?

So is there anything fun/good about this game?

It's not really open ended. There's five stages, and once you complete the objective for each stage, you can still play, but it's pointless without objectives, so you move on to the next stage.

Originally posted by: CottonRabbit
I got my package from Newegg today. The Sept. 7 release date seems to be really loose...

After an hour, my impressions are good. I'm not sure what some people were expecting, this is the guy that made SimCity and the Sims, of course there's no endgame "goal" and you can't "beat" the game either. I also think the game will get better in the later stages as more people start adding weird creatures online.

Sure, there was no end goal in the Sims or SimCity either, but their underlying engine was so complex that you can literally play it for hours.

Spore is a simplistic mish mash of so many different types of games that you really get bored with once you get through them all. You can't compare spore with Simcity or the Sims.