Spoooooooooore...

[Rkolter]

ooh.

Been playing it nonstop since I got it this morning.

Love it.

How about you?

[MixedMyth]

I really doubt it'll run on my computer.

[Tim]

I really doubt it'll run on my computer.

Same here.

Plus I'm busy making my own game.

[SergeXIII]

I'm not going to be able to play it for at least three months to fill my Disgaea 3 time quota. In fact, I shouldn't even be typing this.

[Killbert-Robby]

Spore is actually a very low-spec game - my mum's laptop runs it, and it doesn't even support cell shaders. Yup, cant run old games like Morrowind right <_<. Not sure about later stages in the game though, so don't fork out your cash just yet.

I'm loving the game, though I must say it got very old very quickly for me. The first run through the game is OOOH AHHHH ROCK. But within 24 hours I was at the space stage, and this is where the game stagnates. It had so much potential (The stage, not the game). You're impressed when you find binary star systems. Black holes. Pulsars. But then every 2 minutes you're called back to your home world to fend off an invasion, so you can't really even travel that far. Everything is ridiculously expensive. Especially since most items are ammo-driven. You've scrounged together 200,000 spacebucks, and you can buy a one-off atmosphere creator, which only marginally improves the atmosphere. Or a million or so on something else, then you don't understand that you have to, say, keep the mouse pressed rather than just click, and bye bye cash. In short, the Space Stage is loads of fun, but it's design simply doesn't lend itself to the sandbox gameplay. I want to zoom around terraforming worlds, seeing the sights, making the galaxy my oyster, not fly from A to B umpteen times so that I can *almost* terraform a planet. Especially since your planets are very vulnerable, you can't explore simply because you'll find yourself coming back to rubble.

At this point, I'm playing the cell and creature stages over and over, which for me hold the real meat of the game, and I put in a little bit of time on the space stage once in a while too. My final review is that the downfall of the game is mainly the hype. But besides that, the game is an above average experience, no doubt. The cell and creature stages especially are brilliant, and on their own would have gotten the game a solid B+. However, with the removal of the water stage, and the sometimes tedious later stages, what could have been a sublime experience ends up being somewhat watered down. But it's still more than worth a play, hell, worth a buy if you have a good system, just don't expect the game to end all games.

[Nanda]

I like it so far. I haven't had as much time to play it as I'd like - too many obligations this weekend - but it's pretty cool. Stinky's been lost in it for days. I think I saw him for 3 hours total this weekend.

[[AlmightyPyro]]

Well I've found that that whole... Not having a job, thing, doesn't really improve that whole... not having money, Thing. In fact, it makes it worse. So I have yet to buy, and thus, play Spore. Though the creature creator had me going for, like, a week.

[Rkolter]

I've played the cell phase, the creature phase, and the tribal phase now. I like to play them throughly before moving on.

Cell phase I like a lot - I wish it was a little longer though. And the controls - whose idea was it to not have a 'forward' or 'backward' option so that once you decide the direction you want to go, you can press one button and go that way? But controls aside, I really liked it, a lot.

Creature phase - great stuff here. I wish it was a little longer too - the final brain advancement gives you way too much power - you're all but unstoppable, and there aren't many creatures left to challenge you. And again with the controls - I kept getting wedged into views because of mountains. The camera should intuitively pan out - other games handle this really well.

Tribal phase - This phase I wasn't so impressed with. There really aren't a lot of choices here unlike the previous two phases, and the goal is really single-minded. It seems less like an actual game in itself and more like one of those annoying stages you have to get through to progress on to something good. And again with the controls - nothing was really easy to control. Also, unless your creature has evolved spitting ability, this game will be very difficult. I had to go rework my creature.

Speaking of rework - I see that you only get one save. That's not awful, but once I decided on my creature and saved in tribal phase, I couldn't go back and rework my creature by ressurecting an earlier save.

As for the downloaded content - so far I've seen hundreds, if not thousands, of creatures from different people over the world, and not a single penis-monster. Although, I have seen at least one pedo-bear (I wiped them out quickly). I've been -very- impressed with the content. I do wish the chinese creatures had english-name counterparts so I could call them something.

Overall? So far 3.5 out of 5. Worth buying. Not worth the wait. But I've only evaluated 3/5 of the game.

[Joel Fagin]

The DRM is, apparently, full strength.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20 ... d-drm.html

And the gameplay sounds a bit neh, too. Spore always seemed to be a grand and impressive experiment first and a game second. I always had a lingering suspicion it'd get samey fast.

But I haven't played it or anything. I need to find someone I can borrow it off...

- Joel Fagin

[IVstudios]

It has been getting slammed on amazon. 1,842/1,998 reviews gave it 1 star. Though most of the reviews were done before the game actually came out and most are about the DRM and not game play (though the ones that do talk about game play, are luke warm at best). A lot of people are PISSED about the DRM.

It's enough to make me wait on getting it 'till I can find a bunch of "OMG THIS GAME IS THE SECOND COMING… IN MY PANTS!" reviews. Which is really disappointing because I was really looking forward to this game. It looks like it's been prematurely ruined by Hype Aversion and executive meddling.

BTW: Thanks a lot Jim for showing me TV Tropes. It really is evil.

Edit: I found this review to be hilarious.

[SergeXIII]

Game Trailers posted a review. In the sea of pros in cons for this game its important to understand their bottom line: Spore will be like mana from heaven to the casual and disapointingly mediocre for the hardcore.

[Tim]

Game Trailers posted a review. In the sea of pros in cons for this game its important to understand their bottom line: Spore will be like mana from heaven to the casual and disapointingly mediocre for the hardcore.

That makes sense. It seems more The Sims and less SimCity.

[Dreamaniaccomic]

My friend Andrew recently got the game. Unfortunately, his computer does not have enough processing speed to play anything past the cell phase. He's planning to upgrade his laptop as soon as monetarily possible.
As for me, I'm not getting it. If I'm getting anything game related anytime soon, it's going to be a pre-paid subscription card for World of Warcraft. God, that game is addicting... I anticipate huge amounts of cash disappearing from my already nearly-empty wallet due to that game.

[Joel Fagin]

My friend Andrew recently got the game. Unfortunately, his computer does not have enough processing speed to play anything past the cell phase.

I hear the PS3 has the same problem since it only has a Cell processor.

- Joel Fagin

[[AlmightyPyro]]

That one took me a second...

[BeefotronX]

I has.
I can only play offline or on my brother's login since he took the registry.



An easy way to quickly wipe out a highly developed enemy planet is to simply suck up the atmosphere.

[Rkolter]

To update my review:

Civilization Phase - while I like the controls better in this phase, I can't shake the feeling that it's little more than an excuse to build buildings and vehicles, with minimal time to actually use them. I completed the whole phase in under an hour. It takes longer at the higher levels, but really, I had expected something akin to Civilization or MOO II - evolve your civilization by learning technologies and then grow out to take over the world.

In fact, it's more 'design pretty stuff and then have a few brief fights'. And that is only if you're military. If you do the economic route, the game is over before it's begun.

My review is now down to 3/5.

I started the space phase. But I think I'll go play Cell and Creature some more - those were really entertaining.

[Pimpette]

The Creature Creator wouldn't even run on poor old Redeye McFly... apparently I need a new video card.

After reading all the comments here (and on ARS), I think I might save my money. I'm still going to get the new video card, because I want the creature creator... but it doesn't look like I'll be very interested in the actual gameplay.
Hell, I spent most of Sims2 just building people and houses - I'd play my family for an hour or two at the most and then get bored and build a new one. So I don't think spore will be worth it - especially if they're just going to keep throwing out expansion packs for the next few years to fill in the gaps.

Maybe I'll wait a few years until after some packs have come out and find a used version to play around with.
But I dunno.

[BeefotronX]

Currently at the space stage and starting to pick up some of the more nifty terraforming tools.

I'm stuck with a rather powerful enemy empire as a neighbor, and since I'd rather buy the terraforming tools than save up the millions necessary to pay them off, it's a tedious process to go on the counterattack, since even with 3 allies, everyone is killed or nearly killed just taking on the ships, and the city defenses finish me off.

But it turns out you can take care of the cities if you just steal the atmosphere (or do anything to reduce the planet to T1 or T0). Even so, you still have to finish off the ships before you can wipe out the planet uninterrupted, and doing this to a whole empire is quite slow, especially when you need to regather your allies for every attack.

Terribly fun, though.

[DJMayhem]

I've been playing the game on my friend's new macbook, and it's damn purdy. C'mon people! export the pictures that spore makes and share some creatures! (i'll get some i made soon)