Spore

[Myth]

I've just installed it now, not played it yet.

My ID is MythJM.

[abigsmurf]

Lots of people playing, not many giving their opinions. Anyhow, here's a brief review.

The game is broken up into 5 distinct stages which all play differently and build up in complexity.

The cell stage is essentially Flow with more detail. The second stage, the creature stage, is the one that's been most hyped. It's great fun evolving your creature here although dissapointingly you only have a very limited amount of DNA and parts to evolve with and the stats parts give don't add up, you only get the bonus from the parts which have the best stats. This results in you selling parts as you replace them, discouraging you from having a complex creature.

The tribe stage is simplistic , essentially 'gather food until you've max people then attack nearest tribe'. Customisation on the creatures essentially stops here but you can give your creatures armour and weapons (unfortunately the armour doesn't take into account lots of body types, eyestalks in particular, so looks a bit poor).

The civilisation stage is deeply flawed. Either you build up your base properly at the start and make so much money you don't have to try or you have a bad start and get stuck in a stalemate situation where you're attacked at almost exactly the same rate you can build. It doesn't help that the fairly effective base defences won't reach boats so the only way to defeat boats is with boats of your own.

Worst still, you can get into that stalemate situation and there's no way of restarting. It takes hours (literally) for the cpu to defeat you and if your autosave point is after you've already messed it up, your only option is to erase your planet or start the civilisation stage on another one.

The space mode I haven't finished yet but easily looks the longest mode in the game. You're actively given missions in this stage and it looks like there's something of a story. Trouble is, I found it a bit dull. The closest comparisson I could think of, was the planetary exploration in Mass Effect. Going to scores of indistinctive planets on a confusing galaxy map in the hope you find something interesting.

The game is mind blowing at first but once I got to the latter stages of the tribal part it started to lose the shine. The game can't decide if it wants to be structured or sandbox and suffers because of it. There's not enough openness for those who just want to play, especially given how short the first 3 parts are, and there isn't enough driving you if you want some structured play. It's also annoying how they deliberately prevented you from making humanoid or mammal type creatures in the creator. A lot of parts lack variety, most notably hands and mouths

I know I'm going well against the tide here but for me, I can't see myself spending a long time obsessing over this. I can see myself once in a while booting it up when I'm bored. It's a great idea but the idea took precedent over the gameplay, fun but not earth shattering.

[Tobal]

Can only agree with the above, it's been getting less and less fun the further away from creature and tribe ages i get, the civ age is just terrible that i haven't forced myself to get through to space age to see if it get better, and feel that most of the changes you can do mean very little. Seems we have spiritual sucessor to Black'n'White throne, neat toys backed up with little gameplay.

I think i'll just keep making odd creatures and messing around in the pre-civ ages, and having a laugh when someone else creature becomes my main rival(which has happened, some guy called popayan59 creature became my main rival in tribe age)

ID is Tobal_uk, only made 2 creatures some shark looking fishman im trying to get into space and Xam'd from Bounen no Xamdou just in edit mode.

[Orgun]

I've not encountered any of the civ problems, I probably got lucky and did it right.

I did find the space phase starting to grate but im enjoying it again now, instead of expanding im working on improving my current planets and saving up the Spacebucks.

[EvilBoris]

Heh this is funny

[SuperBeatBoy]

What is everyone playing this like? My first race is a complete must destroy everything race, it didn't make it easy on the civ stage of the game at first. But once i learned how to play and what to strike first for monies, it was childsplay.

Isn't Civ suppose to be like Simcity or something? I find it more of an rts than the tribes age was tbh. I was expecting to properly make thriving cities before i hit space. Civ dissapointed me. I suppose theres room for this sort of idea in the expansions.

I'm on the space age now and i'm finding it difficult to get started, the tutorial in this game is pants tbh. I didn't even know you could domesticate animals in the Tribes age until i read the book, i don't think i would have survived without knowing that like i said previously my race was whiping everything out beforehand.

But i'm totally enjoying it. I think i'm going to start a new race now as i didn't realise you have to get all the parts in the first two eras. Might play as a herbivore now.

[Orgun]

Argh just experienced my first crash while playing Space stage, i'd gone from 4mill to saving about 15mill spacebucks and hadnt saved >_<
Still, it really is a lot more manageable now that i've gotten more of the terraforming tools and the ship upgrades.

Edit: just discovered that as soon as you start makign something, an animated gif of that creation is recorded. You can find them in the animated avatars folder.


By orgunuk



Edit2: And my favourite music in the game http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0R5ATyTbfAk

[Ciaran]

Stuck for things to do in this now. I've got most of the badges, made it to the highest rank, explored to the centre of the universe (disappointing btw) and now the game isn't giving me anything to do. Theres meant to be a proper ending somewhere in here but I've no idea where to go now.

[SuperBeatBoy]

I bought the guide book for this today in game. Its a real nice guidebook and it goes in depth on everything. Just wish it was a hardback.

[dataDave]

Gah. I really liked the sound of this game but going off of what some of you say it doesn't justify the &#163;40.

What a cracking idea for a game too.

Ah well, I'll add the money to my Alpha Centauri fund.

---

It sounds just like Sim City... the novelty is there until you can't go any further, although the urge to restart and go a different path is always there.

[Decider-VT]

Hmm, my race turned out to be rather aggressive.

[Orgun]

Just bought Spore: Origins from the iPhone app store and played the first three levels (had to pop off to the mens room at work to do it) and so far...meh it's a dull version of the cell stage (which I really like in the full game)

[SuperBeatBoy]

That Spore Creatures looks nice enough though, if the iphone game is a simple version of the pc one then i don't have high hopes for creatures. I do like the cute paper mache from what ive seen of the ds game.

[Tig]

just buddied everyone in this thread- looking forward to getting eaten by some top quality NTSC-uk creatures. Screen name's Tiggly

[Tig]

hey Orgun, I met one of your Romin today.






he was rather large.




didn't seem very impressed with my dancing