Spore

[Tobal]

Got back from work to see my play.com order had turned up. So since about 7pm till now(11ish), i been quite lost to the game but i don't know why as its not all that great from the parts i've played so far(cell to the start of the tribe stage) but i can't help but keep going back to see all the strange creatures interact(sometimes) with each other. Cell stage really is just pacman and thats much the same when you get onto land for the pre-tribe section when you wonder around a massive landscape filled with hundreds of other creatures.

I choose to go all meat-eater so found pretty hard to make friends and often i would just end up in fight i couldn't win during the later stages. Socialising seems to be just matching the right action to other creatures dance, and fighting is just click,click,click and hope you have larger spikes than them, nothing you can sink your teeth into. Just started the tribe stage where you go to RTS controls and decided to to stop for the night.

I can see this game isn't made for hardcore gamers in mind so far, it really is similar to Sims "for everyone" approach.

[Stuart Smith]

Just spent my first hour or so with this, and I'm absolutely loving it so far. I've pretty much only played the Cell stage up to this point, having just eaten enough to evolve to a land-based creature, but even though it is an incredibly simplistic start (it's basically fl0w without motion control...even Pac-Man had more actual urgency to it), there's something very pleasing about the lovely and atmospheric graphics and music, and the way that there's just enough nuance in the control system to make chasing after smaller cells and avoiding bigger, more threatening ones subtly challenging.

The real joy though, for me, was in playing around with the Creator mode. At any point in the Cell stage, you can click to initiate a Mating Call, which tracks down a like cell and produces an egg. This is just a fancy way of calling up the Creator mode and playing with the design of your cell. It works really well, with even a very limited number of 'parts', you can produce all sorts of weird and wacky creations, simply because you can position things on any part of the cell's 'body' and resize absolutely anything, down to the individual pieces of vertebrae. My 'Stuartfish' went through all sorts of bizarre configurations, most utterly useless but oddly cute. There are some nice touches, too. Choose not to give your cell any eyes and the stage is still doable, but you have to contend with what is basically massive fog of war, slowing things down immensely.

I do entirely see what Tobal's saying, while I found plenty to occupy me in the Cell stage, it's hardly the most elaborate of gameplay mechanics so far. But if I got the gist of my skim of Eurogamer's review right, it sounds like the real meat of the game comes in the final stage, and in fairness, if you so desired you could blitz through the Cell portion in all of about 10 minutes. That this is the first time in longer than I can remember that I sat down and played a PC game for over an hour solid says a lot for happy I was just messing about in the tide pool!

[Dezm0nd]

Is it possible to play a mates copy of this at my house? or does it require some sort of code verification.

[Orgun]

I THINK it requires verification of some kind, you need to be connected to the EADM to play.

Just got back from town with my copy of the galactic edition.

EDIT: Wow, my disc drive does NOT like the install disc, its going sloooooooowly

[Dezm0nd]

I'm hoping that I can install and play at my house without having to link the CD key to an EA account

we'll see.

[Orgun]

Well install attempt number 1 failed, so I whipped out my old school LITEON USB DVDRW and that is working muuuuuuch better than my mounted drive.

[MyDogSkip]

Is anyone playing this on a MAC? If so, how well is it running? Are there any issues with only using a single button mouse etc?

[Orgun]

Haha man this game has soooo much charm, I love the different music that plays when you mate in the creature stage

Maxis, I love you, the manual that came with the game is as PROPER freaking manual; none of this 3 pages of black n white bull****. It's full colour and 100 pages thick.

Some images, I do have a movie as well but I need to upload that to youtube.

[FreelancePolice]

decent article by gillen about spore http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008...hings-to-know/

for those doubting

[Orgun]

Hahahaha, I domesticated a Cthulu



Love to watch it help defend my village when its attacked

[Dazzyman]

Servers are still borked Im getting same problem authenticating

http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/spore-technical-support/334997-registration-code-used-game-cannot-validated-2.html

[SuperBeatBoy]

Just got home with my GE. I haven't installed this yet, but hearing these issues is making me reminise(sp?) the day Half-Life 2 got released.

[reektan]

I'm confused. No AntiAliasing options - even forcing them in the Nvidia control panel does nothing. No option to invert my mouse either. Both seem to be queries posted on the EA boards with no real response.

It is 2008 right ?

[Orgun]

Lol reektan

Btw has anyone come across the bug in tribal where one of your guys gets shot straight into orbit lol got to have an early look at my plant thanks to it

[MyDogSkip]

Got this today on the mac earlier, really enjoying it! Just came out of the water, now im on land eating stuff. (mainly other creatures)

More views when i have them!