SPORE, don't believe the hype. (spoilers)

Jul 16, 2008
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Wasn't able to finish translating.


Now talk 'bout the game.

So Spore has been in development since 2000 and hyping itself for the last three, and it?s such a disappoint. First let?s get this straight. This is not a game that charts the rise of a civilization from cell to interstellar empire, it is a space game and a poor one at that, its no privateer or X beyond the frontier.
The much vaunted first 4 stages are little more than the customization options at the beginning of any RPG, a long, overly drawn out version. Each epoch sets a different characteristic, and in the second epoch you can design your creature and in the 3rd and 4th dress them, and that?s the crux of this game; it really is just an RPG.
The first epoch is fun the first time, being a cell, bobbing about, and the whole different scales of organisms are a nice touch, but it is over quickly and lacks any real depth. It?d be a mini game in any other game. But it does have the RPG element of leveling up.
Then you have the creature stage, where you can put limbs on your cell and have your own personal abomination against the lord wander around and commit genocide. Your goal is to earn experience points called DNA to level up your creature you also find new traits just lying around. This is the RPG element with the fun taken out. It finds other creatures to kill or impress. Occasionally your herd migrates, so you have to follow, but that?s all the missions are. Then when you expanded your brain enough, you go to the tribal stage and all your decisions are boiled down to 3 outcomes as with the cell stage. This leads to the fun possibility of predatory herbivores. All the rest of your decisions depend on the genetic traits. And the allies and enemies you made become pointless as it is wiped away just as in the cell stage (some physical traits like wings have an effect but offer no real advantage).
And it is off to the tribal stage, here you report the previous ally or kill but instead of one creature you control a group of them. And rather than other tribes of your own species, several other species have similarly climbed the lofty steps of civilization (all with breeding populations only plausible in the bible), so you do want any self respecting chieftain would do, set about committing genocide or cultural subjugation since only your species will progress into the next epoch it same to assume your allies died out. Tribe is probably the easiest stage; you either give all of your tribe musical instruments or impress the other tribes or the quicker route: Give them all weapons and kill everyone else.
Then after this brief section, it?s off to the civilization stage, but if you?re expecting something akin to the civilization games or any of its ilk, then expect to be sorely disappointed. This is the first epoch were a previous decision really effects anything how you won the stage sets your start city type in the civilization one, there are 3 choices Military, Religious and Economic, and you get an air sea and land unit that can be built for each type, economic cities can buy opposing cities, religious ones convert them and military conquer them. There is only one tech to be unlocked and that air units and you unlock that by conquering half the civilization, everything else is unlocked from the start of the stage. This is in many ways just a repeat of the tribal stage and is other nearly as quickly.

These 4 section the games vaunted selling points take no more than a few hours to complete. Then we have the space stage, which is essential an RPG it has some weak story but I only played an hour or so of it, before taking the game back and getting a refund. The game has some nice touches and the designing of creatures, buildings and vehicles is fun but they're interspersed with touch much repetitive grind and too little actual game play. On the evolution front it fails to surpass Maxis own Simlife, and on the game play front you'll be let down if you?re not looking for a grindtastic RPG.
 

Altorin

Jack of No Trades
May 16, 2008
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after actually playing the game, I have a few observations of my own.

Yes, the game is short. You can really play it as long as you want (Nothing forces you to Advance from different stages), but the rewards for staying in the game past the advancement are minimal.

From what I can tell, having played through the whole game as a "warrior", and half the game as a Social creature, the game is fairly boring. Yes, there's a variety of creatures, and a lot of open world to explore, but the combat is clunky, and the "socializing" involves playing a game of Simon Says for 35 seconds.

The character customization is good, but I couldn't live without wings, as flying > walking, so all my monsters sort of look the same. The building customization in the civilization phase seems meaningless, I was expecting something similar to the creature phase where different substructures effected your building, but no, you can have all your buildings as boxes with no doors and they'll work fine. When I was in a rush, I made my entertainment building just a box with 2 little signs on it, that I called the "Fun Box", and I actually thought that was pretty funny.

This game is just shallow, when we were promised depth, and I can understand peoples ire over it. My BIGGEST complaint over Spore has nothing to do with the shotty DRM, shallow gameplay, uninteresting and vestigial features.

It's the graphical glitches. There's no reason why there should be gaping texture holes in a game this new. It's inexcusable. Maybe it's just my version (honestly, I didn't pay for it, and in this case, I'm not ashamed to say it. But the game worked. WTF is with the missing textures?

Oh well. It's not garbage, but at the same time, it is fairly lame.
 

merf1350

New member
Sep 1, 2008
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I actually really like the game. It does what all his games do, it allows me to build things. Sure the options can be limiting at times, but honestly, trying to shoehorn even more in would cause more trouble than it's worth.

Another thing I like is that it take pieces of other games, like RTS, and simplifies them. I love RTS, but I also hat RTS. And my hate for RTS comes to only one thing...too many fricking resources to balance. I like the way I only have to worry about one. It frees me to have more fun with it.

Mostly though, I like to build and make things in games, and for me Spore works because the mechanic it uses offer me a lot of replay value. So, if like other people I get tired of the Space age, I can go back and evolve something completly new. I can also then RP it. My fist race was a race of Shark people, and I made them bloodthirsty warmongers. Next time who knows, maybe I'll make a race of stealthy crap people.
 

Dommyboy

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Jul 20, 2008
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Capital letters and full steps are the basis for English grammar. You learn this in kinder, remember and use it.
Spore tries to implement too much with short tid bits. The stages are fun but you can get through the whole thing so quickly its almost on the same level as sex. So bluntly, great at first, dull at the end and a lot of annoying effort you have to put in.
 

drunken_munki

New member
Nov 14, 2007
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Spot on review(s).

It may be a SIM game but it's a shit one at that. Don't send you're money to EA, please do like he above poster said - and burn it instead.
 

Humanfishboy

New member
Aug 9, 2008
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I like Spore, it's not the greatest thing ever, but once I got over my own personal hype "oh boohoo it's not everything i dreamed it would be" I was still left with something that was fun, charming and has kept me interested a lot longer than most games.

I think the problem with Spore is that, like The Sims, it's more of a toy than a game and requires imagination to be worth anything. Most people who criticize Spore seem to do so on a purely gameplay front, which is simply the wrong way to look at it (what was the Sims, other than click on fridge to eat and click on toilet to pee?)
 

merf1350

New member
Sep 1, 2008
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Humanfishboy post=326.70988.726736 said:
I like Spore, it's not the greatest thing ever, but once I got over my own personal hype "oh boohoo it's not everything i dreamed it would be" I was still left with something that was fun, charming and has kept me interested a lot longer than most games.

I think the problem with Spore is that, like The Sims, it's more of a toy than a game and requires imagination to be worth anything. Most people who criticize Spore seem to do so on a purely gameplay front, which is simply the wrong way to look at it (what was the Sims, other than click on fridge to eat and click on toilet to pee?)
I agree on the point about the hype. The game was so hyped, that many are disappointed by it, but the truth is that over-hype does not make a game bad. A bad game makes a game bad. Hype just disappoints people because they get this unrealistic picture in their heads.

Case in point, how many people expect Duke Nukem: Forever to live up to the hype? I don't. I'm sure it'll be a good game, but people will just go on and on about why the game sucks because it didn't live up to their expectations. I mean honestly what game could after a decade in developement?

Honestly, we need to do away with hearing about games years out in developement. It was the golden age when you first heard about a game say 6 months before it came out. Enough time to get excited, but not overhyped.
 

Quel0

New member
Sep 12, 2008
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What I find comical is the fact that a poorly written review seems to gather much attention than a well written and constructed one. lolzorzm8sbbq!!111 (someone comment on that, please) Nevertheless the game is a flop and his main point of "it's a space game" is the first thing I thought while playing through the game. The stages before the space game seemed worthless and nonimportant to the rest, except for the "class" system implemented. The space game was also annoyingly frustrating kind of like the man-dates in GTAIV where you're constantly being annoyed by events on your home planet when all you want to do is explore. The game never had the complication and scale I hoped and been baited for... well maybe the scale part was in the space age...
 

Nugget

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Jun 7, 2008
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http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.71399

My attempt to review this, I didn't realise most were posting in this thread until 'twas too late.
 

TaboriHK

New member
Sep 15, 2008
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A couple of my friends picked this up on launch date and have said nothing but disappointing things. Seeing as how I don't want to deal with the DRM thing unless the game is stellar, I'll probably be skipping this one.
 

GenericWit

New member
May 16, 2008
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wewontdie11 post=326.70988.709984 said:
Please please use paragraphs. It actually hurts my eyes to read that. .
Hear, hear! I didn't actually read all of it. I'd rather take short paragraphs than super long ones. Umm, I'm surprised you returned the game after one hour of playing it. I mean, there are some games that it's acceptable for because they have really terrible controls, graphics, etc. I don't think Spore had any major problems, and besides that, it's a good game.

I liked it, anyway. When I originally started playing WoW, I got like 10 levels into it and quit because I hated it. A year later, I tried again and *forced* myself to get to level 18 where I loved it, and every time I create a new character 1-15ish is brutal, and then I love it from there to 70. You may have prematurely judged it.

The game is everything they showed in the commercials (something rare), everything they said it would be in press releases (even more rare), and everything they promised it would be (which is astounding, imo).
 

Blind0bserver

Blatant Narcissist
Mar 31, 2008
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It was pretty disappointing that I was able to fully carry a creature from the cell to space stage in the span of about two and a half hours. I don't know, I guess I was expecting some more depth to it with all of the hype that it had been getting for so long. After playing with it for a while, it almost seems like Maxis spent more time creating tools to let players create things, rather than build deep gameplay mechanics to USE said creation in.

That said, Spore does have its shining moments. In the space stage, for example, I was able to raise the atmosphere of a planet controlled by an enemy empire so much that the sea levels has risen and destroyed all of the cities. Such acts of deviousness can be entertaining, but the bad thing about the Space stage is that it takes forever to actually build up enough money to just buy the tools necessary to screw with people, much less do things that are actually constructive.

You have to keep in mind, though, that is is Maxis that we're talking about, the creators of The Sims and stuff like that. They're designed so anyone can really pick it up and play, so a lack of depth that hardcore gamers would expect is, well, expected. It's one of those games that your little sister can pick up and play without any real problems. It isn't a bad game, it's just shallow in a lot of places. Even so, playing around in the shallow areas is still fun enough to warrant your attention, if not for at least a while.

~Van
 
Dec 1, 2007
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So I've gotten around to playing it, and it is without doubt one of the absolute worst games I've ever played.

The man who decided to tie the stats directly to your creature's parts should be shot.
 

r3dknight

New member
Sep 14, 2008
10
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Yeah that is my biggest problem to the game, it's 75% cosmetics and 25% statistics when it comes to customization.

The most glaring example is the creature evolution once you're past the cell stage. It doesn't matter how many legs, eyes, mouths, arms you have it does not add a damn thing. A one legged ball shaped creature with a +4 Speed feet is faster than a 10 legged +1 speed feet. It makes no sense.

Verdict: Good for kids, too shallow for adults.
 
Dec 1, 2007
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What? No, I mean that the stats where tied at all ruined the customization. I wanted to make a race of elephants, and I have to grind for 2 hours and still didn't find a trunk.

When the player has to fight the game's own system to costumize his creature in a game like Spore, well something's gone screwy at some stage of production.
 

Cyclomega

New member
Jul 28, 2008
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meatloaf231 post=326.70988.710108 said:
Maet post=326.70988.710040 said:
Capt_Jack_Doicy post=326.70988.709897 said:
This part of the game is an RPG with the fun part taken out, its find other creature kill or impress arbitrary number, ocasionally your herd migrants so you have to follow but thats all the missions are, then when you expanded your brain enough you goto the tribal stage and all your decisions are boiled down to 3 outcomes as with the cell stage this leads to the fun possibility of predatory herbivores, and all the rest of your decisions on the genetic traits and the allies and enemies you made become pointless as its wiped away just as in the cell stage (some physical traits like wings have an effect but offer no real advantage) and its off to the tribal stage, here you report the previous ally or kill but instead of one creature you control a group of them, rather than other tribes of your own species, several other species have similiarly climbed the lofty steps of civilisation, (all with breeding populations only pausible in the bible) so you do want any self respecting chieftain would do set about committing genocide,(or cultural subjugation since only your species will progress into the next epoch it same to assume your allies died out) Tribe is probably the easiest stage, you either give all your tribe musical instruments and impress the other tribes or the quicker route give them all weapons and wipe them out all of them
Congratulations for writing the longest run-on sentence I've ever seen. There is not one single period in the quoted abomination above.

Never write a review again unless you plan to put some serious thought and effort into it.
Oh my lord... that is unnatural...
Never read Joyce's Ulysses then, Polly Molly's monologue (roughly 20 pages with ONE initial capital and no more punctuation whatsoever till the end of the book) will make you cry...

But yeah, this review is unreadable, after the first line a voice roared TL;DR in my head and I stopped to laugh at your critics. And it's more of a spilling of bile than some review*.

*Yes I did the same with Phantasy Star Universe, but it was written better at least.
 

Eyclonus

New member
Apr 12, 2008
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I actually wasn't disappointed with Spore, I ignore hype for games deliberately, and while I didn't get to the whole Star Trek stage, I found the game to be as I expected, not too bad, but definately not a Magnum Opus for anyone on the design team who missed out on getting their name on The Sims.

As for the review, I'm following Escapist policy by completely ignoring it due such amazingly poor grammar, and Text walling. Its almost like ASCII art, but not cool.
 

hooblabla6262

New member
Aug 8, 2008
339
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My friends and I are quite a diverse group. Half of us love a good old thoughtless shooter and the other half love stories and adventure games.All my friends like/love spore.

The thoughtless shooters like it for the ability to destroy other tribes/cities/planets and grow their army, but they weren't a fan of the first two stages. Their only complaint was the fact that there wasn't enough ways to destroy an opposing army and that space was too big. Cheats solved that last problem for them by allowing them to take over planets easier.

The adventure friends loved the game, but were just hoping for more. They all picked the social aspect of the game, and though they found it harder than just murdering everyone, they still enjoyed it.

The one thing everyone agreed on was that they loved making their own creatures and showing them off. One of my friends made a peace loving creature and as he played through the game a montrous creation of another friend of mine completely obliterated his tribe.

The game is not without a couple of flaws, and it doesn't live up to the hype, but that doesn't make it not fun. Not to mention, the most annoying flaw was fixed in the last patch with the less frequent pirate attacks in space.