Spore - Maxis - PC

[bhodi]

First off, forget the hype. This game may have been long in coming and has an unusually rabid fanbase. That doesn't make it good. I'll just give it to you straight:

This is a game for kids.

It really plays more like a bunch of flash games put together. It's not that it's *bad* per se, it's just that there's no real meat to the game. It requires absolutely no brainpower or creativity. Each level has a simple premise. I'll summarize for you here:

The first part is the game flow plus a very minor amount of creature customization. Occasionally, eating something or killing something will unlock an improvement. When you eat food you get points that you can spend on those improvements. Spikes, fins, jets that help you move faster and kill/eat more stuff. Eat enough stuff to go to the next stage.

The second part plays like a MMO. You've got a dude. You can run up and beat creatures to death or you can dance/sing for them to make them friendly. Do enough of this and you have the ability to bring one or two creatures along with you once you become friends with them. Your unlocks this round come from befriending alpha-male creatures and digging up bones. Upgrades go to better singing or better bashing and you finalize your creature here. Befriend/kill enough creatures to go to the next stage.

The third part plays like a RTS. You've got a little village and you collect fruit. You use the fruit to create more people up to your population cap. Each of your guys can hold one 'thing', and there are 8 or so different items that help your guys gather, be diplomatic, or attack other creatures. You build buildings to give your guys access to them. Customization here comes from different tribal wear that helps you gather or hit things. Befriend or destroy all other villages (there were 5 when I played) to advance.

The forth part plays ... just like the third part. You've got cities with 3 different focuses: economic, religious, or military. Each city has a number of house, factory, and entertainment buildings that you can build which raises your population cap of units, gives you more money, or keeps your city happy. There are three types of units - ground, air, and sea, and each do the same thing. Units from economic cities create trade routes, military units kill shit and religious units (I think, I never built them) convert unhappy cities. Kill all cities to advance.

The final part consists of you being in a spaceship and doing shit like abducting animals from other planets. I'm really not sure because I stopped playing about 2 minutes into it to write this. You can get here in about 4 hours of play time.

In each part, you get to create and customize something and then save it. First and second parts you build your creature, third you customize outfits and fourth you customize what your cities look like.

So, is it fun? Yes, it's fun, but it's fun like bejewled or peggle - it's a game you can play when you feel like turning your brain off. You may also really like it if you love customizing and creating endless amounts of creatures. The online portion may also be a lot of fun, but I didn't go online. In fact, I suspect it's a completely separate game online. I may do a second one of these when I do. As of now, though, the game didn't grab me and it definitely wasn't the second coming of Robot Jesus. I was really hoping for some more meat, and this game really isn't a 'evolution simulator', it's a creature creator with some shallow justification.

--

Rent it (if you can?)

[bhodi]

(This is counterpoint to Cory Jacob's "Spore is going to have my babies!")

[schild]

Cory is a lot like me. Lots of froth, but he'll be back to Disgaea 3 in no time.

[Samwise]

So, is it fun? Yes, it's fun

You may also really like it if you love customizing and creating endless amounts of creatures.

SOLD!   

[lac]

My two year old sure loved the creature editor. If only I could figure out why the full version crashes to desktop as soon as I start it...

edit: I solved the ctd through uninstalling everything, do a reinstall and choosing 'no' when asked if I wanted to install the ea download manager. Apparently this bug has been around since the demo was released...

[Fordel]

Spore is like one of those full packs of Play-Doh.

[MrHat]

You end up storming off in rage because you can't get it out of your carpet and your hands smell like ass?

[Fordel]

Doing it wrong!

[Yoru]

I played a bunch of this last night and just scraped into the space phase at midnight after rushing through the civilization phase. Didn't get to sleep until 1:30, bleah.

So far, I enjoy the space phase the most, as it has the most freedom and variety, as well as just the fact that you're cruising around in space with a custom-built species that you determined the history for (mostly) and all the shit you're working with you built (mostly - I used some prefabs in civ to move quickly).

I like the cell and creature phases, although cell is basically a 2-D creature phase with a more restricted choice of parts. Both give you the option to change your behavior on a whim, so you can pretty much guide your species' evolution to your wishes. Tribe is my least favorite, especially as the balance between social/aggressive seems ultra-broken. (I managed to back myself into a corner where I could ONLY advance militarily and never socially.) Civ is weird; I found it hard to start with, but I captured 50% of the planet in about 10% of my total playtime in this phase. Once you get planes, it's pretty much Form Fleet Of Aircraft, Click on City, Wait, Win.

What I didn't like about the tribe and civ phases is that they give you very little freedom in determining how your species progresses. If you came into it militarily, then you're going to pretty much stick to that unless you get really lucky. See, you can't convert freely between methods. In the tribe phase, it seems your target has to own the same instruments that you do, so it's pretty easy to get stuck with nothing but mismatching/non-social enemies that can NEVER be allied with/controlled socially. In the civ phase, you can only build military/economic/religious units in cities that are denoted as military/economic/religious, and it seems that if you're militaristic, all the other cities on the globe will slowly turn that way too. When I played the civ phase, I got 1 religious city and 6 military cities. The remaining cities were a mix of military and economic, but they were controlled by people that I saved from the other remaining nation, so they became BFFs, unified with me and I won the phase.

Space I've only scratched the surface of, but I've already been given several options as to how to deal with situations and expansion, so it seems that the choice of how I go on to becoming the Master Of Orion is back in my hands.

Space seems to play like some bastard child of Elite and MOO, though. You pilot a single ship and do stuff, but you also manage colonies, planets, diplomacy, trade and defense. It remains to be seen how much micromanagement is required in the later stages. Too much micromanagement for upkeep could kill the fun here.

[Slyfeind]

Sounds to me like they simplified all the potential out of it. Nobody wants to fund the really deep games anymore. :(

[KallDrexx]

So, does the game live up to all the hype?

[Big Gulp]

So, does the game live up to all the hype?

My judgement?  It didn't shit the bed because women who are "gamers" in that they only play The Sims will love it, but I find it even less entertaining than Black & White.

So yeah, the hype was completely unjustified outside of the creature creator.

[Morat20]

So, does the game live up to all the hype?

My judgement?  It didn't shit the bed because women who are "gamers" in that they only play The Sims will love it, but I find it even less entertaining than Black & White.

So yeah, the hype was completely unjustified outside of the creature creator.

You have to bear target market in mind -- we're not it.

It's sandboxy people, and the folks that loved the Sims.

And there's probably more of them than people you'd actually call "gamers".

[schild]

I don't even see how this appeals to people that liked the Sims.

The Sims succeeded in being a digital dollhouse with love and other girly bits.

Spore is uhhhh, not that at all.

[Big Gulp]

I don't even see how this appeals to people that liked the Sims.

The Sims succeeded in being a digital dollhouse with love and other girly bits.

Spore is uhhhh, not that at all.

True, but the creatures are cute.

[Aez]

I like it allot.  It's way better than Black and White.  It's a civilization creator, nothing more.  I haven't finished the space stage with my first civ and there's at least 5 different creatures that I want to evolve from a cell to a galactic empire. Plus you get to share your creation with your friend.

What's not to like?  Play on hard, the gameplay is still very simple but at least you can't sleep on the job.

[Samprimary]

It's way better than Black and White. 

Well, yeah, but so is urethreal rape.

Ugh seriously though they need to make a Spore: FOR GROWNUPS version where the game actually provides compellingly challenging gameplay.

[Khaldun]

I think my problem so far is that the changes to your creatures over time are not really meaningfully accumulative. The space game would be a lot more fun if everything that I had built up in the previous stages was dependent on what I did earlier and where what I did earlier all seemed to logically connect--if my buildings looked like the buildings that something with beaks or flagella etc. would have built. The middle stages are boring in part because they don't seem to matter the way the first two do. I almost think the game would have been better if it just went from creature creation to space, maybe gave you a very quick minigame to define or place technologies. I think Wright was too in love with the scope of his original design document and didn't adapt when it was clear that some of the stages just weren't working as games.

[Yegolev]

Seems that we have established Spore sucks.  What sort of modability does it have?  The Sims also sucks without third-party content, and it's a very Will-Wright thing to do, I think.

[Samwise]

I don't even see how this appeals to people that liked the Sims.

I like the same thing in Spore that I liked in the Sims, which is being able to make part of the game "mine".  Except in the Sims that was pretty much just building the house, whereas in Spore it's building the creature, building the buildings, building the vehicles, etc.  So there's more of the parts I like.  And much much less of the things I hated in the Sims, which is telling your people when to go to the bathroom and micromanaging block parties so they can become secret agents.

[Ingmar]

I'm enjoying it, and I don't particularly care for the Sims. Yeah, the tribal and civ phases could use a little more depth.

[TripleDES]

I like the game. Though I'd rather have an option to stop the game creating any inter-empire politics, which interfere with my exploring and terraforming.

[Khaldun]

I like it on the whole but now the disconnectedness of Tribal and Civilization is really, really bugging me. I'd pay another $40 for an expansion & patch that integrated those phases with the Creature phase visually and in terms of gameplay, that had a slightly more complicated sense of what made my Creature distinctive and carried that over into my Creature's technological and social evolution.

[rk47]

That's the hook, line , and sinker I thought.
At its current state, there isn't much compelling reason to play your creatures. They play the same with other creatures regardless how many legs, hands, mouths or eyes they have. Which is quite disappointing since seeing my super speed cell outrunning everything with a huge spike on its head was VERY satisfying.

[Azazel]

I like it on the whole but now the disconnectedness of Tribal and Civilization is really, really bugging me. I'd pay another $40 for an expansion & patch that integrated those phases with the Creature phase visually and in terms of gameplay, that had a slightly more complicated sense of what made my Creature distinctive and carried that over into my Creature's technological and social evolution.

You mean if the game was complete and contained what you (and many others) thought it was going to contain in the first place?

[rk47]

Spore is the next Sims.
I foresee at least 4 expansion packs. Who wouldn't want Santa Hats and Sugar Canes or Snowmen?!

[Kamen]

I don't even see how this appeals to people that liked the Sims.

The Sims succeeded in being a digital dollhouse with love and other girly bits.

Spore is uhhhh, not that at all.

My wife loves all of the various The Sims games.  She has zero interest in Spore for exactly the reasons you stated.

[Khaldun]

I like it on the whole but now the disconnectedness of Tribal and Civilization is really, really bugging me. I'd pay another $40 for an expansion & patch that integrated those phases with the Creature phase visually and in terms of gameplay, that had a slightly more complicated sense of what made my Creature distinctive and carried that over into my Creature's technological and social evolution.

You mean if the game was complete and contained what you (and many others) thought it was going to contain in the first place?

Well, yeah. It's just that I can see what it would take, and it would make it pretty great if they did it, so if they want to double-charge me, ok, they can do that. If an expansion pack is just "here's ten more kinds of legs and some new Tiki masks for Tribal", then Will Wright can fuck off. The game isn't broken or buggy or a massive conceptual failure: it's worse, it's close to being fucking awesome, and the closer it is, the more unforgiveable the failure to achieve that is. It's like somebody started painting the Sistine Chapel, got bored or ran out of paint, and did some doodles of cock-and-balls on the other half.

[Samprimary]

That cock and ball doodle was the whole gameplay implementation thing.

EXAMPLE:

an entire section of the game that should have been awesome is now the world's simplest game of simon. The creature phase!

A creature emotes at you and you pick the same emote out of a list of, like, four, or you can alternately pick 'bite' which is always the right answer as long as you press it fast enough. SO CHALLENGING

[Yegolev]

Well, yeah. It's just that I can see what it would take, and it would make it pretty great if they did it, so if they want to double-charge me, ok, they can do that. If an expansion pack is just "here's ten more kinds of legs and some new Tiki masks for Tribal", then Will Wright can fuck off. The game isn't broken or buggy or a massive conceptual failure: it's worse, it's close to being fucking awesome, and the closer it is, the more unforgiveable the failure to achieve that is. It's like somebody started painting the Sistine Chapel, got bored or ran out of paint, and did some doodles of cock-and-balls on the other half.

Congratulations, you are EA's target demographic.  I predict Spore will get both expansions and content packs like The Sims does.  Expansions add new areas and activities, like pets and college life and running a store, and content packs just add clothes and furniture, like the Ikea pack.  I'm actually cynical enough to wager that Spore was shipped with gaping holes by design, and I use the number of The Sims expansions to date as Exhibit A.  Welcome to "It's Not A Barbie Dollhouse, It's the GI Joe Action Base", assholes.

[Bunk]

I'm still undecided, but it did keep me interested for several hours last night. The highlight would have been flying along with my treehugging blue thingy, when suddenly a huge shadow passes over me. I turn around and look up at a 100' tall monstosity with an octopoid head. I actually said "Oh fuck, Cthulhu!" outloud, just before mousing over it to see it was called Cthulhoid. I thought it was just awesome that random chance ended up with me only encountering that race as a 100' tall epic.

[Khaldun]

Yeah, there's lots of great little design touches, it's just totally hollowed out and empty inside. It's not just that the mechanics are simple, but the consequences of the mechanics are simple. You can have a simple underlying mechanic if you've got enough variables interacting with a certain amount of uncertainty or mystery, where there are variable outcomes. But yeah, the gameplay on a second pass is so mind-numbingly simple, predictable and robotic that it keeps you from just being in the world and enjoying the experience. Even my kid was frustrated with how boring the Tribal and Civilization phases are.

[WindupAtheist]

I'd probably like this better with cheats.  That way I could just amuse myself tossing animals through the air with the tractor beam and shit without worrying that the Klingons are building a fleet to smash me while I goof off.

[Yoru]

I'd probably like this better with cheats.  That way I could just amuse myself tossing animals through the air with the tractor beam and shit without worrying that the Klingons are building a fleet to smash me while I goof off.

This. The game elements get in the way of the toy elements by demanding your attention every 10-15 minutes. Some of them you can minimize by genociding everyone around you and planting lots of advanced gadgets on your planets. Once you get to the center of the galaxy though, they should just hand you a switch to turn off the goddamn Grox attacks. Even uberturrets won't save your colonies from those forever.

[Phildo]

They probably could have made more cash if they'd just charged $10 for the creature creator and then let you watch your creatures tool around on a planet interacting with others via some free downloadable client.  All the customization with none of that boring gameplay!

I played it through first as a game and didn't focus on my character creation much beyond giving him the abilities I wanted, so it came out looking pretty dumb.  I won't be doing that again because, honestly, the gameplay wasn't very compelling.  I haven't played much in space yet because I got bored and wandered off to play EvE or something.

If and when I decide to play the game again, I'm probably just going to spend hours customizing creatures and ignoring everything else.

Does not live up to the hype.