Spore

[JarlFrank]

So, I've played that thing and after all that hype I'm quite disappointed. It's fun in the beginning, but once you get past the evolution phase it just gets tedious. Once you've reached the state where you build your first city, it becomes a normal RTS, and a rather simplistic one at that.

I had a lot of fun when being a small microbe and evolving to a creature that can live on land. I had a bit less fun, but still fun, when evolving my creature to become a sentient being. But from that part on, it became completely and totally meh. And I blame the "casual gamer" phenomenon. Wright probably wanted to cater to the same audience as he did with The Sims, the casual gamers. That's why the game is horribly simplistic and offers no real choices or depth. Especially those parts that play like an RTS. Even the original C&C offered more strategic depth than this. After all this hype, it's horribly diappointing that it doesn't play like a creative form of Civ, but like something that has been made deliberately simple to play so the casual crowd can enjoy it.

The only really fun feature is the creature-designer. That's about it.

 

[Texas Red]

Call me a cynic, but I didn't need the actual game to see that it will be extremely shallow. I was immune to hype the moment I saw the gameplay videos and made the logical deduction.

 

[thesheeep]

You guessed that it was like this, and with a very high possibility that you were right. And you were right.

But without either reading a lot of reviews or opinions about a game, there always is the possibility of you being wrong. I was very curious about the game, had the same fears, but still played it just to be sure.

I stopped playing after entering the RTS-like phase and being forced to design every fucking building myself. That's just annoying.

 

[Balor]

I stopped playing after entering the RTS-like phase and being forced to design every fucking building myself. That's just annoying.

You can can load building designs from Sporopedia. There are LOTS of them over there. There is a button for that, smallish and easy to miss, though.

 

[WalterKinde]

On amazon.com it has one star rating while the galactic edition beats the regular version by half a star to reach 1.5 stars.
Some people seem to be complaining about the drm (when i heard and it was confirmed it would the ME/Bioshock type drm i had already decided not to get it) but most seem to take issue with the game play itself and how the game seems incomplete, buggy (probably the drm) even on an Intel Mac and that there are rumors that EA plans to microcharge ala The Sims for Spore addons

 

[JarlFrank]

there are rumors that EA plans to microcharge ala The Sims for Spore addons

Of course. This game just lends itself perfectly to things like that. Add a few new components, like... some new mouths, new hands, new feet, new eyes. So the people can create even more custom creatures!

The only positive thing this could bring would be the possibility of creating a human-looking creature, and thus creating a race of egg-laying lesbians.

 

[MetalCraze]

If things will continue to go like they do now - there will be no Spore addons

 

[Balor]

Oh, there would be. And I hope there would be. I'll buy a 'gold edition' with cut content and some more stuff thrown in a year or two.
I consider this version of Spore to be a 'payed beta', just like creature editor demo.
Well, I can wait while it's out of beta. The 'demo version' I've happened to play for a few hours didn't impress me after all.

 

[Fez]

It'll take a lot of work to make this a half-decent game.

 

[sportforredneck]

I enjoy it. I haven't been in space that much, but I still like it. Though I also liked The Sims, despite not being a "casual" gamer. Different strokes for different folks I suppose. Of course a lot could be added to make it better, of course that doesn't matter to me at the moment as my copy was not removed from inventory.

 

[Fez]

It's the repetitive nature and lack of content that kills it. After about an hour in the space stage you've seen it all, really.

 

[WalterKinde]

Just went over to amazon.com and it looks like they followed the steps taken by amazon.co.uk and deleted all the negative Spore reviews, now there are no customer reviews for Spore.

 

[Fez]

Clearly EA are determined to bribe their way to success with this one and Amazon want to keep the hype going to sell boxes.

 

[Jedi_Learner]

An Amazon spokesperson says that the reviews disappeared due to a "glitch" in the system. "The team is working to resolve this issue now and have all the reviews back up on the site," the spokesperson told Ars. "Amazon doesn't censor or edit customer reviews based [on their content] and we'd only remove a review if it fell outside our guidelines." If that's the case, the thousands of negative reviews should be back online in a matter of time.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080912-amazon-gags-spore-critics-deletes-all-customer-reviews.html

 

[Fez]

Uh huh. Sure. Amazing how these "glitches" happened on .com, .de and .co.uk (as well as other similar sites) on a specific product like that all at the same time and in such a way. Astonishing concidence.

 

[Jedi_Learner]

Reviews appear to be back.

 

[Fez]

Considering it's already been hitting the news sites they are probably gearing up for damage control now and EA will be joining in with the usual "blame it all on pirates".

 

[Lumpy]

So creature design matters fuck all and you can just slap all body parts randomly on the creature, right?
Is there anything that's actually procedural, anyway? If I put a mouth on a creature's rear, it would still bite "forward", with the mouth entering the body.

 

[Fez]

The walking seems to be about it.

The only thing that isn't purely cosmetic is the placement of the "spitting" attachments. Everything else is just stats.

 

[MetalCraze]

2016 reviews with 1/5 out of 2216
Guess Spore is pretty much tanked.

 

[Fez]

http://news.bigdownload.com/photos/10-r ... e/1033846/

That article covers some of the complaints about the game itself.

 

[shihonage]

Call me a cynic, but I didn't need the actual game to see that it will be extremely shallow. I was immune to hype the moment I saw the gameplay videos and made the logical deduction.

Exact same thing here. I saw the videos, but they were just pre-generated content taken out of context to imply more. The actual gameplay mechanics to facilitate their indirect claims would be impossible to implement for a gaming company, and nobody would invest into such an experiment in the first place.

What others perceive as cynicism sometimes is just result of experience.

 

[Fez]

The few cool moments seem to be scripted and rather phoney too. None of the living universe, evolution, fancy AI or procedural content that was expect.

 

[JarlFrank]

So creature design matters fuck all and you can just slap all body parts randomly on the creature, right?
Is there anything that's actually procedural, anyway? If I put a mouth on a creature's rear, it would still bite "forward", with the mouth entering the body.

I created a creature with the mouth at the crotch and the eyes at his ass. He still could see forward instead of backward. And adding multiple arms doesn't really do anything.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Amazon customer reviews as of 2008-09-18:

2,761 Reviews
5 star: (138)
4 star: (87)
3 star: (36)
2 star: (103)
1 star: (2,397)

If the experience with Mass Effect tells anything the rating will improve later on when the legit customers come to defend their favourite game.

Anyways, as usual I did all the usual slandering I could at other games forums. I just felt it would be a bit lame to write a review for a game I don't own and that actually doesnt even interest me. So I will leave it at that.

Now do the only manly thing: don't buy the fucking game until it can be installed an unlimited number of times. 2K removed the crap from Bioshock after about 1 year - entirely - so will EA, ulitmately, when they have written it off.