Spore

The Core Video Games Forum
1

Surprised nobody made a thread on it yet. Here’s a few quick assessments:

Gene Pool Stage

Nice, fun and minigame-ish. You just eat stuff and try not to get eaten. Over so quick you barely notice it.


Creature Stage

This one was a lot of fun. I played for a long time hunting for parts and evolving my spawn into all sorts of crazy shit. I eventually ended up with a white winged herbivore penguin-ish… thing. That could dance. Yeah.

Tribal Stage

Slightly less fun as it was very quickly over and easy. Seriously, I just sang danced and played maracas for a while and won the whole thing. Most difficult part was figuring out how to use tools since the tutorial conveniently forgets to mention that. Also, the lack of a “center on the guy I’m selecting” camera option was dumb.
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Civilization Stage
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Huge disappointment. Basically just one very shitty and short RTS. RELIGION RUSH KEKEKEKEKE.
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Space Stage[/u]
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I ARE SPACE PENGUIN, I CONTROLS THE SPICE, I CONTROLS THE UNIVERSE.

Now here it gets interesting. The complexity shoots upward tremendously from anything you’ve done before. There’s a lot to do and it’s theoretically very fun, however it ends up being incredibly frustrating since your colonies cannot seem to hold their own against anything ever and you CONSTANTLY need to fly back to your planet to blow up invaders. Add to that the clumsy controls of the ship that make effective combat impossible, and the game basically interrupts you every five minutes for you to go back to the homeworld and stop Pirate Raid #1239864 over and over and over and over and over. I really hope I’m doing something wrong here. Also, the terraforming stage lacks convenience, like how I need to search all the way round the globe every time I need a herbivore or carnivore to take to another planet instead of just having an auto-search function for the tedious shit.

In addition, unless I’m mistaken, you can’t control more than one of your own ships in Space. One Ship. You’ve got a like a fucking billion planets but you ALWAYS have ONE ship. If you die, you get revived instantly, but you have to do EVERYTHING with ONE SHIP. God, this is really retarded.

2

My computer can’t run this for the love of god, so I’m waiting to get a new machine for Spore, Fallout 3 (damn straight!) and Starcraft II related purposes. Looking up game reqs and putting together a rig are bo-ring.

More on topic I had fooled around with the Spore creator and it was rather fun. It’s a pity that you say the civ stage doesn’t cut it. Having a normal RTS and then cutting to Master of Orion II sounded nice. Anyway, we’ll see.

and the game basically interrupts you every five minutes for you to go back to the homeworld and stop Pirate Raid #1239864 over and over and over and over and over

You bring up memories here. A year before Sierra published Half Life and flushed the rest of its projects down the drain, they had published Birthright, a TBS with real time battles, AD&D-based, where you could “adventure” (do quests) as well. I really liked the game, but as you conquered (or bought) more and more of the continent, you had to face all the plundering/disaffiliated troops on your own. And this would happen every single round. bangs head against wall

3

It’s dull, dull, dull! That’s really all you need to know.

4

My computer chugs if I even think about playing this. Still, I’m going to give it a try someday.

5

It sucks?

6

That sounds disappointing…but I was planning on playing it sometime whenever it was out. Then again, I gotta actually find some time to play it.

7

Browsing on metacritic, the IGN reviewer thinks it lacks depth. Oops.

8

Ok, after playing for a while, it’s not so bad.

So long as you like EVE Online.

After gaining new toys, more cash and making it a policy to blow the everloving shit out of anyone who so much as looks at me ugly (Seriously, diplomacy isn’t worth it. If they like you, wonderful, but if they don’t, playing nice is huge waste of time that just delays the war a bit), I’m still very mad at two things:

First is how you can only carry a couple ships with you, and they have to be borrowed from allies. I just don’t get it, WHY can’t I be joined by another ship from MY race?

Second is the insufferable micromanaging needed to get money: Go to planet, get spice shipment, search for another planet that will buy at a good price, sell. Rinse. Repeat. Would it be so hard to just establish a trade route and have the money come in on its own?

Apart from that, after I got better at piloting and gained some new instruments like unlimited terraforming tools and automatic Uber Turrets for defense, it’s been much smoother. There’s a lot of nice details like how terraforming planets too far or too close to the sun is more difficult because the atmosphere and temperature decays over time, or how you can contact undevelopped species in tribal stage and have them think you are some divine messenger.

Right now I’m just exploring. I’ve heard you can actually find Earth, though I’ll be damned if I can tell which of these is the Orion Arm. The galaxy is HUGE, like really, REALLY huge. I still haven’t even gotten out of the first thirty or so closest stars, and of course there’s the mystery of what is in the center of the galaxy.

EDIT: I found Earth :D… except it’s totally deserted and has a Terrascore of 1 (I.E. can barely support life). Man, what a dissapointment.

9

I haven’t played, but I’m still amazed by all the dirty little creatures people have made and posted on YouTube. My inner middle schooler is giggling.

10

After careful consideration, I’ve concluded that the game is in fact awesome, you just need to get in the correct mood for it.

11

That comic makes a great point about games. I have now the urge to construct a fleet and [strike]outmaneuver[/strike] destroy things.