Spore + Random Ranting

[Rakk]

Anyone else playing it?

Last night I completely lost track of time and went form the cellular stage all the way to the galactic stage without noticing what the time was. The only reason I knew that it was around 9:00 am was when I heard people going out and starting their cars. My first thought was, "WTF why are people leaving at 2am?" I look outside and then think "God damn it all."

The stages all have some fun parts to them.

Cellular is kind of like playing pacman or pacman after eating the large dot.

Creature is fun as you get to play around with your creature and evolve it. Though for me this was also the most boring part, oh hey look your pack has moved, now you must find them and get killed along the way. This was also the longest stage at least for me. Then again I was playing as a carnivore so I pretty much hunted everything around me to extinction. Except for the last few creatures that I befriended as I wanted a challenge and the ample DNA points that achieves when you lack charm and can only pose, sing and dance.

Tribe was pretty fun, go out hunting, make music for other tribes.

Cleon: Make love not war... man... /hippy

No I did that too...

Cleon: Damnit...

Yeah I conquered the tribe next to me as they annoyed me with their whole "Play instruments you don't have but we do!" Routine. So I killed them all because I wanted some flutes. Then with flutes in hand and my didgeridoos I allied with a tribe next to me, who then sent over lots of gifts of food. Hell I barely needed to hunt thanks to them. They would show up with food, I'd play them some music. They'd give me a ten and go home throwing confetti. Then once I was getting the hang of it, someone decided to attack me. Not good for them. As I walked over with most of my tribe and killed ala of them... except their leader who respawned and killed my guys.

Then I thought I was screwed. As they quickly popped back up to full numbers and I had to rely on hunting the generally extinct animals around me for food, and those gifts. I took a while to get back up to full numbers, thankfully though I was able to ally with another tribe and get maracas. So now I could play austrailomexipean music. This is when that one tribe sent some warriors to kill me. About six of them, I had all twelve of my guys in hunting mode as I needed food. The other tribe walked into an ambush. I slaughtered them all without losing a single tribe member. I think you see what I did next. Yes I killed the rest of that tribe. Allied with the next two and won the Tribal Stage.

Civilization, roughly a take off on regular civilization. My species started out on the military path. So I built tanks and conquered those around me. Then I built a navy and conquered those around me. Then I built an even bigger navy and more tanks supported by planes. I think you see where this is going.

Soon I moved to the galactic stage. Which is where the pool really seems to deepen. It seems to be the majority of game play, everything you did leads up to this point. So now I shall embark upon creating a galactic empire.

But I wonder if anyone else is playing Spore as well and what paths you took.

[Oct-taku]

*Beats Rakk with a baseball bat*

YOU LITTLE &&#$$%& WHO LICKED A &%^&*%@ IN A TOADSTOOL $@(&#@%@# SARAH PALIN'S CHINA PLATES ^$#$^$^$% ROBIN HOOD $&%&$%&^$%^$ JAX AND CLEON'S FUTURE CHILD #^#$%^@$$@ UP THE %$^$^#$^$ FROG CAKES #$%^#^#%^$%^%$& TOM$%$%&^$^$ FEDEX DELIVERING #%#^$#^$#^#$%^#!

$%^&$^#^#^#$^#$^#^ ^#@%#^*(&#^$^%&*$&^$


I think I made my point about my jealousy.

[Khallos]

*raises hand* Yeah, ive got spore too. Though, wow, was the Creature stage really that tough for you? It was my favorite part. Heh. Though thats probably because i was a social Omnivore, not a carinivore.

Fun game, though. Im not really liking the Galactc stage too much, though. Kinda samey.

[Oct-taku]

*Beats Khallos with a bucket of KFC*

[infernalhorde]

Here we go: www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/218-Spore

My review:

I, like many others, were looking forward to its release. I had followed the game for many years and was extremely excited when I was able to purchase it. I soon, however, was sorely disappointed in this game.

Game Play - 6/10
I will review each phase separately as each stage is separate from the others and consists of different game play elements.

Cell Stage: Though it should be more appropriately called the "multi-celled organism stage," we will leave it as it is called by the creators. You start by picking a starting planet and choosing to be an herbivore or a carnivore, though both are relatively the same. You kill creatures and eat their “meat,” which I thought looked like red eggshells, or you eat free floating algae, some of which is clustered on “bushes.” I found that to be rather repetitive and there is no other way to progress than to eat. From there you are able to unlock various parts to improve your creature, where placement of the defenses is important and speed is a needed asset. You will eventually eat enough so that you “grow” a brain and are able to progress to the land. I found this stage to be one of my most favorite, very interesting designs, but it was over far too quickly and the parts that you unlock have very little purpose in the next stage.

Creature Stage: Welcome to the land, because you are never allowed into the sea again. The parts that you collected in the previous stage don't matter because you can go around and collect the “shiny bones” on the ground to unlock new parts that are devastatingly better than your previous ones. Of course you can also unlock parts by using social or aggressive abilities on enemy creatures, but it is far easier to just wonder around picking up parts. I believe this creates an undermining of sorts because you the player get rewarded for finding random bits of bone and when it comes to progress further, you have to socialize or be aggressive to progress. But what is the point when I don't get reward for it in the first place? As you collect parts, you upgrade your creature and can choose to either be good or evil. The same as all the other games, you can dance, pose, etc. or bite, spit, etc. Based off of this, you get DNA that allows you to buy new parts and progress though the game, unlocking a pack system that makes it easier to socialize or kill. Though I did find it stupidly easy to just kill everything, after all socializing requires exact duplication of what the species you are trying to socialize is doing and that can get rather annoying. I would just rather beat the snot out of the creature than mimic it. Eventually, after repetitive steps, you progress to the next stage. Overall, this stage is fun. You can create a creature and see it progress, though evolution doesn't matter, since I can change from a shark-like creature to a dragon with just changing of a few parts. Be sure to choose your creature precisely, because you can't change him once you progress.

Tribal Stage: Ready? Here we go. This stage mimics a typical RTS game, in that you gather materials to make more tribesmen, and that is it. You don't need lumber or gold, nor can you select and make a hotkey function for a certain number of tribesmen. I found that to be rather annoying. Just like the previous stage, you can either socialize or beat the snot out of an opposing tribe. Once you do, you get more parts or clothing to customize your guy with and more buildings. Though the clothing matters for now and you are limited in the number of buildings you can possess, after all, there are only 9 of them. Once you ally with a certain tribe, you can't break that bond and strike them down however, and the fight system consists of telling your 9 tribesmen to go to point B and attack. Sheer numbers can win most of the time and I found that stone axes will get the job done plain and simple. After you kill or ally with all the tribes, you progress into the next stage. This stage is rather the same as the previous. This includes the social and aggressive choices and the fact that once you progress, your parts don't matter anymore, and so all your customization doesn't matter. By the way, you might want to make sure your guy looks his best, because you can't change it once you move on.

Civilization Stage: Sweet, your tribe increased in size to create a city. This stage operates like the RTS that you might be more aware of. You can customize your buildings (because I am a building designer) and your land, air, and space vehicles (because I am a vehicle designer) and use them. You collect spice and either takes over by economic, aggressive, or social, I mean religious means. But there is no point in that because you get completely overpowered abilities that can literally take over a city in a single shot, so there is no need to use your vehicles. Once you unite or take over the world, you move on to the next stage. Unlike the previous stages, you can further customize your buildings later, but you can't customize your vehicles and will never see them again, well, maybe the boats…

Space Stage: Your civilization realized how to fly in space and so you got to this stage, congrats. You can now customize your space vehicle. Too bad you have to go on tedious and repetitive missions. The scenarios include: saving a planet from a disease animal (because killing 5 animals saves the whole race), saving a planet from pirates (though they will just come back in 2 minutes), and that is it actually. You can't invade a planet like you might have thought, because only your space ship goes into space and you take over by firing at a city till it surrenders. Socializing only lets you ally with the other races on other planets that you didn't populate because you created the universe and doesn't do anything else besides allowing for trade routes that take over slowly or getting some of their ships to join you (though they don't do anything besides fire if you are under attack, though the pirate and opposing ships are incredibly weak and require little effort to destroy. They are also very repetitive looking and unoriginal.) The goal is open ended and you can colonize, though I thought that just means more “save me from the pirates” than anything, and you can customize planets with new colors and change the terrain. You can customize other animals, etc. You unlock more impressive weapons and abilities by repeating the same actions over and over and that is about it, besides the endless repetitive planets.

Audio – 8/10
The audio includes animal sounds, ambient sounds, city sounds, and all the normal sounds that you would expect from creatures, cities, or vehicles. There are even fun musical bits for when you mate and progress from one stage to another or do something special. There is no overriding musical choices though and no real soundtrack to speak of.

Graphics - 9/10
The overall designs and looks are beautiful, exactly what you would expect out of game that has been polished over and over to look good. But that is all I feel that it is, it just looks good.

Replay Value – 5/10
Whether you play as an herbivore, carnivore, or in-between, you have done it once, you have done it enough. The supposed best part of the game is the most lacking, without much in the way of change, it always comes between two decisions, social or aggressive, meat or plants, it doesn't matter, because it will stay play the virtual same.

Conclusion:
The downfall of this game I feel was the huge hype. This game was supposed to be the end all and be all, but it had fallen short and burned. But not only that, the repetitive nature of the game and the fact that overall your customization only amounts to cosmetic effects really hurts. No matter if your creatures has four legs or two legs, he moves the same, there are a set amount of abilities and no matter how hard or long you play, you are just playing the same game over and over. I suggest renting it or borrowing it from a friend. Though be careful about that whole SecuRom thing.

There might be a few punctuation, grammer, and spelling errors, but there you go.

[Oct-taku]

And do I agree with IG's review, or Mr. Croshaw's one?

Short answer: Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

Long answer: F**k noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooonoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooonoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooonoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooonoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooonoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

I think I made my point.

[infernalhorde]

haha, I am entitled to my opinion, just like you are entitled to yours. I just think they game is a poor version of other games, just like Yahtzee said. lol

[Griggs]

Yahtzee also didn't like Mass Effect.

I rest my case.

[Oct-taku]

HER-E-TIC!

Shall we start up the Gaming Inquisition, Grigs?

[Rakk]

Yahtzee is paid to not like games. Its what drives the hits.

Before the escapist put Yahtzee on they were totally unknown and no one cared. Hell their magazine failed and their website was probably going to fail. Its why they pack Yahtzee with ads, because he is the only thing on that site which gets views. Why does he get views, because he tears into games.

So its in their interest for him to tear into games.

And its in his interest to tear into games as he gets money for it.

So you see while he does speak the truth a lot of the time, you must always take a critical eye on what he says. Remember with spore he complained about the lack of depth in all the stages. Imagine what spore would look like if there was all the depth in the world for those stages, if the civilization stage was a deep as CIV IV, or if the Space was as deep and complex as GAL CIV 2. You would spend ages, days, possibly more on a single stage. Remember it might also lose some of its user friendliness in doing that. Add on top of that all the hype...

Hype is the worst thing out there, hype made Halo 3 seem like the second coming of christ. Which it was not... unless you ask Kan... but you have to take anything he says with a grain of salt. All the hype surrounding Assassins Creed made it up to be something it was not and so it floundered a bit. While it is a great game, its nowhere near as good as the hype made it out to be. Hype is just that, hype. When something is not what it was "hyped" up to be then you get undue backlash.

So if you get caught up in the hype around a game, you only have yourself to blame. I at fist was caught up in the spore hype, but was able to disengage myself from it so I could actually play and enjoy spore for what it really is, a user friendly, fairly simple sim-life game. It has a lot of fun moments in the customization of everything, the problem is that people looked at the customization options and started trying to imagine that ti would somehow have some great affect on the game. That having a spike jutting out of your back would really actually mean something other than you have a spike jutting out of your back.

So if you have to complain about the hype or rate a game with the hype in mind then you have yourself to blame.

[Griggs]

Nah, Oct, he gets to keep his life. For he, too, loves teh Half-Life.

As for Rakk's post... well, how the f*** am I supposed to follow that? I can't. Not without looking like a total douche.

Ya see? Just did.

[Khallos]

Yeah, most of the customisation items ARE useless once you're past the creature stage... though, might i point out that a wing on your creature will ALLWAYS let them fly, no matter which stage they're in? I found that pretty handy in the tribal stage. Anyway, i cant really see the point in complaining about the Cell stage. Its pretty short and, really, its just a tutorial to teach you how to move around, how to customise your creature, and to point out that your actions have concequences. Trying to criticize it is like playing COD4 and saying "That first mission with the SAS sucks, all you did was shoot at cardboard targets in a firing range, what a shallow game"

....I worry i have fanboy syndrome sometimes.

[Kan]

Actually Halo 3 could have been done quite a bit better, it was a good game and all but it lacked...the epicness I was looking for, the battles still seemed to revolve around some faceless asshole, and the marines were still incompetents.

Now COD4 Campaign with Halo 3's that would be the closest thing to the second coming of christ.

[infernalhorde]

Dude, I played the game when it first came out. I was really looking forward to it, but there is problem with saying your game is going to be based with evolution in mind. The game doesn't care about evolution at all. The science behind the game is wacked. Seriously though, you are in the multi-cell stage and a God figure comes and slaps legs on him. There is no gradual learning to come onto land, it is sudden and forced, plus you can never go back in the water again. Evolution really doesn't matter because how come having 4 arms doesn't make me stronger than 2 arms and having 4 legs doesn't make me faster than having 2 legs? Plus, evolution is survival of the fittest, but no species threatens your existance at all and you can find body parts on the ground...umm...where in science does that make sense? If this game was marketed as a creature simulator, I would have liked it more, but not when they say that it will have scienctific basis.

www.edge-online.com/magazine/spore-and-creativity-science

I quote, "...has attempted to in some way depict the smorgasbord of sciences encapsulated by the epic drama of astrobiology, from survival of the fittest, through sociology to the principles of terraforming."

www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/sep/08/gameculture.usa?gusrc=rss&feed=science

I quote, "...Eventually your species will develop enough to form rudimentary legs and crawl to ground...Species do change in response to their environments..."

Yeah...

[Khallos]

...Well, yeah, ill admit the sience doesnt really make sense. Im not sure HOW your creature picks up genetic date from fossils, unless it has a Jurrassic Park lab tucked away in its many tentacles. Or quite how i made the jump from insect wings to feathery wings and badger claws.

But, well, I try not to pay much attention to the hype.. and one of the reasons i actually got the game was so I could make improbable monsters rather than a functional species xD Im probably not playing it right, but, meh, i'm having fun. =p

[Rakk]

Dude, it came out less than a month ago. And saying that you just decided to miss my whole point. My point was if you believed the hype, then you are partly to blame with disappointment. Personally I was expecting this game to have Molyneuxitis, and I was right. When game publishers make grand statements about a game and the hype calls it the next coming of christ you have to take anything they say with a grain of salt.

Any highly anticipated game is usually subject to this. Developers can say something and the community will just eat it up without question, so the unrealistic ideas are never put in check. This happens on a lot of games by Peter Molyneux. Anyone remember the hype surrounding Fable before its release?

I do, I was really anticipating the game. And I was let down a bit, but still enjoyed the game.

And IG, if you really, really, want to play an interactive evolution simulation you should go find a nice lady and do the bareback shuffle... and wait for that dreaded phone call nine months later. Tah-dah EVOLUTION!

Yes the game has flaws, but a lot of them really stand out due to the hype surrounding it. The game basically is fairly well polished with good graphics and sound. Fairly solid gameplay for its shallow mechanics. Sure it does not meet the hype or follow the exact way we all imagined it would be, but well thats all partly our fault.

[Khallos]

Sept 23, 2008 7:18:12 GMT Rakk said:

Dude, it came out less than a month ago. And saying that you just decided to miss my whole point. My point was if you believed the hype, then you are partly to blame with disappointment. Personally I was expecting this game to have Molyneuxitis, and I was right. When game publishers make grand statements about a game and the hype calls it the next coming of christ you have to take anything they say with a grain of salt.

Uhh.. was that directed at me or IG? Sorry to have to ask.

And, um, sorry if ive been a bit of a douche recently. Ive been pretty frazzled of late, Real Life's been keeping me busy... and paranoid about my behavior =/

[Rakk]

IG.

I felt it was obvious because I was borrowing the way in which he said it...

[infernalhorde]

I bought Spore because of the game that it was going to be. Was the game fun? Yes, but it wasn't what I expected or wanted and I hated it because of it. I hated Fable for the exact same reason.

My point is that if your game is going to be one way, don't freaking hype it up to be something else because all you are going to do is piss off people. I am not the only one that feels like this game didn't live up to the hype and I feel that it is a poor version of other games. Sort of like 5 mini-games. Woo...I paid 60 bucks for this? Wow, I got raped...

[Griggs]

They're in business to make money, man. The only goal a developer has is to make lots of money. Hype sells games, often moreso than the game being of any quality. It also pisses off gamers, but we never stop buying their games, do we?

Simple economics and marketing. Nothing you can do about except stop buying the games, and that defeats the original purpose of playing them. So there will always be hype. That's one of the reasons I stopped buying Game Informer.

[Captain Obvious]

"FABLE ONE! Have kids that grow up in REAL TIME! Get married, become king, rule your empire! An epic, sweeping storyline of redemption that is TOTALLY NOT RIPPED OFF! AWESOME sneak levels, along with a WELL POLISHED prison level! It will be SO MUCH FUN!!!

BUY FABLE ONE TODAY! IT'S FREAKING AWESOME!

I was wary of Peter Moleynuex when I heard him screaming about this game. Rented it, beat it in a day, then broke the disc in half so nobody would ever have to make the same mistake I did.

And now Spore. 75% of the game sucks ass. The remaining 25% of the space phase doesn't make up for the rest of the damn thing. Evolution simulator my ass.

And yes, I got a pirated copy. I have the last laugh now Peter Molynuex!!! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

[Khallos]

Meh. Fable never really appealed to me. I didn't get caught up in the hype of the first one because i didn't have an Xbox when it came out, and the hype for THIS one is actually kinda putting me off it.

Take the interviews with ol' Pete they've got up on Xbox Live. He put a MASSIVE emphasis on family this time, and i mean MASSIVE. It kinda went like this:

"Your an adventurer, and that means acquiring large amounts of gold, right? And to get that gold you do quests, right? Well, no, not really. I mean, you get to keep everything you loot off of the people you murder, but I wanted to make Fable 2 a different sort of game, so people wont ever pay you for running across the goddamn kingdom to slay the frickin dragon of whyisthisbosssohard. But you need money to buy new equipment, so how do you get that? Why, how do you do it in REAL life? You get a job, silly! What do you mean you already have a job in real life? This is a GAME job, it'll be fun! Cause, you know, farming's fun, and thats pretty much the only job in this game.

Ok, so, whats that? You wanna buy a farm? Well you cant, because every land merchant in the realm thinks that only MARRIED men should own land. You'd best go find yourself a wife! Do it. DO IT NOW. Now buy a bigger house and fill it with crappy furniture because she didn't like the old one. Whats that? You wanna do all the farming yourself? Like hell you do, no, you've gotta hire farmhands. Gotta spend money to make money, boy! Make sure you hire the right people, too, because some farmhands are dirty thieves who'll rob your house and rape your wife!

Ok, so, you've got your cashflow going now. That means that you can go out adventuring now, right? Nawr. Your wife wants kids. she DEMANDS them. And once you've got them, she wants a bigger house for them too. And you'd damn well better not go wandering too far when you adventure, otherwise your wife will get sick of being alone and divorce you, taking control of your farm and taking half your money, forcing you to start over again! Whaddya mean 'why cant she just sleep with the farm hands'? Well thats not a very positive message to be sending to the kids playing this game, despite the fact that you can turn into THE FREAKIN' DEVIL if you want. Whee! Isn't this game fun?"

...Wow. Sorry to rant, guys, but... yeah. That interview kinda put me off Fable two. He does also say in it that you CAN go through the game as a bachelor, but that people wont respect you, you'll be poor and several quests will be cut off. Because those barbarian hordes might be pillaging the town and raping the king's daughter but he'll be damned if he's letting an unmarried man help him out!

OOC: Sorry it was so long. And off topic. Kinda wanted to vent

[Rakk]

Thats just because you are single Khallos. Single and Bitter. Just like I am!

And will be on the 25th, if I'm around on the 26th it means I survived and didn't drink myself into a coma the night before. I'll make a thread the day of, but expect me to be in a big funk that day.

Also, I was and still am F***ing wired! And I only got three hours of sleep, but I still am wired, I've been wired since about 11am... WTF is going on?