Spore!

[Gargantou]

Just made it to the galactic core(and without cheats I might add)!

Funny ending also.

Edit: Very dissappointed with what you get for completing it though.. Beware, don't get your hopes up..

 

[nurizeko]

Thats because people who weren't looking forward to it are simpletons who are barely aware of the rise and setting of the sun, let alone other things.



Seriously though, I'm not amused, the first half was okay, a good little game, little being the word to keep in mind, I was expecting the space stage to be really sandbox and open ended but having to fly about doing missions and all this crap ruins it.

I played through the rest of the game working up to this moment of awesome where I can bend the galaxy to my whim, and now I have to do stupid boring kiddy missions?.

Ugh....

 

[Evo]

Do you have to do those missions? Can't you ignore them?

 

[Kamikazie]

You don't have to do them. What you can do is go to your home planet and say something to the effect of "I just want to explore"

 

[AJ Rimmer]

Biggest annoyance in the space stage is easily all the "Help us, help us, we're being attacked and we only have the one spaceship between us!". Mighty frustrating.

 

[Dax]

^ Yeah, that's what ruining my experience in the space stage. So much for planetary defense. Hope this is adressed in a future patch.

 

[DEATH eVADER]

You're going to be destroyed in space if you make enemies with everyone without being properly equipped.

I learnt that the hard way.

When there are raids on your planet, do the city turrets actually do damage? Because I can see them firing up at the raiders, then they just stop :|

Talk about the raids being long and hard, I found myself doing hit-and-run tactics so I don't get swarmed by all the fighters.

 

[TwwIX]

Biggest annoyance in the space stage is easily all the "Help us, help us, we're being attacked and we only have the one spaceship between us!". Mighty frustrating.

I agree. I just started ignoring them at this point.
You'd expect a planet/colony to have defenses to repel such attacks. I hope this get resolved in a patch. Knowing EA though this will probably be added in an expansion instead.

 

[Shakermaker]

Q. Can you only add a second spaceship from an ally? Or can you build one yourself?

 

[Lucid]

Looks like you can only recruit from allies.

Also yeah, I'm sick to death of the helpless allies constantly crying for assistance, it's like... you have the technology to build your own army and defenses... DO IT.
And then, today... they finally got sick of me ignoring them and broke off our alliance! God damn it, I hope this gets fixed in a patch or mod.

It's hard enough to colonize planets without your allies bitching about being under attack all the time.

I'm about to cancel my preorder, this is game breaking for me tbh.

 

[AJ Rimmer]

I agree. I just started ignoring them at this point.
You'd expect a planet/colony to have defenses to repel such attacks. I hope this get resolved in a patch. Knowing EA though this will probably be added in an expansion instead.

Yeah, if I build a colony and beef it up with as many defense turrets as it can take, I expect it to at least repel some attacks on its own. Seeing three of your worlds get attacked at the same time knowing that not one of them will survive if you don't rush there straight away= Not fun.

 

[nurizeko]

You don't have to do them. What you can do is go to your home planet and say something to the effect of "I just want to explore"

But missions are the only realistic way you can earn the UFO tools and income.

 

[Dog--]

But missions are the only realistic way you can earn the UFO tools and income.

I know what you really mean, but still..

lol.

 

[Sedako]

I think I'm done playing this for the time being. The repetitive factor for space is through the roof.

 

[Dog--]

I'm glad I only watched like 1 video of it and only seen 3 screens, it seems the less you hype the game the better it is. I'm still finding joy in the game.

 

[Nibwoddle]

I was trying to play Spore vicariously at the xspore forums (thanks Google!) and found this curious thread:



tee hee

Well what do you know... I made that thread.

 

[French Ninja]

Can we have infantry in the civ phase?

Any guns?

 

[Kamikazie]

You only have cars, boats and planes. :/

And the only guns are the ones on the vehicles and around your cities.

 

[French Ninja]

You only have cars, boats and planes. :/

And the only guns are the ones on the vehicles and around your cities.

:|

After reading all these gamer reviews of these games, I'm really feeling bad about this.

 

[Kamikazie]

Other than those minor flaws and a few in the space it's really a decent game.

 

[French Ninja]

Other than those minor flaws and a few in the space it's really a decent game.

Can I still suck up animals and eject them onto planets lacking oxygen?

 

[Kamikazie]

Why yes you can. I actually did that more than once

 

[French Ninja]

Why yes you can. I actually did that more than once

Then not all hope is lost.

 

[cabbs]

Today I was attacked by sentient Broccoli.

Those bastards are vicious.

 

[theotherguy]

Bah, downloaded, but 13 hours remain before I can unlock it. I am trying to change my country to UK, but I think they fixed that exploit.

 

[MorganFreeman911]

You cheap bastard theotherguy.

 

[Zeus]

You cheap bastard theotherguy.

? I think he was referring to the EA downloader..not warez.

 

[Jintor]

I need to wait until tommorrow's test is over so I can install it.

Until then, back to Persepolis.

 

[Nitre]

I reckon that overall the game is quite good, but people overhyped it way too much (as usual) and so not everyone is satisfied.

Some of my opinions:


The stages are all too similar to each other. So far i've played up to the space stage with a civilisation that destroys everything, and up to tribal with a peaceful species. I don't know what can be done about it, but a little more depth would be nice.

The Creature stage is quite fun, picking up parts and gradually developing your creature, as well as exploring a bit and finding some really weird creatures (and epic ones).



Space stage needs a bit of tweaking. Too many random attacks, eco-disasters and pirates (even though i have the Pirates B Gone trait). I have most of my cities fully kitted out with turrets, and even an uber turret on all my important colonies (about 5 of 40 odd) but they still have to call me back to protect them. This could be solved with planetary defenses that actually repels attackers without you having to be there. Way too many civilisations much too close to each other. I encountered i think 6 different ones within about 50 or 60 star systems. Considering there are probably thousands in the galaxy, and in the real world we have yet to discover any planets that could support life, there are way too many habitable planets. I'm not saying that the game is supposed to be realistic or anything, but come on.

I'd like the chance to explore some barren planets and terraform them for my civilisation, not have every other planet some lush landscape with full ecosystems. The fact that there are so many civilisations also devalues alliances and wars and trading (which i can't see much of a point for at the moment, because i can just take any planet i want for free using force, and it only takes about 20 seconds). If there were fewer civilisations then you would actually have to think about whether you wanted to destroy them or trade with them, because it could impact on the amount of money you can get, since at the moment everyone and their mum is available to buy spice for ridiculous amounts of money, especially pink and green for me. I've made about $20 million from just a few round trips of my colonies, because some of the spice i've been able to sell for about 40,000 each.

tl;dr - Space needs to have fewer civilisations in it, and less attacks from random people.


If the space phase was sorted a bit and the other phases (other than cell, which is really good, i think) were improved a little, it would be an even better game than it already is.

 

[stemot]

Well, what a ****ing farce this is: Me and alot of other users have very angrily discovered you can't use mulitple accounts with one installation, even though on Page 62 of the manual, it says you can, here is what I've been posting on forums:-

Hi There, I have come across something I think your readers should be aware of.

I recently bought Spore, for both me and my wife, as both of us have Spore accounts and installed on both our machines. After setup, I logged in fine to the on-line features, then I tried it on my wife's machine.
We were greeted by a message that told us she was not able to have on-line privileges.
I contacted EA Support thinking the reason was due to the server troubles they have been having and got this reply:-

"Hello Ste,

Thank you for contacting us here at Electronic Arts Technical Support. I understand that your wife wishes to use a different account for SPORE™.

Unfortunately, code registration is restricted to 1 legitimate entitlement creation per code only. We apologise for any disappointment or inconvenience that this causes you.

Should you require further assistance about this or any Electronic Arts games in the future, please visit our website and review our extensive Self Help knowledgebase (http://electronicarts.co.uk/support).

Thanks!

Anne
EA Support Centre, UK and Ireland
http://electronicarts.co.uk
http://electronicarts.ie"

Now this wound me up as it was, the fact they had changed this from the Creature Creator which allows multiple accounts.
I then saw this on page 62 of the EU standard retail manual:-

"You may have multiple Spore accounts for each installation of the game"

Which according to EA support is a bare faced lie. I just thought others should be aware of what EA is pulling here, and this won't be the last they hear from me on the matter either.

I got a reply once again after I emailed EA support saying I was going to trading standards over the fact the manual has false information pertaining to account usage, and got told that my problem

"has been escalated to the senior support staff"

and I would hear back from them shortly.

If these twats don't get back to buy monday, trading standards WILL be getting a phone call I think.

 

[Jintor]

Fight da power Stemot.

They better fix that up, the bastards.

 

[hool10]

1. Cell stage: Incredibly fun. You eat stuff while trying to avoid a mouth the size of your screen eating you. The music picks up with an alarm sound and when you get bigger, you eat those monsters.
2. Land stage: A retarded simon says game. Completely frustrating and dumb. You must constantly add perks to your character so your ass wagging looks good.
3. Tribal stage: Completly breaks the looks of your character as you add stupid armor that floats on your character. A fun RTS though.
4. Civilization stage: A retard version of Star Craft and is fun. Also nuke effects are shit.
5. Space stage: Completely bad and is making me not want to play the game.

In all stages, the game isn't really involved but it's made for people who don't play games or kids. There is no blood neither like that 2005 GDC video. It's just a sampling of here and there of game genre's and just doesn't get involved. The game just goes by super fast. I had a feeling it was going to turn out this way and I was right. I wanted to create in the end a penis empire conquering the universe. Did I get that? No because I had to put stupid armor on it and make it functional. I was literally forced to be other empires bitch or else I would become extinct. If you notice as well, the reviews boast of the user created stuff and customization to a certain point. Also in space stage, wtf are the body parts to the ship? They have land, sea, and air parts you can put on it. Bugs like that make you wonder.

 

[KagePrototype]

I think the problem with Spore is that each stage feels too disconnected from the last in terms of gameplay, and the only thing that does connect them are your awesome creations. Instead of having each stage naturally build on top of the last one in complexity, it feels like you're just starting all over again with a new genre of gameplay. It's like playing five seperate demos and calling it a game. If they made an effort to keep abilities and controls from past stages, it would probably feel a lot more fluid and less arbitrary.

 

[theotherguy]

It's almost noon and there's still two hours before EADM will let me unlock. :|

EDIT: Oh there we go, I apparently have two separate accounts, one for support and one for buying games. I was changing my support account to UK. Now its decrypting after I changed my game account to UK.

 

[Kyorisu]

I hate EA's account system. The fact I have to enter my credentials three times to access my list of serials is bloody irritating.

 

[hool10]

Yeah, now pirates are attacking a lot. What is worse is that it's not as simple as pointing and clicking on the planet to go there. You gotta hop all over the galaxy, just to get there. By then the pirates have left and the colony hates you. Did they playtest this game?

 

[Nomad]

How are the physics in the game? Are there ragdoll physics?

 

[AJ Rimmer]

Yeah, now pirates are attacking a lot. What is worse is that it's not as simple as pointing and clicking on the planet to go there. You gotta hop all over the galaxy, just to get there. By then the pirates have left and the colony hates you. Did they playtest this game?

I honestly doubt it. Pirate raids and eco-system dangers are way too frequent and must always be dealt with by you. Why? Why does your burgeoning interstellar empire have only one ship to defend it? Why don't your defens turrets do shit? The uber turrets are good but they don't seem to do anything unless you travel to the system, I'm not sure but I do know I keep getting "You've been pirated"-messages if I don't go to those systems, even though all I do when I do go there is watch my uber turret blast them to pieces. Also, couldn't they have given us some way of marking out points of interest? Like, you know how your economy is 100% dependent on you trading spices? Wouldn't it be swell if you could, say, put a marker on a system that has good prices for a certain spice, rather than try to remember their stupid names.

 

[hool10]

Wasn't spice a term used in the movie Dune? Collecting spice geysers is a lot like vespene gas in Star Craft. I was expecting a guy to go "I require more minerals! I require more vespene gas!".

 

[Stigmata]

Insufficient coriander.