DISQUS

Marrow · 1 year ago

Have some fun playing your copy of spore too, I saw your creature for a little while that it appears you have been running through the creature stage. I am anxious to have mine soon too, but being in the US for whatever reason we have the last date of release, oh well.

Mythor · 1 year ago

Yep, I played it a little bit in the wee morning hours. Managed to get to the end of the Creature Stage but decided to stop before advancing to Tribal and get some sleep. :)
Maybe some US stores will break the release date as well?

Marrow · 1 year ago

I'm not too sure that any stores will. My friend who works at blockbuster couldn't get Mercenaries II early even though they had it at the store he works at because there is apparently a $5,000 fine for breaking the embargo and letting it out early. My hope is that EA, who I ordered from, will send the game out soon because it won't arrive before until the 7th which has happened with other games before.

Mur · 1 year ago

I had a chance to play though the game twice today and something about the feeling of spore just does not sit right with me. Though my play though, I found one common theme though all of the game. Fast and simple game play. I felt like the game did not go though enough testing and should have been improved more. It had the feeling of a beta test more than a polished game. I am really shocked to say this but I think this games release should have been held back to fix some / most of these issues and expand the game play. Without expanding the game play, spore feels cheap and rushed.

The game starts off as cell which gets you to get used to the controls and it plays very nicely, but after a while I noticed that I was growing at a very fast rate, before I knew it I was out of the cell stage in 30 minuets. Personally I loved the cell stage and played it four more times though out the day but it felt like it was rushed and uncompleted.

The next stage the same feeling crossed over. I was rushed though the stage hardly having time to collect parts and DNA when my nest moved twice and I did not have the chance to add members to my party.
The way you attack is on a timer based cool-down system (Like rouges in WoW) and you only have four main attacks and four social abilities so if you are aggressive you find yourself bashing the button trying to keep the damage rolling while hardly able to keep up with the creatures dying. With the social path, its hard to figure out what they are asking you to do, but then you catch on that the song stays the same even if the animation changes.

The stage ends and tell you to click on the time-line button to continue. You can still mate and pick up parts which is good because when I finished (even when I spend another two hours trying to find parts) I never had anywhere near enough parts to finish my creature. Now if you are a omnivore this can cause a problem, you want to stay in the middle of the time-line but you can no longer see if your swaying one way more than the other because you cannot click the time-line anymore to check.

After completing your creature and moving to the tribe stage you start to notice the narrow feeling of the game. Yes you can fish, hunt, domesticate creatures and collect fruit. Domesticating creatures seem like an after thought. Eggs are just like any other reusable resource minus hunting.

You either attack and kill a tribe or play the social game and make friends. After playing for a bit you start to really stock up on food and find yourself having nothing to spend your resources on and force yourself to finish the tribe stage quickly.

The tribe turns into a city. Nothing expect your clothing carries over but the clothing can be changed in this place too and get upgraded to silly looking gear. Here we finally get our first glimpse of the music editor. It comes with no explanation on how to use it or even shows you that its there.

This stage differs from the other stages. Where instead of having a awkward balance between aggressive and passive, there is a defined branch of choices. Economic (middle) Religion (Top) Military (bottom). Having only played Military and Economic I can say that Economic is easy if it works and Military is a lot of work but you can keep working at it and eventually win.

First play though I ended tribe with Economic and was a bit slow to build up and so I did not produce a lot of spice. This made trying to made trade routes impossible and I was against a military nation which just attacked me and killed me. Economic units do not attack and only trade, so I was not able to do anything. Lucky for that play though I took over a military city early on and finished the level with ICBMs. The second time I played though everyone was friendly toward me and I took one city after the next and had enough money to buy out all the cities and give gifts to those who did not want to open trade routes.

For space stage it felt like a mash of a bunch of stages and really felt like one of the worst stages. This was most likely due to the fact you felt like you were making very little headway with a lot of effort and constantly being interrupted to do something else without free time to wonder around or do something you needed to do.

The game play in civ was good but still not without some faults. It was one of the more refined (along with cell) stages.
CELL

Pros - Cell
Very fun to play and customize
Here you get the feel of aggressive vs passive and it clearly makes a division

Cons -Cell
Too quick – Shame they did not extend the game, this could have been a whole game on its own
Very fast – You often find yourself dying a lot from one to two hit kills
Limited parts – It would be nice if they expended the parts like they did in creature stage with level of damage

CREATURE

Pro – Creature
Lots of customizations
Interesting game play aspects

Con – Creature
Button Mashing – In combat you find yourself constantly just smashing the 1 and 3 buttons
Nests - When the nest moves it is really annoying and takes forever to get to it, usually it happens when you are able to add the next pack member too.
Other Pack Creatures - I find that adding another creature that is not in your pack an afterthought considering you cannot change or update them.
Focus / Time - More focus on getting fossils than social / hunting when you need parts
Hills - Some hills are not even sloped much and are hard to walk on
Epics – Epics are way too strong, I mean like one hit kills
Short – This level was too short

TRIBE

Pro – Tribe
Umm....
Setup – This sets you up for Civ stage (Eco, Relgion, Military) and brakes away from the food type you eat

Con - Tribe
AI – Your units stand there if you do not tell them to do something, it would be nice if they did -something- or at least notify me if they are just standing around
Simple – This stage is just too simple, there needs to have more to do
Domesticate – They should do more than give you food
Items – Items come to late and are only one level, like I only received baskets when I had one tribe left and I had 400+ food
Food – There is no sinkhole for food (minus people eating it and babies) you have nothing to spend it on at the end of the stage and you really do not care that wild creatures are eating it. You are able to kill a Epic and its worth it for the food stock but really thats all you need to do to max out on food.
Short – it was again too short



CIV

Pro – Civ
Focus – Changes the focus away from passive and aggressive
Fun – this stage was well made and was well rounded

Con - Civ
Turrets – Not enough range and are not strong enough
Eco – Either economic is way too strong if they get a good start and can finish quickly by making everyone happy and buying them out or are screwed because they have no spice and die because they cannot start trade routes.
Cities – I found myself constantly using the same city design which got repetitive.
Short

SPACE

Pro – Space
Fun to look around planets
Terraforming is interesting
Tools are fun to use

Con – Space
Difficult to find planets – There needs to be a search bar to find certain planets
No terraform info in universe window
Terraforming is annoying when you need to fill the ecosystem
Combat – Combat is wayyyy to fast and the enemies are toooo small (fly in and go boom)
Items - you do not get enough basic items fast enough (weapons, cargo hold)
Collecting Spice – you have to go to EVERY planet that you colonize to pick up spice which is a huge hassle when they have such a limited number of slots for the spice, this should have been redone.
Loading creatures – On my laptop when you are collecting small creatures it hard to see them or sometimes they do not even show up when you at the lowest altitude.
TREES – OMG the trees are so annoying to fly though when your trying to find something, I often have to toss them away to find what I want.
Quests – they all feel very similar
Trade – there is no way to figure out prices for things and you often forget where to sell things
Explanation – there is no explanation of what the different types of spice are
Cities – Cities seem like a hold over from the last stage and should have been changed
Too much going on – I find myself with no time, there are too many other races trying to do something with me, too many quests at once, running out of fuel too often, tryign to set up another colony, fix the ecosystem, terraform the planet, while fighting off pirates and other races....there is just too much happening

Misc
The music at times collides with its self playing two tracks at once.
Tribe seems to crash a lot on me
Lack of depth for a lot of the game
Lack of music editor for most of the game
no autosave


Just open up all the Stages at the start and if someone doesn't like one stage let it be shippable than making it too easy and short.

After thought
Well its getting late and I have to say ill prob think of another 20 or so things that could have been fixed or changed to make a better game. I do hope that people tell maxis that there is a problem so they can patch the game to play better because I do hope that this is not going to be the condition that the game will stay in.

The game is great but lack of focus is not

Marrow · 1 year ago

Thanks for the review first of all.

I haven't had a chance to play yet, but I was getting disappointed when I have recently heard them talking about how short some stages are because they want people to be able to take a species to space quickly. I think they should have allowed cheats or something to leave a stage early if that was what you wanted to do instead of making it short and allowing you to loiter there after you are able to move on.

It might be interesting to see how long the stages are in the various difficulties, I am sure it will alter the experience but I don't see it extending them much. If you are able to alter the difficulties at the start of each stage it could be nice so that you can get the most out of each stage for entertainment.

Mythor · 1 year ago

I've not read Mur's review, just wanted to chime in to say you can loiter on any stage if you want, though there's more or less point to it, depending on the stage. You can keep swimming around in Cell if you've not collected all the parts yet or you can keep wandering around in Creature if you want more Creature parts. Tribal you seem to get all the tribal buildings simply by progressing further. Civ you only finish once you control every city - little point continuing after that since there's no other cities to poke, just your own.

But yeah, you can loiter if you want, there's just not always any point to it. :)

Mur · 1 year ago

I had a chance to play though the game twice today and something about the feeling of spore just does not sit right with me. Though my play though, I found one common theme though all of the game. Fast and simple game play. I felt like the game did not go though enough testing and should have been improved more. It had the feeling of a beta test more than a polished game. I am really shocked to say this but I think this games release should have been held back to fix some / most of these issues and expand the game play. Without expanding the game play, spore feels cheap and rushed.

The game starts off as cell which gets you to get used to the controls and it plays very nicely, but after a while I noticed that I was growing at a very fast rate, before I knew it I was out of the cell stage in 30 minuets. Personally I loved the cell stage and played it four more times though out the day but it felt like it was rushed and uncompleted.

The next stage the same feeling crossed over. I was rushed though the stage hardly having time to collect parts and DNA when my nest moved twice and I did not have the chance to add members to my party.
The way you attack is on a timer based cool-down system (Like rouges in WoW) and you only have four main attacks and four social abilities so if you are aggressive you find yourself bashing the button trying to keep the damage rolling while hardly able to keep up with the creatures dying. With the social path, its hard to figure out what they are asking you to do, but then you catch on that the song stays the same even if the animation changes.

The stage ends and tell you to click on the time-line button to continue. You can still mate and pick up parts which is good because when I finished (even when I spend another two hours trying to find parts) I never had anywhere near enough parts to finish my creature. Now if you are a omnivore this can cause a problem, you want to stay in the middle of the time-line but you can no longer see if your swaying one way more than the other because you cannot click the time-line anymore to check.

After completing your creature and moving to the tribe stage you start to notice the narrow feeling of the game. Yes you can fish, hunt, domesticate creatures and collect fruit. Domesticating creatures seem like an after thought. Eggs are just like any other reusable resource minus hunting.

You either attack and kill a tribe or play the social game and make friends. After playing for a bit you start to really stock up on food and find yourself having nothing to spend your resources on and force yourself to finish the tribe stage quickly.

The tribe turns into a city. Nothing expect your clothing carries over but the clothing can be changed in this place too and get upgraded to silly looking gear. Here we finally get our first glimpse of the music editor. It comes with no explanation on how to use it or even shows you that its there.

This stage differs from the other stages. Where instead of having a awkward balance between aggressive and passive, there is a defined branch of choices. Economic (middle) Religion (Top) Military (bottom). Having only played Military and Economic I can say that Economic is easy if it works and Military is a lot of work but you can keep working at it and eventually win.

First play though I ended tribe with Economic and was a bit slow to build up and so I did not produce a lot of spice. This made trying to made trade routes impossible and I was against a military nation which just attacked me and killed me. Economic units do not attack and only trade, so I was not able to do anything. Lucky for that play though I took over a military city early on and finished the level with ICBMs. The second time I played though everyone was friendly toward me and I took one city after the next and had enough money to buy out all the cities and give gifts to those who did not want to open trade routes.

For space stage it felt like a mash of a bunch of stages and really felt like one of the worst stages. This was most likely due to the fact you felt like you were making very little headway with a lot of effort and constantly being interrupted to do something else without free time to wonder around or do something you needed to do.

The game play in civ was good but still not without some faults. It was one of the more refined (along with cell) stages.
CELL

Pros - Cell
Very fun to play and customize
Here you get the feel of aggressive vs passive and it clearly makes a division

Cons -Cell
Too quick – Shame they did not extend the game, this could have been a whole game on its own
Very fast – You often find yourself dying a lot from one to two hit kills
Limited parts – It would be nice if they expended the parts like they did in creature stage with level of damage

CREATURE

Pro – Creature
Lots of customizations
Interesting game play aspects

Con – Creature
Button Mashing – In combat you find yourself constantly just smashing the 1 and 3 buttons
Nests - When the nest moves it is really annoying and takes forever to get to it, usually it happens when you are able to add the next pack member too.
Other Pack Creatures - I find that adding another creature that is not in your pack an afterthought considering you cannot change or update them.
Focus / Time - More focus on getting fossils than social / hunting when you need parts
Hills - Some hills are not even sloped much and are hard to walk on
Epics – Epics are way too strong, I mean like one hit kills
Short – This level was too short

TRIBE

Pro – Tribe
Umm....
Setup – This sets you up for Civ stage (Eco, Relgion, Military) and brakes away from the food type you eat

Con - Tribe
AI – Your units stand there if you do not tell them to do something, it would be nice if they did -something- or at least notify me if they are just standing around
Simple – This stage is just too simple, there needs to have more to do
Domesticate – They should do more than give you food
Items – Items come to late and are only one level, like I only received baskets when I had one tribe left and I had 400+ food
Food – There is no sinkhole for food (minus people eating it and babies) you have nothing to spend it on at the end of the stage and you really do not care that wild creatures are eating it. You are able to kill a Epic and its worth it for the food stock but really thats all you need to do to max out on food.
Short – it was again too short



CIV

Pro – Civ
Focus – Changes the focus away from passive and aggressive
Fun – this stage was well made and was well rounded

Con - Civ
Turrets – Not enough range and are not strong enough
Eco – Either economic is way too strong if they get a good start and can finish quickly by making everyone happy and buying them out or are screwed because they have no spice and die because they cannot start trade routes.
Cities – I found myself constantly using the same city design which got repetitive.
Short

SPACE

Pro – Space
Fun to look around planets
Terraforming is interesting
Tools are fun to use

Con – Space
Difficult to find planets – There needs to be a search bar to find certain planets
No terraform info in universe window
Terraforming is annoying when you need to fill the ecosystem
Combat – Combat is wayyyy to fast and the enemies are toooo small (fly in and go boom)
Items - you do not get enough basic items fast enough (weapons, cargo hold)
Collecting Spice – you have to go to EVERY planet that you colonize to pick up spice which is a huge hassle when they have such a limited number of slots for the spice, this should have been redone.
Loading creatures – On my laptop when you are collecting small creatures it hard to see them or sometimes they do not even show up when you at the lowest altitude.
TREES – OMG the trees are so annoying to fly though when your trying to find something, I often have to toss them away to find what I want.
Quests – they all feel very similar
Trade – there is no way to figure out prices for things and you often forget where to sell things
Explanation – there is no explanation of what the different types of spice are
Cities – Cities seem like a hold over from the last stage and should have been changed
Too much going on – I find myself with no time, there are too many other races trying to do something with me, too many quests at once, running out of fuel too often, tryign to set up another colony, fix the ecosystem, terraform the planet, while fighting off pirates and other races....there is just too much happening

Misc
The music at times collides with its self playing two tracks at once.
Tribe seems to crash a lot on me
Lack of depth for a lot of the game
Lack of music editor for most of the game
no autosave


Just open up all the Stages at the start and if someone doesn't like one stage let it be shippable than making it too easy and short.

After thought
Well its getting late and I have to say ill prob think of another 20 or so things that could have been fixed or changed to make a better game. I do hope that people tell maxis that there is a problem so they can patch the game to play better because I do hope that this is not going to be the condition that the game will stay in.

The game is great but lack of focus is not

Fobok · 1 year ago

Ok, I'm not criticizing your review, I just have a couple questions since I haven't played the game.

First, with cell and creature phase, you complain about them being too short, that you wanted to evolve further. It's been said many times, even as recently as the fansite day, that you didn't have to advance when the option first comes available. Why, then, did you not just stay in the stages until you were satisfied? I can see with Tribal and Civ, after you're ready to advance there probably isn't much to do, but with Cell and Creature, Maxis people have even described spending a lot of extra time in the stages trying to collect every part.

Secondly, for space. Also during the fansite day, it was mentioned that after you completed the initial tutorial in space stage, you didn't have to follow the missions. Is there that many mandatory missions that you feel so rushed? Couldn't you have just skipped some?

Mur · 1 year ago

sorry for the double post, the system stalled

well for the stage lengths
Cell :20 - :40
Creature 40 - 2
Tribe :40-1:30
Civ 1-2
Space ~~

Most times you leave a certain stage because of clicking on the time-line. If you are trying to be a omnivore it is hard to do this without the time-line but you could keep playing cell for an extended period of time.

No even if you did finish the tutorial there is too much going on in space, you need to constantly baby all your colonies and go back and forth to do things.

The game is good but its really really needs work