Spore, a complete letdown

Spore is now on sale in Australia.

Dont get hopes up too much, its just another overhyped game.
But then again, its for everyone so I guess that evens out.

Tried Spore out, it was fun to start with :-

Cell Phase

The idea is to feed on monsters, grow bigger, and as a result gain DNA with which you can alter your creature. You can gain up to 5 new parts.

The good:
- well animated
- easy to control
- simple to grasp
- the new parts do make a nice difference here

The bad:
- at this stage, creature design is in its infancy and there's not many options
- it's pretty repetitive - you eat, grow, design, eat, etc.
- too few DNA points stop you from building creatures similar to the ones floating around you.
- too simple in essence

Creature Phase

Here you really start to make your creature grow. There's hundreds of parts to collect here and a lot of combat (if you chose to).

The good:
- the combat is similar to WoW's system - you select an enemy and then proceed to use "skills"
- upgrading parts is quite fun - as you gain new limbs, your skills go up as well
- you can tweak your creature a LOT more than before and you feel more in control now
- UFO attacks!
- great animations in cut scenes - the 2001 spoof scene is great
- gigantic epic creatures roam the planet pretty cool to see, but not when they start chasing ya

The bad:
- the combat gets extremely repetitive. You only have 3 skills, two of which can be used in combat.
- terrible controls - often your creature will refuse to turn, will refuse to respond to your actions, will refuse to eat, etc.
- poor graphics - this is sub WoW graphics and those are already 3-4 years of age. I don't mind cartoony but that doesn't mean p**s poor textures, terrible shading, clipping, etc.
- the world is too artificial in design: nests at the same distance from each other, spawning carcasses for you to loot, etc.
- skills gained from limbs do NOT stack
- your creature is often too slow in doing what you tell it to: if you push the attack button, it will often wait a few seconds which can mean death
- death doesn't give you a punishment

Tribal Phase - Civilisation

Here it starts playing like an RTS, you collect food and wage war against other tribes while designing buildings and clothing for your tribesmen. Moves on to a more technological phase where you fight with tanks, ships and aircaft instead. Nukes are awesome :D

Space Age

Here is where it seems like they gave up making the game. You are the only space craft in the whole game for your race. You get to trade and fight and ally tens over other aliens from other worlds and with only one against all. Gets REALLY repetitive and tedious as you have to manage and build a whole universe of colonies for your race by yourself, just one tiny spacecraft. And with more colonies you establish, you get pirate attacks where you have to fend off by yourself, which means you have to travel over to the other side of the universe all the time just to defend as your race counts on you to save them.
Another disadvantage is that cutomization aspect of the game is compleatly irrelevant to the gameplay, it's purely cosmetic. And as a result, what was supposed to be this games biggest selling point simply isn't there.




And as quoted:-

'Spore Will Change the Way People Look at Games Forever,' Claims Creator Wright
by Chris Faylor Sep 05, 2008 11:20am CST tags: Spore

As Electronic Arts prepares to unleash Maxis' long-awaited life simulator Spore, creator Will Wright has noted his belief that its emphasis on player-made content will have long-term effects in the realm of video games.

"Spore will change the way people look at games forever and change hopefully the perception people have of their own creativity," he told the BBC.

Launching this Sunday in North America and already available elsewhere in the world, Spore (PC, Mac) tasks players with creating their own life form and then helping it evolve from a single-celled organism to a space-dominating race.

The complete game follows the release of the free Spore Creature Creator toolset, which resulted in all sorts of various monstrosities. The full version of the toolset hit retailers for $10, and has been among the best-selling PC games since its debut.

Both Wright and EA hope that Spore will be another cultural mega-hit, much like Wright's ultra-successful The Sims franchise. That brand became so popular that EA created a dedicated Sims division.

And while expansion packs and high sales are likely, Wright's hopes for the series extends into the realm of films and a television show. "Spore potentially has a wider net to cast [outside of video games] than The Sims did," he noted earlier this year.

In addition to PC and Mac, Spore will also arrive on Nintendo DS and iPhone by Sunday, though those releases will respectively focus on tribal warfare and cellular life instead of multiple evolutionary phases.