Spoooooooooore...

[ShineDog]

The tech behind the game is phenomenal. It's really great, creating your little race is amazing and you will fall in love with them...

but...

The game gives you lots of stuff to do, but its as shallow as a puddle. not one phase gives you any meaningful way to interact with the world, short of buffing your creature and moving to the next phase.

cell phase is pretty much perfect. I dont really get Kolters complaints about the control though, it's one button. Click, move. I dont really see making that more complex would have improved it. The early cell previews looked much nicer though.




Creatures phase is pretty, and fun the first time round. Second time around you are going to realise that there isnt actually a game here. I went in expecting a simple ecosystem at work, where herbivores would try and eat and survive while carnivores hunt them. In practice all the different creatures stand around and wait for you, and depending how you have built your creature, you either kill them or befriend them. Theres no real difference to the effect on the world (none) save that friending a tribe lets you swap a member of that tribe out for one of your own if you want. In practical terms a race that is killed or friended is essentially out of the game.

This phase could have been brilliant, the best of the bunch, had they made the world work. If anything had happened. If there was any interactivity. If there was any hunting or scavenging or... anything at all rather than completely passive creatures waiting to be killed. Imagine the fun if the world was unbalanced and all the carnivores wiped out the omnivores. Its set up to be so casual friendly its neutered anything interesting happening.




Tribes phase is the worlds simplest RTS. And its pretty fun, untill you realise that the worlds simplest RTS doesnt have much to pull in repeat play. Its awesome to watch your little guys do there stuff in this phase. Unfortunately, since the AI tribes don't react in the slightest to each other, it makes no difference in the long run who you befriend or kill, since other tribes don't hold an opinion of your action either way, you have the same problem as the creatures phase. What you do doesn't matter. In game terms, killing someone or befriending them is identical.





Civ phase... Im torn on this. It shoiuld be fun, Its the worlds second simplest RTS, but a simple diplomacy system and the fact that AI factions interact with each other (by that I mean have tiny little ultrawars) makes it deeper than tribal. Unfortunatley, The balance is simply shocking (If you lose, even on hard, theres a problem) With the player getting the ability to steamroll any opponent after 1 city capture. Also, it sucks that you will barely ever see your custom race from this point. Everything is now too big in scale.



Space is.. yeah space is pretty good. Its got the enormous problems of being spammed by attacking hostiles every five seconds untill you get the uber turret (And then you get disasters), and it would be very nice if you could get your space empire to equip itself with some other ships while you zoom around in your spaceship, but these are things for expansions, and its pretty damn fun for what amounts to star control without the awesome story. Terriforming and harassing enemy planets is something you will never tire of.






So in my opinion, in gameplay terms the middle three phases is pretty lacking. You have basically nothing to do. Space phase is fun, but my personal gripes come from the lack of life and consequence. For a game about evolution it doesnt feel like anything is evolving. You are just earning XP to move on to the next level. Other than a special ability, The game wont remember a damned thing about your previous phases, and nothing you do in the early phases effects later ones. (And short of clearing a spawn, the one you are in)




However. Then you meet a planet of xbox controllers flying tie fighters, and you lead them into battle against caterpillers flying Iphones, and its all fun again. Everything I'm griping about could be fixed in expansions (And I desperatley hope the expansions push depth, not breadth, when they inevitably come) That add complexity to the hideously passive AI to make those early phases interesting and worth playing, and the creature and vehicle creatures are so good as to be a worthwhile purchase on their own.



Oh well. Spore is a 3/5 for me, getting an extra point for the creature creator being awesome, even when the game is kinda iffy.

[The Way]

None of this is really that important because I HAVE JUST ALLIED THE GROX.

Oh yeah!






Except like 2,000 nations declared war on me. But I have the -Grox- on my side.

And planet busters! -I'm- the one with the WMDs!

[BeefotronX]

The Grox, well, you can't top that.

I did just find my way to the sector with one of my brother's planets and allied one of his enemies.

[Rkolter]

Well, I spent the weekend playing the Space portion of Spore.

Is there an easy way to find a planet? I mean, once you've seen a few hundred stars it's nuts trying to find "planet X on star Y".

[Killbert-Robby]

Well, I spent the weekend playing the Space portion of Spore.

Is there an easy way to find a planet? I mean, once you've seen a few hundred stars it's nuts trying to find "planet X on star Y".

For missions you mean? The only easy route I found is the handy orange guiding lines.

[Risky]

Here's my profile / creations for stealing.

http://www.spore.com/view/profile/Risky

A lot of them are from my family, we played Spore on their big screen last week and it was awesome.

[IVstudios]

Zero Punctuation reviews Spore.

[Rkolter]

I'm enjoying going for some of the achievements now.

I got the "Cell stage in under 8 minutes" achievement. I'm going for the "Creature stage with no deaths" and "Kill an Epic in Creature Stage" now. I may have to run through Creature Stage twice for those tho - it's kind of hard to not die while attacking epic creatures.

This game is growing on me.