Spore impressions - TTLG Forums

Chade on 25/9/2008 at 02:06

I have yet to detect any easy way to predict whether a hardcore gamer will "get" Spore. The variety of opinion is remarkable.

I think it's fair to say that Spore is not interesting in the way that computer games are traditionally interesting. If that's all you look for in Spore you will certainly get bored. But Spore has a lot more to offer then traditional gameplay challenges. You can't really judge Spore by "how deep" it is. Whether this appeals to you is another matter ...

Also: get to space before writing Spore off. No guarantees you will like Space, of course ... but it is considerably different to the rest of the game, and therefore "worth a shot".

Finally, I found this interview quite interesting:
(http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/09/22/spores-lead-designer-on-spores-design/)

Fafhrd on 25/9/2008 at 03:14

Quote Posted by Stitch

I'm finding the game to be oddly annoying. Each stage so far is increasingly difficult, but not in a challenging way so much as a "let's toss wave after wave of enemies at you until you figure out the one trick to beating a stage" kind of way. I have yet to pass the Civ stage because (1) one neighbor just keeps hammering away at my religious civ and (2) constant city defense is ridiculously tedious. I've figured out the basic way to beat this one--create a fleet of culture planes and just go on a conversion world tour lol--but goddamn does this not seem like a good usage of my valuable personal time.

If you're trying to play as Mr. Supernice, you can give the guy that keeps attacking you money and compliments and shit until you're friendly with him. Also, at the beginning of the Civ stage build a vehicle and immediately run around crushing the still tribal villages, they usually have nifty stuff in them. If you're lucky you'll get an economic vehicle, and you can form a trade route with another city until you can buy it, convert it to Economic if it isn't already, and then build economic vehicles and use them to take over other cities the same way.

I've gotten to the Space Stage, and I've grown kind of 'meh' about the whole experience, myself. Military conquest is a pain in the ass, since you can only have 4 ships (I think, I've only gotten two additional ships so far) in your fleet at any given time (and three of those ships have to be provided by allied alien races), and the AI are under no such restrictions; and getting enough money to buy other systems is tedious as all hell, and there doesn't seem to be any way to talk allies into giving you systems for free. Plus they seem to have shoehorned an ACTUAL story into the space stage (this Grox bullshit). I also really really wish I could use the tractor beam to redirect comets into planets, instead of having to buy a single use Comet Attractor. On the plus side: I fucked a civilized planet down to T0, thus driving everything on it into extinction, just because I could, so that was kind of fun.

Malf on 25/9/2008 at 06:22

I got fed up with the space stage eventually. Sure, it held my attention for longer than the Tribal or Civ stages, but again, it came down to a constant slew of repetetive actions.
Let alone which, I think they kinda reneged on the inital idea of Space; they sold it as you being an omnipotent being flying around the universe fucking with other creatures, which would have been awesome, but the scope to do such has been dramatically reduced.
Instead you're left with a severely dumbed-down Elite clone with no opportunity to sandbox due to continuously being bombarded by pointless bureaucracy.

Also, all your choices from the earlier game are boiled down to 3 distinct civilisation types, making your lovingly-crafted individual creature species rather generic. Evolution no longer plays a part.

icemann on 25/9/2008 at 06:33

Elite was a flight sim game very similar to freelancer and Privateer, I fail to see what that and Spore have in common.

Malf on 25/9/2008 at 06:44

Really?
The trading of goods to earn money to buy better equipment for your ship maybe?
That and an ominous aggressive alien race that becomes an increasingly bigger threat as time goes on?

WingedKagouti on 25/9/2008 at 12:30

Quote Posted by Malf

Also, all your choices from the earlier game are boiled down to 3 distinct civilisation types, making your lovingly-crafted individual creature species rather generic. Evolution no longer plays a part.

If you're talking about Tribal or Civ stages, sure. If you're talking about Space there's 10 different types of civilizations, and the consequence abilities you got from the earlier stages still have an effect.

As far as money generation goes, it's very slow in the start. However, once you have a couple of T3 planets (with Spice Storage) with green/pink/purple spice going, it won't take long (10 mins or so) to generate 5 million sporebucks.

As far as messages go, you can ignore pirate attacks and allies being attacked, along with generic (non-Grox) attacks on the colonies with Uber Turrets. The Bio Protector and Bio Stabilizer combine to almost completely remove any Eco Disasters on the planet.

You can have up to 5 ally ships with you (you get one additional for every other rank), but they tend to die against anything the Grox throw at you. Note that the NPC ships have health based on the size of their empire. Allies are generally only good for their ships and automatic mission generation. The ships are a big help until you have good weapons and defenses, after that they're cannon fodder that only helps degrade relations and provide a minor meat shield.

Malf on 25/9/2008 at 12:44

Believe me WingedKagouki, I know cash comes easy after a while; I've currently got on my active space-faring race over 20 million sporebucks.
I'd forgotten about the civilisation types you mention, but that's purely because even though there seem to be more, it still comes down to essentially economic, religious or warlike, none of which seem to actually influence gameplay in space to a great degree, if at all.

I just think the game is a huge missed opportunity, and that the Sims games are significantly deeper.
Shame really.

WingedKagouti on 25/9/2008 at 12:50

Quote Posted by Malf

Believe me WingedKagouki, I know cash comes easy after a while; I've currently got on my active space-faring race over 20 million sporebucks.

Well, that was mostly for Fafhrd, your posts kinda blurred together for me when I was writing my reply.

Chade on 25/9/2008 at 21:28

Quote Posted by Malf

the Sims games are significantly deeper.

That is surprisingly true, and I have to say that I thought Maxis of all people would have understood that you don't need to make a game easy to make it accessible to a broad audience.

raevol on 25/9/2008 at 21:47

(http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/24/1939256&from=rss) Spore Class-Action Suit. *happy dance*

As for the game itself, these impressions may be because I am playing a carnivore, but: cell stage was irritatingly difficult, spent the creature stage unlocking everything just to make an ugly creature, tribal and civ stages were a joke- too easy, and the space stage seems interesting though I haven't played it much.