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Spore Has Gone Gold!

Capt. Vulcan said:
Well after playing through this again with guest creatures on, I'm ready to call this game a bust for me. If this really is just a sandbox for your creations, they should have made the creations vary more than just a 1-5 stat per part. As it is it's just too simple and boring.
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Pretty much how I feel. I was expecting a LOT more of a game-play element. Something of a massive, great, awesome combination of The Sims and Sim City and Sim Earth.

THIS is the game we've waited for how many years for?

It took them this long to produce a rather simple creature/vechile creator combined with pretty damn simple gameplay?

I was expecting something a hell of a lot more complex than this.
 
Arrghman said:
Trekker4747 said:
It took them this long to produce a rather simple creature/vechile creator combined with pretty damn simple gameplay?
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You think the creators are simple? :wtf:
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Yes. It's a collection of parts and pieces that can be sized and stretched and fit in a variety of, almost limitless, combinations but, fundamentally, they're "simple."

As they're really nothing more than "these are legs", "these are arms", "these are bodies."

Granted, I acknowledge the variety that can be made with them is vast. But the system itself is pretty simple and basic.
 
The backend to the creators is pretty obviously not simple. I think you're confusing simplicity of use with simplicity of design. All of the creators in the game, particularly the creature creator, are extraordinarily flexible with what you can create. Simple input, yes, but this is so that it's easy to use... but the fact that it can handle the massive amount of potential variety without breaking the system pretty clearly shows that it's not a simple thing.
 
Actually I've been spending more time building spaceships and aircraft. :)

Still holidng my interest over here. I've currently got two games going. One Space, the other the Civ level with difficulty set on Hard (and currently gettign my butt kicked by the AI).

I fully expect that at some point EA is going to add online play to this thing. At which point it'll take off like the proverbial rocket.
 
The creature creator certainly is not simple, but the result is. Aside from differing animations, there's no functional difference to using the same arms at 1 ft. long and 10 ft long. So the option to do so is kind of meaningless outside of aesthetics.

It's impressive that you can just put all that stuff together, and they turn it in to a living thing. Too bad they couldn't make your creations mean more than just looks.
 
Capt. Vulcan said:
The creature creator certainly is not simple, but the result is. Aside from differing animations, there's no functional difference to using the same arms at 1 ft. long and 10 ft long. So the option to do so is kind of meaningless outside of aesthetics.

It's impressive that you can just put all that stuff together, and they turn it in to a living thing. Too bad they couldn't make your creations mean more than just looks.
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The functional difference is not a limitation of the creator, but rather a design choice. As I've already said earlier, Wright's goal was to create a tool to allow everyone to be creative and the creativity is the driving factor of the game, not the simulation aspect.
 
I've seen Will Wright demo this game for about an hour a couple of years ago and nothing he talked about then seemed to indicate that this was going to be neo petz with a really awesome creature creator. In fact he seemed to take some pleasure in demonstrating how you might want to make a creatures neck longer to get inaccessible food, yet worry about whether it could defend itself. If the creature creator was the core of the game, what the fuck have they been doing these last two years? The creature creator looks almost exactly as it did two years ago. They really spent two years to re-tool the ancillary "rest of the game?" I don't think the creature creator was intended to be the meat of the Spore experience.

You're really splitting hairs with the whole "it's not a limitation" thing. Sure the engine might be able to output creatures that accurately lived as they were created, but it doesn't really matter since the game doesn't. It's limited in that way.

Personally I don't really care what vision they had or what vibe I should be enjoying the game with. For me it fails at it's basic purpose, which is to entertain me enough to want to keep playing. I wonder what's the point of creating a creature of your own if the only real difference is how it looks. In the end, all the time I took to make my creature felt like a massive waste of time. It was like making a rube goldberg device to wind one of five clockwork soldiers. I could sink as much time and effort in the lead up, only to have a very limited end result. It's a dress up doll fashion show for gamers. For me it might as well be Bratz Pet Farm Jamboree. Wheee, I can put a hat on my pony that gives it +5 galloping! I can give it hooves for eyes and it'll still be just as good! Meaningless.

I understand the difficulties of putting concept in to a working game, I'm sure doing everything he wanted was difficult. I just don't like the end result or where he took the game.
 
I'm not splitting hairs at all.... there is a significant difference between "they weren't able to make something work" and "they made a purposeful design decision to make it this way." There is a reason why they made that decision and Wright's talked about it quite a bit. Now sure, that isn't going to appeal to everyone. And that's fine. But it's very clear to me that their main goal was to not appeal to people who were expecting an indepth simulation and was instead to appeal to people who like making crazy stuff. And a glance at the Sporepedia shows me that they succeeded in this goal.

Again, if you don't like it then that's fine. Lots of people do and I'm explaining why.
 
I dunno, if something sucks I'm not sure it matters all that much if the designers intended it that way. I still think the creature creator is great, so I'm not sure why it matters if it actually could have led to a good game but chose to not. Again, if Spore really is just a creature creator and that's what they intended all along, what exactly have they been doing these last two years and why all the cocktease of pretending it was going to be more than dress up with virtual dolls? You're telling me they released the core of the game for free online months before the game launched?
 
I read an article on CNN.com, which gave it a less than spectacular review. I'm NOT into it right now and will probably wait three years when the price has dropped so I can pick it up at the $19.99 bargain bin at Wal-Mart.

:borg:
 
I thought it was okay. Some of the creature stuff was pretty endearing, but the gameplay was about as watered down as I've ever seen. Stages 1 and 2 were kinda fun, but the rest fell apart until the space era. Space then got repetitive after an hour and downright maddening after another few hours. Only being able to directly control one ship while every empire known to your species is constantly attacking you can be very irritating!
 
Capt. Vulcan said:
I dunno, if something sucks I'm not sure it matters all that much if the designers intended it that way. I still think the creature creator is great, so I'm not sure why it matters if it actually could have led to a good game but chose to not. Again, if Spore really is just a creature creator and that's what they intended all along, what exactly have they been doing these last two years and why all the cocktease of pretending it was going to be more than dress up with virtual dolls? You're telling me they released the core of the game for free online months before the game launched?
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See, and this is where we cross the gap between "things that appeal to different people" and "people think that just because things don't appeal to them then it sucks." Spore does not suck. It just wasn't what you were expecting.

Seriously, I've gone over this over and over and I'm getting really tired of repeating myself. Just go read some of my previous posts and the Wright article I linked to a while back.
 
Well. This past spring, I bought Civilizations IV, after reading about all great reviews from critics and players like. I hated it, tooo slow at first, and toward the end, it gets confusing, with all the units and all jumbled together. I told myself that before I buy a game, I'd try it somewhere and see if I like it first from now on. But with my returning to school this coming semester with a potential heavy course load, I'd better off not buying a new one for a while. SimCity 4 is enough for now.
 
Arrghman said:
See, and this is where we cross the gap between "things that appeal to different people" and "people think that just because things don't appeal to them then it sucks." Spore does not suck. It just wasn't what you were expecting.

Seriously, I've gone over this over and over and I'm getting really tired of repeating myself. Just go read some of my previous posts and the Wright article I linked to a while back.
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I said "if something sucks" not that spore sucks. I'm sorry if that wasn't clear, but if it makes you feel better think of it as "if I think something sucks". It's a comment on why I think it's pointless distinction that the designers decided to make the game that way. If someone takes a shit on my shoe and tells me it's art, it's up to me to decide whether I kick that guys ass or sell that shoe on eBay. (No I'm not saying that Spore is shit on my shoe, calm down I'm not crossing any more gaps.) Responding by saying that something I don't like is meant to be that way doesn't mean jack to me so I'm not sure why you keep repeating it or why it's even a valid response to anything I've said. I can't really think of a situation where designer intent makes me enjoy a game more.

Seriously though, if you're going to try to call someone out for stating an opinion as a fact maybe you should refrain from doing the same thing in your response. Also maybe refrain from then telling people what they feel.

Why should anyone buy this game if the core experience is available free online? Seems massively overpriced. My guess was that they just couldn't build a fun game around the system.
 
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