Hello there everyone, I just have a quick question that will be vital to my decision regarding whether or not I'm going to buy Spore!
I've read a LOT of reviews, and quite a few posts around here and I still can't seem to understand if how Spore's replayabilty factor is. I'm a poor student and the games that I buy NEED to be played hours on end in order for me to consider them a good buy, so if anyone could tell me from personal experience if they can see themselves playing this game for a long time that'd be great.


Cheers!

The number of iterations of this game are:

((Number of planets in galaxy) - (Number of unhabitable planets in galaxy)) * Number of creatures posible.

A . .. .. .. .ing big number in other words. :D

Yes, obviously I could create a jillion and a half creatures till my eyes bleed, but would it really create a different experience similar to changing your win type in civ?

Yes there quite a number of paths you can take. For instance, you could be a massively aggressive carnivore, or a trading herbivore, or religious omnivore, or any other combination. Also the types of creatures you meet along the way help to influence your creation as well. So ultimately, there is a lot of replayability.

There are many different ways to play as Dale has said, and once you get through the first 3-5 hours and you are in the space stage then it is going to be very different every time, like in civ. The civ and tribal stage will be pretty similar compared to the creature and space age, but still provide a a way to lay differently up to about 6 times. And the cell stage i think was made intentionally short as it is pretty similar each time.

Reference: http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/spore/908134p1.html

"((Number of planets in galaxy) - (Number of unhabitable planets in galaxy)) * Number of creatures posible."

- You forgot the Genesis Device. (Number of planets in galaxy) * Number of Creatures possible

I've found it's pretty replayable so far, simply because of the different stages that you go through, including spending time in the various creators.

I haven't spent too much time in the space phase (relative to the rest of the game), but I find I'll enjoy cell for a time, spend 10 minutes in the creator, get to creature and spend a good hour or 2 there (broken up with, what 5-10 spurts in the creature creator), tribal starts with another trip to the creator for costumes, civ starts with up to an hour or more in various creators for buildings and vehicles, well I think you get the idea of my playstyle! And don't even get me started on the space phase, which is huge (I almost made it to the centre of the galaxy once, and let me tell you there are a few surprises along the way!)

It's good because I'm not min-maxing (especially in the creature phase) but rather going for aesthetics (for example my handless herbivores, as seen here (http://www.youtube.com/Braktech)).

Having now played it 1/2 day, I have to say it's very replayable. The Cell and Creature stage are very replayable because it's not easy to get all the parts in a reasonable amount of time. I find the tribe stage kind of tedious. Hard to get into it except to tweak one's favorite creature.
The Creature to Tribe movie was the best part of Tribe overall.

The Civ stage was a bit off-putting, because I started as religious, and it's less obvious to know how to win, and the other civs are very aggressive. Not having an autosave to reboot makes it fun though, when you wish you could reboot. It forced me to finally figure a crooked path to victory.

Space stage is sort of infinite. I sort of feel that it's not exactly playable, but more obsessive. That makes it fun to start new Cells and Creatures, after the colonization/missions start to become a bit tedious.

I'm not sure if the question can really be answered until a month or so's time

I'm not sure if the question can really be answered until a month or so's time
I agree. I also think this will eventurally will have one of the biggest modding community as there is so much to mod, yet we wont know how it will end up as there has never been such a type of modding as there is in spore.

Spore has basically 5 games in 1. The space one alone can make for hours of play. The others are playable really for fun initially, or if you want a custom alien in your space (which by then really doesnt matter).

Also, no multi-player really hurts. You will be most satisfied if you like starting as a spore and genetically building your alien, then upgrading it to a race, a civilization, then the fun space stage. It's progression.

If you like pacman (think super-ultra deluxe pacman), the Sims, generic Civ, and a good space game -- yes, you'll be happy. If you like complex Civ4 and the likes, probably can wait for sale price.

This game has no replayability whatsoever.

Most of the parts you can add to your creature do nothing, the rest are mostly trait duplications with different graphics, and most of those traits are worthless. In other words, you get to play three different ways, omnivore/herbavore/carnivore. Unfortunetly the play differences between the three are near nonexistant.

This game fails at every level, and you know this before you even get to the creature phase.

Having now played it 1/2 day, I have to say it's very replayable. The Cell and Creature stage are very replayable because it's not easy to get all the parts in a reasonable amount of time. I find the tribe stage kind of tedious. Hard to get into it except to tweak one's favorite creature.
The Creature to Tribe movie was the best part of Tribe overall.

The Civ stage was a bit off-putting, because I started as religious, and it's less obvious to know how to win, and the other civs are very aggressive. Not having an autosave to reboot makes it fun though, when you wish you could reboot. It forced me to finally figure a crooked path to victory.

Space stage is sort of infinite. I sort of feel that it's not exactly playable, but more obsessive. That makes it fun to start new Cells and Creatures, after the colonization/missions start to become a bit tedious.

Does getting new parts carry over to new saves? (i.e., eventually, you could have all the parts in the game) Or, are the Cell and Creature stages the only chance to get parts for that save only? Is it possible to start as a new lifeform from the current space stage and get parts that way in your main game?

@Patroklos- It is extremely irritating for me, someone who still lacks the game, to hear someone complaining about a game with no replayability.

Put your money where your mouth is- I can give you an address to send it to, so I can play the game (it'll probably be quicker than waiting for EA to send me my pre-order). You don't lose anything- after all, there's no replay value. :p

Does getting new parts carry over to new saves? (i.e., eventually, you could have all the parts in the game) Or, are the Cell and Creature stages the only chance to get parts for that save only? Is it possible to start as a new lifeform from the current space stage and get parts that way in your main game?

The parts you unlock are attached to the current game/save. They sort of represent what you have done. If you eat vegetation and meat in the cell phase, you will only find omnivore parts. I noticed things like... if you use your "strike" ability a lot, you will find upgrades for your "strike" part. Was I dreaming that?

... if you use your "strike" ability a lot, you will find upgrades for your "strike" part. Was I dreaming that?

To me it seems like you are more likely to get upgrades for parts you have used in your creature - so if you put a certain 'base' hand or mouth on it, you should find 'upgrades' for that part.

Thanks guys for all the advice! After much consideration I am indeed going to purchase Spore!

@Ball Lightning- I have have heard nothing of Spore being Modable...by modding do you mean creating different creatures/buildings/vehicles via the creator or is it really possible to mod Spore?

Some people already are. a guy in another fourm has made a liilte program to give you multiple uses of certain weapons, while in the space stage-
Link is here
http://forums.facepunchstudios.com/showthread.php?p=11645353#post11645353

Put your money where your mouth is- I can give you an address to send it to, so I can play the game (it'll probably be quicker than waiting for EA to send me my pre-order). You don't lose anything- after all, there's no replay value.

Honeslty, I have pretty much already put the game down, not sure if I will pick it back up. The Tribal stage was as challenging as a game of minesweeper on easy, and only 1% as fun.

I'm serious- I can provide an address where you can send the game to someone who would love it- someone who preordered, and has yet to even see the game.

Or to me, who hasn't done anything yet. :D

This game has no replayability whatsoever.

Most of the parts you can add to your creature do nothing, the rest are mostly trait duplications with different graphics, and most of those traits are worthless. In other words, you get to play three different ways, omnivore/herbavore/carnivore. Unfortunetly the play differences between the three are near nonexistant.

This game fails at every level, and you know this before you even get to the creature phase.

I didnt think this day would ever come but I agree with Pat 100%. I reached the space age, made a few dozen errand boy quest and exited the game in disgust and uninstalled it. The game is a glorified version of monster sims. If you love screwing around in editors and customizing most trivial details of the game then this is for you. However should you be looking for actual gameplay worth then steer clear of this.

This game has no replayability whatsoever.

Most of the parts you can add to your creature do nothing, the rest are mostly trait duplications with different graphics, and most of those traits are worthless. In other words, you get to play three different ways, omnivore/herbavore/carnivore. Unfortunetly the play differences between the three are near nonexistant.

This game fails at every level, and you know this before you even get to the creature phase.

I'm not so sure, having to repeat tribe again using civfanitc peoples creations
who probably played those creatures from cell to space. As against my creature just made in an editor, I have found them to be much stronger and harder to beat,with more specialized abilities.
Even if I am imagining it, that helps the re- playability.
I would expect civ players to have excellent skills in picking traits to make their Tribe/creature hard to beat:)

Well, I don't make my creatures for statmaxing- I create them to look good, and look like logical descendants of their predecessors.

I would say that my feelings on Spore's replayability has to fall along the lines of what Patroklos said although I might not put it in such stark terms.

The game play, in my opinion, is rather shallow. The five stages of the game may be very different from each other, but that doesn't really translate into being a different experience each time you play. I mean, if making different looking creatures is the only thing you need to keep you coming back, then the game has replayability. It's fun, it's beautiful, but without more depth, I don't see myself playing this frequently and repeatedly like I have with other games.

The only replayability lies in doing nearly the exact same thing from Cell to Space stage with purple elephantmen instead of your previous red lizardmen:

Cell stage: You either eat microscopic plankton or kill other organisms for their 'meat'. Doing the former is more boring since all you have to do is look around for plankton while evading larger organisms. You could attack other ones of your size, but in that case it'd be basically acting as carnivore without eating the meat of those you kill. So, not many choices here. The type of mouth you finish the stage with determines whether you're herbivore or carnivore (or omnivore, if you have two different mouths) in the Creature stage.

Creature stage: Two choices here: either slaughter species by using mediocre, MMORPG-like combat, or befriend him using childish Simon Says-like interaction. Body parts provide different attacks or 'social moves'. If you think about it, combat and socializing is pretty alike, given in the former you go through very similar mechanics to bite the other creature instead of dancing for it. No more choices than that.

Tribal stage: RTS-like part, instead of third-person light-hearted action. Same two choices as before: ally other tribes through another Simon Says-like mechanic (somewhat more complex, given you need instruments you build in your settlement, and you get to unlock more types as you conquer/befriend others) or destroy them through a barebones RTS combat system (Dune 2 and Warcraft I were far deeper than this) using members of your tribe equipped with three kinds of weapons instead of three kinds of instruments. You unlock weapons just like you do instruments. As in the Creature stage, destroying everything is way easier than playing nice. Again, you're stuck with two choices.

Civilization stage: Still RTS, considerably shallower than even the first RTS games. This time you have three (yes, THREE) choices. Well... no, not really. According to your behaviour in the previous stages, you end up either a military, economic or religious civ. So you can only follow the path imposed on you. Economic is the most boring, given all you do is accumulate cash, establish trade routes with other cities and wait till they're available for purchase. Military and religious are pretty much the same thing: you either literally destroy stuff with your land, air and sea units (of which you have one type: one tank, one ship and one plane, if you designed them that way, and that's it) or bombard them with religious propaganda in pretty much the same way you'd fire your guns at them. You have several 'powers' according to your orientation, which get progressively get unlocked as you take over cities (sounds familiar?). The last one is basically an insta-win button, which automatically conquers all the remaining cities on the planet. LAME. But then, doing the exact same thing you've been doing to conquer/purchase cities any longer would be just as atrocious. This is the worst stage of them all.

Space stage: Back to third-person. This time you have several small-scale options, like travelling around, explore, terraform, settle and such using your species' spaceship design (again, just one). However, on the empire scale, your only option is to try and ally every other race you meet, since the more wars you get into, the more you will be harrassed with attacks.

For making money, pretty much the only option is selling spice to other races (for which you need to have acceptable relations with them), either the one your planets provide or what you can buy low from other race. There are missions you can carry out for your people or the other races, but they get repetitive pretty fast and only offer pocket change, compared to spice trading.

Back to harrassing, it's the biggest issue you have. Every 5 minutes, you've to drop whatever you were doing to defend your colonies (or your allies') from enemy aliens or pirates, or prevent some ecodisaster which, if left unchecked, can totally cripple a planet's ecosystem.

This stage will hold your attention the longest, but eventually you'll find yourself doing the same stuff over and over and over. Eventually, it gets boring. There's Earth somewhere, but it's nothing more than an easter egg. And there's also the galactic core, which you can reach after a stupidly, unimaginatively challenging voyage. You get a special item there. In order not to spoil anything, I'll just say it could be something way more revolutionary than the thing you get.

The Space stage is the best of the five, but it's not good enough to redeem the dumbness of the rest. I got bored of it a while ago, and haven't touched the game ever since. It's just not replayable unless you enjoy doing the exact same stuff (with marginal differences) with a graphically different race.

There are stupid achievements all over the place, symptom of the terminal disease known as consolitis. Doing the exact same thing 10,000 times to get an idiotic badge is not my idea of replayability nor, above all, FUN.

Lord Shadow:

I agree with most things you said, except the following:

1. In Cell phase, the type of mouth you finish with doesn't determine the type of creature you are. It's the amount of meat or organic that you eat. Eat more meat, you're a carnivore creature, eat more organic you're a herbivore creature, eat roughly the same of both you're an omnivore creature. If you click the History button (before you complete the level) you can see your progress one way or the other. I feel the goal is to end in the blue zone (omnivore zone) as omnivore mouths are the most versatile in creature (+5 sing, +5 bite for whichever path you take).

2. Trible phase, befriending is by FAR AND AWAY the simplest method to victory. As soon as another tribe spawns, give a gift then do the instrument thing. Literally, as soon as they spawn you can do this. The whole level complete in 5 minutes, zero losses.

3. Civ phase in not the worst phase, but only because of the trible exploit mentioned above. Civ is an extremely close second for the most boring.

All up I like creature phase, but only because of the wandering and discovering aspect of the phase. Nothing else. I love the feeling of struggling up that massive mountain to end on the top, and watch a spectacular sunrise with a gas giant or other in the background. :)

But that's the only part of the game that is interesting. The rest of the game is so shallow that it's amazing to consider that half a world renowned company spent millions on it and 7 years.

It's even sadder to think that we are the ones that get screwed.

1. In Cell phase, the type of mouth you finish with doesn't determine the type of creature you are. It's the amount of meat or organic that you eat. Eat more meat, you're a carnivore creature, eat more organic you're a herbivore creature, eat roughly the same of both you're an omnivore creature. If you click the History button (before you complete the level) you can see your progress one way or the other. I feel the goal is to end in the blue zone (omnivore zone) as omnivore mouths are the most versatile in creature (+5 sing, +5 bite for whichever path you take).
My mistake. It must've been a coincidence in my experience.

All up I like creature phase, but only because of the wandering and discovering aspect of the phase. Nothing else. I love the feeling of struggling up that massive mountain to end on the top, and watch a spectacular sunrise with a gas giant or other in the background. :)

But that's the only part of the game that is interesting. The rest of the game is so shallow that it's amazing to consider that half a world renowned company spent millions on it and 7 years.

It's even sadder to think that we are the ones that get screwed.
I won't deny the sense of discovery is nice when you play the game for the first time. You really feel like a new creature in a strange world. However, that feeling evaporates once you're done with your first run. You've seen it all already, the novelty of the game vanishes, and there's nothing to really lure you back into playing again, except taking marginally different paths along the evolutionary route with an aesthetically different creature.

As for the mountain climbing in the Creature stage, I actually didn't like it. I don't know if it's the pathfinding or some mapping error, but sometimes I got almost stuck in steep angles (once even on a perfectly flat lake shore). It took random movement key pressing and jumping and my creature spasming like it was going to die to get out of that poorly generated spot.

And yeah, it's hard to think Spore's Wright's brainchild, considering the huge amounts of money and time he spent on it. Either he screwed up himself or EA neutered his creative ability and simply used his name to earn more money selling a very average product.

I hope Firaxis and Take Two stay the hell out of Electronic Arts's way. I'll personally bomb EA's headquarters if they ever defile my beloved Civilization or any other of Meier's legendary series. :mad: