Looks like there's a review

[Chieftess]

Sort of. Someone paraphrased a review they read.

Pros:

Limitless custom content
Varied types of gameplay
No more Sims #1!

Cons:
Not deep enough
All about the creator
Designed for Non-gamers

Overall: Awesome in scope, mainstream in depth. 9/10

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"Spore is a far better game than The Sims ever was"
"Spore is an incredible experiance but it doesn't quite live up to all that it said it would"
"The occasional UFO sighting becomes all the cooler when YOU eventually get to be the UFO"
"For Spore to work you really need to be playing it as one continuous game, instead of seperate stages. If you play them in isolation, you're bound to end up dissapointed."
"In many ways the gameplay of creature takes some of the worst aspects of games like WoW and Diablo"

"creator"? I assume creature. Obviously, you need to play any game continuously... Not much of a review, though...

And what's a "non-gamer", and why would they be playing a game?

Hardcore wanting a deep game = 7
Casual, rest of hardcore gamers = 9
People who love creating stuff = 10(they even say this in the review)

If that's true, then I would agree with the rating of 7. I was hoping for things like physics, more procedural animations rather than a set of pre-programmed creature animations (they're all the same - at least from the demo editor parts).

[Jerrymander]

Everything has to be pre-programmed. Software hasn't really evolved to the point where it can think for itself.

[leonel]

I'm just looking forward to the creators and exploring planets bit.

Also making species histories.

[a space oddity]

Originally Posted by Chieftess

I was hoping for things like physics, more procedural animations rather than a set of pre-programmed creature animations (they're all the same - at least from the demo editor parts).

There's definitely physics, all the celestial bodies move like they should, there's realistic day and night, what you see from the surface as a creature is what you get when you move into space. From what I understand they have been meticulous to make every consistent throughout all the scales. No small feat.

The creature movements are not pre-programmed, the are deduced from the way you put together the limbs, where the joints are etc. Of course there are, like Jerrymander rightly remarks, fixed modules. If you put the same limbs on two different creatures in the same way and don't modify anything, they will move the same.

You might be right about a lack of depth, although that still remains to be seen, you really are way off the mark where it comes to Spore not being procedural. I suggest you watch some of the developer presentations on my blog (like these, esp. the first one about the music) to find out just how much of Spore is procedural.

[GoodGame]

I think they mean the casual gamer, as in games like Tetris, Bejeweled, and Minesweeper.

Originally Posted by Chieftess

And what's a "non-gamer", and why would they be playing a game?



If that's true, then I would agree with the rating of 7. I was hoping for things like physics, more procedural animations rather than a set of pre-programmed creature animations (they're all the same - at least from the demo editor parts).

I believe there is a good deal of procedural programming in the music and planet generation.

I'm thinking they stripped some of the gameplay on purpose to make it have family and all-ages appeal and of course for a cash cow in expansions.

[Lord_Iggy]

Tetris is a casual game?

I run a competitive league at my college.

[GoodGame]

It's casual in that you don't need a forum dedicated to it to get it good at it, and you can learn to play in a quick sitting. Obsessive is another matter.

[ColdFever]

This fansite contains a PDF link worth checking out as long as it will exist...
http://www.xspore.com/news/646_first_review.html