First Impressions

[salty mud]

That is a great write up Salty Mud!
I have some questions-
can You name planets? I heard you can name your star ship.
When you find a new planet an you create another creature race or you just stay as your own species?
Can you enslave another race?

1. You can name your home planet, either with a randomly generated, pre-made name or make your own name up. All other planets in the game already have names. You can name your ship, along with anything else you create in the game (buildings, vehicles etc can all be named.)

2. When you find another planet, you can abduct creatures from other planets and put them on that planet, but you cannot control them - just watch how they react. Sometimes they will die instantly, other times they might survive and grow. Unfortunately, I haven't played long enough to see if tribes etc are formed, but I will research it if you wish. A rather humerous thing happened when I put a creature on a planet about 2 miles away from its star - he ran about and erupted into flames! So you cannot start again as a cell, or take control of another species, but for lesser civilizations you can frighten them with your awesome power! Which is always fun.

3. Enslaving a race isn't possible, (as far as I know anyway) but you can ally with them and work together, or you could beat them into a pulp and make them submit to your bidding, if you class that as slavery.

Anymore questions, just ask.

 

[cubsfan6506]

Just 2 more hours until gamespot opens.

 

[thomas.berubeg]

two hours until it opens here... (i'm going with a friend to buy it... )

 

[Puppeteer]

I thought the cell phase would bore me, but it was entertaining. When you build your cell (or later creature) you pay to add parts and can sell existing parts at half price, so there's some decision making about what you want to upgrade. I wanted to focus on the attack but found that my prey was running away too quickly, so I had to focus on speed, too.

I think the creature phase was my favorite. You have the same kind of compromises to make and can try to ally with other creatures.

Like I said, I stuck with carnivore all the way, but I don't think there's anything (except dna/money for buying mouths) preventing you from alternating between carnivore and herbivore every time you go to the creature builder. And it affects your creature's abilities based on how much you're a carnivore and how much a herbivore. It could be interesting to alternate.

The tribal phase reminded me a lot of Warcraft II, and the city phase reminded me of Command and Conquer. So far I like tribal much more than city.

I just started space. Be sure to zoom out and move the camera around...the galaxy looks really cool. But I haven't played space much. I'll probably start another cell next time I play.

One gameplay note: The part/clothes values aren't additive, so if you have a +2 health bonykneecap and a +2 health whatchamacallit they don't add up to +4. And while the cell creature parts give you abilities in the creature phase I think they either expire or are obsoleted by later creature parts you buy. Just sell a part every now and then to see if you lose an ability; if not then keep the cash. If so then undo.

 

[Niptium]

I'm wondering... to the people that already have the game... If you find a T3 planet on which you just put a few members of your race (à la Survivor) do they start at the Tribe stage ? Do they ever grow a new population out of the few select members you placed on the planet ? Or well... what happens if you pust just a few members out there... without buildings, just them in the wild...

 

[cubsfan6506]

My compute sounds like it's dieing while I'm installing it.

 

[Catharsis]

The Cell/Creature/Tribe stages were all a lot of fun. Now I'm in the Civ stage, and my vehicles won't do what I tell them to do.

 

[Hitti-Litti]

My compute sounds like it's dieing while I'm installing it.

Mine did as well for about 10 minutes, after that the install ran smoothly.

 

[OllyUK]

I'm wondering... to the people that already have the game... If you find a T3 planet on which you just put a few members of your race (à la Survivor) do they start at the Tribe stage ? Do they ever grow a new population out of the few select members you placed on the planet ? Or well... what happens if you pust just a few members out there... without buildings, just them in the wild...

I don't know, but I have found planets at various stages. For example I've found tribal and civ stage cities. And you could effect who wins by destroying certian teams (for example lazering all the blue tribe! ) and I think they will advance through the stages.

Blimey, the amount of creations uploaded has absolutley rocketed today! It was 5mill ish this morning and is now over 6mill!

 

[King of Town]

For whatever reason I couldn't get my copy to play after I installed for about 10 minutes. I've mainly been abducting things and dropping them from high altitudes, or into another tribes territory. I haven't seen an epic to abduct, but I'll keep that bugger and unleash him on someone.

 

[Daftpanzer]

I've installed and activated it on 56k connection. I can access everything and download creatures, but I have trouble sharing my creations. They either don't appear when I search for them on the server, or they appear after a long delay. I don't know if this is because of my bad connection, or just the servers being swamped?

Haven't played the actual game yet, as I've had too much fun making creatures in the editor! I hadn't seen the editors before, I can vouch for them being very intuitive and awesome. I was able to start making complex things straight away.

 

[Daftpanzer]

Cell stage was great, but could have been longer and had more bearing on the creature phase. The non-stacking of bonuses for creature phase also seems strange. Only people who want to 'role play' will have rational creatures, while others can get by on minimal limbs and items and save their DNA points for more stuff.

Herbivore 'missions' seem almost pointless. Eating plants doesn't seem to do anything. I have to walk around singing and dancing with wierd other creatures. Still, I'm having fun by not approaching it as a game, but as something different...

 

[Dale]

On the right-side of screen, where your health bar is, is your food bar.

Eat before that gets to zero.

 

[Niptium]

I don't know, but I have found planets at various stages. For example I've found tribal and civ stage cities. And you could effect who wins by destroying certian teams (for example lazering all the blue tribe! ) and I think they will advance through the stages.

Blimey, the amount of creations uploaded has absolutley rocketed today! It was 5mill ish this morning and is now over 6mill!

Yeah, I've tried transferring some citizens to a T1 planet when I didn't know what I was doing or how it was all working. I actually saw them light a little fire and sit next to it... but they weren't there the next time I came to that barren land.

 

[Lord_Iggy]

Poor guys, they probably died of old age, alone and forgotten...

 

[Daftpanzer]

On the right-side of screen, where your health bar is, is your food bar.

Eat before that gets to zero.

Thanks yes I discovered that today (playing after having had some sleep helped!). I realise now the first few encouters were nice and gentle. It was only after exploring further that I met truly dangerous creatures, and neutral ones that were hard to impress. Although the basic concept was repetitve (impress, upgrade parts that impress, impress more, upgrade more parts, etc) it was still fun exploring the continent and meeting new creatures.

I had fun setting goals for myself, like reaching the north limit of the continent and getting home with dying (got eaten by an epic ), or trying to swim to an island (got swallowed by a giant reptillian humanoid rising out of the deep ). I didn't want to leave the creature phase until I felt I'd seen all there was to see on my continent, which was hours of fun, and I guess I still missed seeing some species and landmarks.

I don't know about the replay value yet, but I can imagine a different planet backdrop and different species (not to mention different playing style with another game) would keep things interesting.

First impressions of tribal stage is good. I wasn't expecting anything amazing due to what I'd already read from other's comments, so I'm just taking it as it is. I have found a bug where a couple of villagers dont seem to drop their tools when picking up new ones, and end up with strange blended objects in their hands - hope it won't be stuck that way when I reload!

Oh and about the installation itself, it did seem to take ages installing EA support files first, for some reason (just text and HTML pages as far as I know, nothing big). The progress bar hardly moved for 5 minutes, which worried me for a while!

 

[King of Town]

I had a goal to take out all of the species in creature mode. I ended up pretty close I think. Right before my tribe moved the last time I killed one of those rougue things and it gave me the big brain but allowed be to continue getting DNA points. I was maxed out in almost every category before the end.

Now that I know what I am doing in the space phase I am having tremendous fun, I've got another trading race on my side and we are just taking out hoistile colonies. I'm getting really rich trading spice, and I'm learning how to transform planets. It's a good time. The one thing I don't know is how to raise temperature or lower it on a plnet. I assume it is something I will find later, but if anyone knows that'd be great.

 

[Rub'Rum]

I had a goal to take out all of the species in creature mode. I ended up pretty close I think. Right before my tribe moved the last time I killed one of those rougue things and it gave me the big brain but allowed be to continue getting DNA points. I was maxed out in almost every category before the end.

Now that I know what I am doing in the space phase I am having tremendous fun, I've got another trading race on my side and we are just taking out hoistile colonies. I'm getting really rich trading spice, and I'm learning how to transform planets. It's a good time. The one thing I don't know is how to raise temperature or lower it on a plnet. I assume it is something I will find later, but if anyone knows that'd be great.

You use the meteor or ice storm terraforming tools I think.

I'm having trouble in the space age! How do you even "take out" a hostile colony?? As soon as I even try attacking, I get PWNT. Not to mention I'm constantly under attack and can't do anything else than run to all my planets and defend while other ones get their colonies destroyed. Meanwhile my allies hate me because I don't have time to help them. When I try attacking, I take 2 or 3 friends with me but we get zapped out quickly. Is it because I played as mostly friendly before? I got green-green-green-red as my four stages. I was sort of forced to play bad boy in the previous phase too...

EDIT: Oh and I have another question; is the number of planets you see in the opening screen for starting new game the absolute maximum number of games you can have at the same time? Will I have to delete whole games when I fill all of these?

 

[Dale]

As you fill planets up, new ones open up. You'll always have at least 6 empty planets.

 

[SpurnSpore]

So far this is great fun!
why I chose a carnivore don't know was hungry :0 I guess? new game and all,
still in creature....
died 3 times getting -reborn is cool.
This game would be great for kids and even all grown ups too.
I feel like I am an alien creature! In another world.
Just pausing and looking up at the stars is real primal.