First Impressions

[sourboy]

I agree with most of what was said in here -- all around good game. The one thing that really annoys me is that control of your units is sloppy and changes with each stage. I hate that I have to relearn how to navigate and target, etc -- in each stage.

What happened to the other stages? I thought there was to be 6 or 7, originally? expansion maybe...

 

[Rub'Rum]

Okay, so I've played quite a bit now and have been thinking about my impression...

I initially voted SPACE as my favorite stage, because for me it represented the ultimate Spore. Let me explain.

On my first play through, I was disappointed by the lack of depth and "gamey" aspects of the four first stages and I found them incredibly repetitive and vain. But I quickly started to enjoy the customization aspect of it and realized Spore was all about creation and customization and exploration and internet seeding and funny discoveries.

At that point, I thought "GREAT! I can't wait for Space Age when I'll have all this freedom to terraform planets, put whatever animals I want everywhere, etc! This is gonna be awesome". And it was like that, briefly. But as soon as I found myself in an accidental war, or my empire was a bit too big, or I knew too many people, I started to be bogged down by constant attacks and crippling missions and requests, leaving me no time to even notice what color the moon of my home-world was. And I realized they put a lot of "depth and gamey" in the part where I was looking forward NOT TO HAVE THEM so that I could have my freedom. Yeah, I want interaction in space, but I want my freedom to express creativity a lot more... freely... ahem...

So in conclusion... For now, before patches... They removed all the gamey things from the parts where they should have been, and put them all where I didn't want them to be. As far as I'm concerned, they could leave the first stages alone, I already decided to take them as they are. But they need to let me be a lot freer in space.

PS, in a relatively unrelated way: I find a few of the creature design limitations to be rather annoying though. For instance, once I bought a pair of legs, I should be allowed to copy it on my creature as many times as I want for free. As it currently is, I find it limits my creativity to have me pay for every single pair of the same thing. Sure, I can spend the extra DNA making a 6-legged monster... But I may not have the DNA to afford the 6 feet that go with it, so only one pair of legs will have the strongest feet. Wut?!? And yeah, I wish having more of one item would make a difference (two sets of spikes instead of one should be more dangerous... Not just give me a combat rating or something)... But whatever. This doesn't bother me as much as the space age thing.

EDIT: I had never seen this 35 minutes presentation that many of you have probably seen. It's Spore as it was in 2005. I think I should never have watched it as I am now rather annoyed at what they removed. Oh well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8dvMDFOFnA

 

[Ambler]

When I first get to creature phase, I love watching the day/night cycles. I was so surprised and pleased to see a gas giant rise during the night on my most recent Creature phase. It's the little things that immerse me in this game, and so far I've had many more satisfying moments than I have in a game for a long time.

It doesn't really bother me how other people play or create their creatures - each of mine is an organism struggling for a place in a world that gets larger and larger until it becomes a galaxy full of life, and I get immense satisfaction in guiding them towards that goal.

I also enjoy befriending a 'Rogue' in creature mode as a completely passive herbivore, and letting it become my bodyguard (if anyone attacks, they get flattened), and then having it automatically become a pet during tribal phase. Like I said, the little things.

 

[Dale]

When I first get to creature phase, I love watching the day/night cycles. I was so surprised and pleased to see a gas giant rise during the night on my most recent Creature phase. It's the little things that immerse me in this game, and so far I've had many more satisfying moments than I have in a game for a long time.

It doesn't really bother me how other people play or create their creatures - each of mine is an organism struggling for a place in a world that gets larger and larger until it becomes a galaxy full of life, and I get immense satisfaction in guiding them towards that goal.

I also enjoy befriending a 'Rogue' in creature mode as a completely passive herbivore, and letting it become my bodyguard (if anyone attacks, they get flattened), and then having it automatically become a pet during tribal phase. Like I said, the little things.

If you get three different species in your posse in creature mode, you get an achievement plus they all become domesticated in tribal phase for the highest food collection rating.

Pretty SWEET!

 

[Chieftess]

Okay, so I've played quite a bit now and have been thinking about my impression...

I initially voted SPACE as my favorite stage, because for me it represented the ultimate Spore. Let me explain.

On my first play through, I was disappointed by the lack of depth and "gamey" aspects of the four first stages and I found them incredibly repetitive and vain. But I quickly started to enjoy the customization aspect of it and realized Spore was all about creation and customization and exploration and internet seeding and funny discoveries.

At that point, I thought "GREAT! I can't wait for Space Age when I'll have all this freedom to terraform planets, put whatever animals I want everywhere, etc! This is gonna be awesome". And it was like that, briefly. But as soon as I found myself in an accidental war, or my empire was a bit too big, or I knew too many people, I started to be bogged down by constant attacks and crippling missions and requests, leaving me no time to even notice what color the moon of my home-world was. And I realized they put a lot of "depth and gamey" in the part where I was looking forward NOT TO HAVE THEM so that I could have my freedom. Yeah, I want interaction in space, but I want my freedom to express creativity a lot more... freely... ahem...

So in conclusion... For now, before patches... They removed all the gamey things from the parts where they should have been, and put them all where I didn't want them to be. As far as I'm concerned, they could leave the first stages alone, I already decided to take them as they are. But they need to let me be a lot freer in space.

PS, in a relatively unrelated way: I find a few of the creature design limitations to be rather annoying though. For instance, once I bought a pair of legs, I should be allowed to copy it on my creature as many times as I want for free. As it currently is, I find it limits my creativity to have me pay for every single pair of the same thing. Sure, I can spend the extra DNA making a 6-legged monster... But I may not have the DNA to afford the 6 feet that go with it, so only one pair of legs will have the strongest feet. Wut?!? And yeah, I wish having more of one item would make a difference (two sets of spikes instead of one should be more dangerous... Not just give me a combat rating or something)... But whatever. This doesn't bother me as much as the space age thing.

EDIT: I had never seen this 35 minutes presentation that many of you have probably seen. It's Spore as it was in 2005. I think I should never have watched it as I am now rather annoyed at what they removed. Oh well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8dvMDFOFnA

Same here. From the video feeds I've seen, it seems like Space is more like a "Space Tradewars" game than actually being able terraform, populate planets with creature of your choice (even playing them, or just watching them evolve/interact/experiment). The fact that the physics of body size/limb configuration was taken out really dulls that freedom of experimentation. These are the main reasons its' making me hesitant to buy the game; I want to be able to create planets and creatures from scratch in the Space stage, watch them interact, play as the creatures and not have to bother with trade/requests/attacks every 15 minutes. Even the colored lines between planets look confusing when there's lots of them. I guess I was also hoping this would be SimEarth II or SimLife II after looking at the GDC 2005 video... I get the feeling that I'd be dissapointed if I get this game. I'm probably going to wait for a patch, or, at least, a duluxe expansion set (if they do something like Sims where there's 8+ expansions... I'm not about to shell out $300-$400 - I'd rather pay $40-$50.).

 

[cubsfan6506]

That entire video was prerendered, It doesn't take three years to make a gam worse.

 

[SpurnSpore]

You can terraform,Someone found our solar system and Terraformed Earth's moon and Mars.
It isn't like SimEarth with sliders and all, but that may come later in a patch or expansion.
Or most likely People Modding the game,You don't need all the expansions to use Sims2 mods. There is weather in the game ( in creature at least) electrical storm/thunder and rain.
I don't think it will be too long before the space part is total Sandbox.

 

[King of Town]

I've found that I'm having plenty of time to terraform. I've tried to keep my expansion very slow, so that what I do make will be good. I haven't played in a day or two, but I have a couple T2's that have turrets, the next time they get attacked I'm going to save and see if they can defend themselves well enough to let me leave them alone. I have one race at war with me but I have two allies, I'm just going to talk my allies into attacking their planets, and then go in myself and whomp them. once you get certain weapons you can knock out cities easy. I have a medium laser and it destroys cities prety quick. The easiest thing to me was to get a couple allies and just have them attack my enemies for me.

the space pirates do get annoying, but if you don't want to deal with them, go down the carnivore predator path. The consequence there is that pirates stay away from you.

 

[Rub'Rum]

the space pirates do get annoying, but if you don't want to deal with them, go down the carnivore predator path. The consequence there is that pirates stay away from you.

Do the pirates only steal your stuff? I haven't seen them actually attacking me yet. They just take my spice and go away, which isn't too bad. But in that game I did have the pirate-attack-are-reduced skill (you get that from being military in the Civ stage).

Nah, in my game it was the atrocious rate of alien nation attacks that made me whine a lot.

 

[Amon Savag]

My first impression is from stone axes to a big ass battle walker with howitzers and huge death cannons. Nothing would have satisfied me more than to watch my guys evolve their technology as they evolved their bodies. The civ game really should have been a game of civ... Would have kicked a whole hell of alot more ass that way... Especially if we could design our own wonders of the world, and trash like that.

Maybe I should play the game over in hard, because for my warmongering race, it only took me like 45 minutes to whup tribal and really only a half hour to beat civ stage hahaha. And 10 of those minutes in civ stage was me jacking around with my anthem.

At any rate, at least there's different paths to take on each stage, so I'll replay it again with a different species and see what happens. In conclusion, good game.. But it could be a whole helluvalot better.... As with alot of other games.

 

[Rub'Rum]

I realize that every day I'm expecting a patch to be out already to fix Space Age! I'm sure they will release a patch addressing some of the overwhelming comments about Space... I just want it now!

 

[SpurnSpore]

I have just started space stage,So I am yet to get into all the "wars" and over the top micromanagement"?
Its has been a fun game,and give sense of life from a cell all the way to tribe and Civ
Civ by far was the easiest and shortest for me.
From the earliest times in creature there was a sense of looking up in the night sky (with UFOs buzzing around ) thinking this "being" will get to space too.
So for me there was a linear game with funny things in between.
8/10 and 9/10 for the creator editors, That is a buzz seeing something you made interact in the game.

It isn't like the Spore I expected, I suspect EA took parts out and made it similar to the Sims2. For expansions and to try and capture that crowd.
Which is really silly Sims is like families/ dream homes/ clothes furniture.

Spore is science, scifi they could have had 2 levels to it 1 for children and one for adults
where it was more realistic and closer to what Will Wright envisioned.
Guess I wanted "emulation of real life in a test tube" totally designed by me and realistic life evolution to a sand box galaxy where you "create" a star then its planets (terraforming) and seed with life.
Maybe in Spore 2?

 

[Dale]

I'm now finding two weeks later that I can only bring myself to play cell, creature and sometimes tribe. I think in another week I'll be over Spore and returning to mod Civ4: colonization ready for it's release.

 

[Angst]

Great read. I find the Cell phase amazing. Competition over food sources, feasting frenzies (Nobody wants to be left out hungry), etc. It is simply a stunningly funny phase. Can't wait to play tribal.

... And yes I haven't done so yet because I have played the Cell phase over and over again

 

[Ball Lightning]

Still playing my first game. Now up to 40 solar systems and about 50 planets. I can get about 90 blue, red and yellow spice always as i just have wayyy to much producing it. Attacks have slowed recently, with just 2 grox attack, 3 pirates, 2 enemy and 1 eco disaster today. More to come as i continue trying to take over the galaxy.