Daftpanzer
canonically ambiguous
The Cell stage is simple fun, where your choices actually matter!
But after playing a few creature games, trying to play it different ways, I've found its all pretty much the same. 'Basic' creatures appear near your nest, but after you kill or ally those you meet tougher ones, and you always need to use the same 'parts' if you want to actually kill/impress anything else. The way things currently work, it simply doesn't matter if you have a one-legged blob or a multi-limbed monstrosity. You have the right kind of part, you get the points. It doesn’t matter how many parts you have, one will do. It doesn’t matter where you place them, either. Body size and shape doesn’t alter anything except visuals. As things stand, the game actually punishes you for adding extra limbs and trying out different things, due to the cost in DNA points. I had a very tough time getting through the creature phase with a 7-limbed creature, because each pair of limbs (you can merge a pair into one central limb) costs 50 DNA points, and hands/feet cost extra ontop of that, while 250 points would have got me a top-rated ‘part’ for attacking or impressing other creatures. I then didn't have the DNA points to spend on the parts you need, in order to achieve things, in order to get more DNA...
Your first game is 'special', when you can believe that the game is evolving due to your input. The graphics are also amazing, if you have a reasonably high-spec machine (I have 3gig ram, quad 2ghz, but lower-end graphics card that struggles with the highest settings of shadows+lighting), and I found my first planet to be very rewarding visually. There is more fun to be had in another couple of games, perhaps trying out carnivore or herbivore routes for the first time, or spending points of wings for flying around instead of walking. But after that, I've found myself losing interest and not really discovering anything new.
Even in the Space stage, after the initial joy of being able to explore strange new worlds and see your homeworld from space, along with all the places you explored as a simple creature, there's only so much variety to be found – probably, less than an hour’s exploring will show you all the main types of planets - and not a lot you can actually 'do' on other worlds. Sure you can terraform them, and seed them with life-forms, to be able to plant more colonies. But it simply doesn’t matter what life-forms you use, so long as they are from the right ‘category’ (small plants, big plants, herbivores, omnivores, etc). And sure, you can change their colours and alter the terrain, if you spend hours doing mini-games and flying around to find all the terraform tools, but that’s purely cosmetic. As is the design of your spaceship, buildings, vehicles…
I’ve yet to find the ‘hologram’ thing that lets you talk to life-forms on planets. But I guess even with that, most of the time, you will just see the random creatures moving randomly from their random spawn points, and running away when you fly too close. You can’t land or get out of your spaceship. I’ve yet to make a large empire and fight in wars, because my first experiences of combat have been pretty depressing – you basically fly, click to fire, fly, and then probably explode. If you’re on your homeworld, you then launch in a new spaceship, to carry on the cycle of pointing, clicking and exploding… Admittedly there is some skill involved, and you can learn to swoop around and dodge incoming fire, but its hardly up to the standard of any decent combat game (same goes for combat in all stages).
I must say I've found tribal stage to be more enjoyable and repayable than most people seem to think. But even that isn’t exactly thrilling in terms of gameplay. Whereas the Civ stage can be pretty horrifying, especially if you are forced into a total war against a military power, while not being a military power yourself, as has happened to me most times. The religious and economic options do add variety, but I’ve rarely been able to make use of them for long, before everything is taken over by military powers. This is a stage you can lose - if you save at the wrong time, you can be stuck in a non-recoverable situation. When you lose, you go back to your last save, potentially to lose again straight away, and go back to your save… That almost happened to me on my first attempt. It’s tempting to spend hours designing vehicles and buildings on your first go, until you realise they display poorly in-game, and vehicle designs don’t actually change the way they behave except for sound effects. All ground vehicles fire blue cannonballs, all aircraft fire lasers, etc. All do roughly the same amount of damage with every shot. All shots hit.
I’d also hesitate to compare it to The Sims 2 – I’ve also played that game, and I see some major differences. The Sims is completely open-ended, and potentially never-ending, rewarding you in some way for any path you choose, and always having something else to aspire to. Whereas, Spore leads you towards a certain goal all the time, and - before the Space stage at least - it doesn’t reward you at all if you deviate from that. In the Sims you can actually have generations and inherited traits, and you also have responsibility - the youngsters need help to gain skills and happiness for later life, and the things you purchase depreciate in value over time, so you need to plan ahead, etc. The design of your house, the value of its stuff and the state that its in all effect all kinds of things.
But there is basically none of that in Spore, no real evolution and hardly any responsibility – in the cell and creature stage, you can totally reshape your lifeform every time you go into the editor, sell all your parts for their original prices, change body shape and emerge with something completely different - anything you can pay the DNA price for. The species ‘traits’ you acquire over time are limited in number and basically impossible to miss if you aim for them. Your only real long-term responsibility is relations with other empires in the space stage, which take time to develop. But again, its simply a matter of paying demands / doing mini-games to raise your standing with them.
In the Sims, you also get to see your different people and families doing things together, and potentially cross-breeding! You can build a whole neighbourhood if you have the patience. You absolutely don’t get that in Spore, as your planets/games cant interact, each has its own version of the ‘galaxy’. And nothing actually ‘evolves’. You might see other creations of your own or your friends in game, but its randomised and you have very limited interaction anyway.
It’s true to say that you’ll get out of Spore what you put into it. If you enjoy making things for the fun of it, and enjoy telling stories, you’ll gain something from this game, but it won’t be from any enthralling gameplay. It will be from your own mental effort. I can’t say I regret buying Spore at this point, but that’s just me. Nothing does what Spore does all in one game… but Spore doesn’t quite make it all work, even in reduced form. Again, it’s a bitter-sweet experience, seeing the engine behind Spore and knowing the possibilities of what could have been. Its still early days to talk about long-term appeal.
/rant (wow)
-----
Short version = I’d hesitate to recommend it to others, especially with the potential DRM issues…
Here’s hoping for better things from Spore 3 when its released in 2014!
But after playing a few creature games, trying to play it different ways, I've found its all pretty much the same. 'Basic' creatures appear near your nest, but after you kill or ally those you meet tougher ones, and you always need to use the same 'parts' if you want to actually kill/impress anything else. The way things currently work, it simply doesn't matter if you have a one-legged blob or a multi-limbed monstrosity. You have the right kind of part, you get the points. It doesn’t matter how many parts you have, one will do. It doesn’t matter where you place them, either. Body size and shape doesn’t alter anything except visuals. As things stand, the game actually punishes you for adding extra limbs and trying out different things, due to the cost in DNA points. I had a very tough time getting through the creature phase with a 7-limbed creature, because each pair of limbs (you can merge a pair into one central limb) costs 50 DNA points, and hands/feet cost extra ontop of that, while 250 points would have got me a top-rated ‘part’ for attacking or impressing other creatures. I then didn't have the DNA points to spend on the parts you need, in order to achieve things, in order to get more DNA...
Your first game is 'special', when you can believe that the game is evolving due to your input. The graphics are also amazing, if you have a reasonably high-spec machine (I have 3gig ram, quad 2ghz, but lower-end graphics card that struggles with the highest settings of shadows+lighting), and I found my first planet to be very rewarding visually. There is more fun to be had in another couple of games, perhaps trying out carnivore or herbivore routes for the first time, or spending points of wings for flying around instead of walking. But after that, I've found myself losing interest and not really discovering anything new.
Even in the Space stage, after the initial joy of being able to explore strange new worlds and see your homeworld from space, along with all the places you explored as a simple creature, there's only so much variety to be found – probably, less than an hour’s exploring will show you all the main types of planets - and not a lot you can actually 'do' on other worlds. Sure you can terraform them, and seed them with life-forms, to be able to plant more colonies. But it simply doesn’t matter what life-forms you use, so long as they are from the right ‘category’ (small plants, big plants, herbivores, omnivores, etc). And sure, you can change their colours and alter the terrain, if you spend hours doing mini-games and flying around to find all the terraform tools, but that’s purely cosmetic. As is the design of your spaceship, buildings, vehicles…
I’ve yet to find the ‘hologram’ thing that lets you talk to life-forms on planets. But I guess even with that, most of the time, you will just see the random creatures moving randomly from their random spawn points, and running away when you fly too close. You can’t land or get out of your spaceship. I’ve yet to make a large empire and fight in wars, because my first experiences of combat have been pretty depressing – you basically fly, click to fire, fly, and then probably explode. If you’re on your homeworld, you then launch in a new spaceship, to carry on the cycle of pointing, clicking and exploding… Admittedly there is some skill involved, and you can learn to swoop around and dodge incoming fire, but its hardly up to the standard of any decent combat game (same goes for combat in all stages).
I must say I've found tribal stage to be more enjoyable and repayable than most people seem to think. But even that isn’t exactly thrilling in terms of gameplay. Whereas the Civ stage can be pretty horrifying, especially if you are forced into a total war against a military power, while not being a military power yourself, as has happened to me most times. The religious and economic options do add variety, but I’ve rarely been able to make use of them for long, before everything is taken over by military powers. This is a stage you can lose - if you save at the wrong time, you can be stuck in a non-recoverable situation. When you lose, you go back to your last save, potentially to lose again straight away, and go back to your save… That almost happened to me on my first attempt. It’s tempting to spend hours designing vehicles and buildings on your first go, until you realise they display poorly in-game, and vehicle designs don’t actually change the way they behave except for sound effects. All ground vehicles fire blue cannonballs, all aircraft fire lasers, etc. All do roughly the same amount of damage with every shot. All shots hit.
I’d also hesitate to compare it to The Sims 2 – I’ve also played that game, and I see some major differences. The Sims is completely open-ended, and potentially never-ending, rewarding you in some way for any path you choose, and always having something else to aspire to. Whereas, Spore leads you towards a certain goal all the time, and - before the Space stage at least - it doesn’t reward you at all if you deviate from that. In the Sims you can actually have generations and inherited traits, and you also have responsibility - the youngsters need help to gain skills and happiness for later life, and the things you purchase depreciate in value over time, so you need to plan ahead, etc. The design of your house, the value of its stuff and the state that its in all effect all kinds of things.
But there is basically none of that in Spore, no real evolution and hardly any responsibility – in the cell and creature stage, you can totally reshape your lifeform every time you go into the editor, sell all your parts for their original prices, change body shape and emerge with something completely different - anything you can pay the DNA price for. The species ‘traits’ you acquire over time are limited in number and basically impossible to miss if you aim for them. Your only real long-term responsibility is relations with other empires in the space stage, which take time to develop. But again, its simply a matter of paying demands / doing mini-games to raise your standing with them.
In the Sims, you also get to see your different people and families doing things together, and potentially cross-breeding! You can build a whole neighbourhood if you have the patience. You absolutely don’t get that in Spore, as your planets/games cant interact, each has its own version of the ‘galaxy’. And nothing actually ‘evolves’. You might see other creations of your own or your friends in game, but its randomised and you have very limited interaction anyway.
It’s true to say that you’ll get out of Spore what you put into it. If you enjoy making things for the fun of it, and enjoy telling stories, you’ll gain something from this game, but it won’t be from any enthralling gameplay. It will be from your own mental effort. I can’t say I regret buying Spore at this point, but that’s just me. Nothing does what Spore does all in one game… but Spore doesn’t quite make it all work, even in reduced form. Again, it’s a bitter-sweet experience, seeing the engine behind Spore and knowing the possibilities of what could have been. Its still early days to talk about long-term appeal.
/rant (wow)
-----
Short version = I’d hesitate to recommend it to others, especially with the potential DRM issues…
Here’s hoping for better things from Spore 3 when its released in 2014!
![[to_xp]Gekko](https://civfanatics-data.community.forum/avatars/m/74/74677.jpg?1475248346){kind=avatar}
