Spore: A Failure?

[Gelion]

Nah its 1994-1996!

Duke Nukem 3D, Transport Tycoon Deluxe, Terminal Velocity, Doom 1+2, UFO: Enemy Unkown, Civilization 1+2, Jane's ATF, Eurofighter 2000, Hexen, Sim City 2000, Worms, Screamers, Master of Orion 1+2, X-Wing, Mechwarrior 2. Those were truly great games... especially if you were 13 at the time

You got it!
Add Fallout 1 and 2, Dune 1 and 2, Starcraft, Warcraft, Red Alert, Legends of Kyrandia, Wolfenstein 3D, Europa Universalis, Alpha Centauri, Settlers 2 and I would agree with you. Back then, these were top. You could only dream what the future would bring. Unfortunately.

<post>

There is no single line I oppose in that post. I however, did buy a few new games this decade and most of them suck.

 

[EdCase]

Best gaming years are whatever years during which you were 15-19.

*cue 17 years old posting about how he is into "old school games" and how I am wrong just like this kid in high school who's so proud of schooling everybody about Pink Floyd*

PS: I know you're there, but you're not gonna post NOW are ya? mah!

Interesting thought..shame that it was 1977-1981 when I was 15-19..I know those were definitely NOT the best gaming years I had. That seminal event was the year Civ 1 hooked me.(Been hooked ever since).

Spore *sigh* I thought I was (finally) getting SimGalaxy to follow up Sim Earth. I actually got...interactive silly putty ...in space

 

[LastLegionare]

Well, yes, it suceeded. With all these creations and purchase, it has became a huge market "Success."

But it didn't accomplish it's point. EA took its vassal Maxis by the hand and demanded that it make it a "profit game" with the huge audience (the "Casual" gamers.) Some say that's why Will Wright left. I am one of those people.

Society is now mostly this way. A dollar is better than a smile. Sad, but ultimitally true.

 

[Kid2255]

I'm quoting PCG Gamer and myself:

No one seems to think of Spore as what it is:
A great toy.

 

[Daftpanzer]

I can't have fun with it, even as a toy. Its all too fake. What can you actually do?

There are much better 'toys' out there, IMO. I prefer forum games (NESing) to Spore.

 

[The Almighty dF]

I'm quoting PCG Gamer and myself:

No one seems to think of Spore as what it is:
A great toy.

It's a toy in the fact that you can play with it for awhile, then get bored and forget about it quickly.
Sure, with enough imagination you can pretend like what you've done matters, and maybe never leave the creature phase, but come on. There are much better things to do with your imagination than that.

Spore isn't a "great" toy, it's more like one of those Made In Taiwan GI Joe knockoffs you can find in convenience stores for $1.50 for a pack of 6 figures, only it was sold for a price higher than its true worth.

I'm glad this hunk of crap sold less than expected, and became one of the most pirated games of the decade (though Modern Warfare 2 is either about to or has already beaten it.)
Hopefully after this and the crapfest that was The Sims 3, EA might beg Wright to come back and help them release a game that -isn't- the sim equivalent of Daikatana.

 

[GenMarshall]

A nice toy that is broken thanks to the limited instals the copyprotection program has implemented.

 

[GoodGame]

A nice toy that is broken thanks to the limited instals the copyprotection program has implemented.

Deauthorization was implemented, so that problem was fixed. But yeah that probably didn't help it much on release.

 

[Luckymoose]

I finally got a copy, borrowed from a friend after debating on playing it for years, and I have to say that the first 5 hours were enjoyable. I'm in the space phase now and really like the whole thing. It's not the best but for some reason I'm hooked.

 

[Silv Something]

Play 3-4 more games.

 

[Rub'Rum]

Yeah, I really liked it the first 2 or 3 times. And suddenly stopped. I mean, really suddenly. I started a new game, played it to tribal stage, stopped, and never ever booted the game again in 1.5 years.

Space stage was my favorite, except for the fact that the game left me absolutely no time to enjoy any of it by badgering me about crap going on all the time.

 

[Silv Something]

Yeah, I really liked it the first 2 or 3 times. And suddenly stopped. I mean, really suddenly. I started a new game, played it to tribal stage, stopped, and never ever booted the game again in 1.5 years.

Space stage was my favorite, except for the fact that the game left me absolutely no time to enjoy any of it by badgering me about crap going on all the time.

Space would have been fun, except you have to do everything yourself, no minions to take care of it . . .

 

[Daftpanzer]

Yeah, I really liked it the first 2 or 3 times. And suddenly stopped. I mean, really suddenly. I started a new game, played it to tribal stage, stopped, and never ever booted the game again in 1.5 years.

Space stage was my favorite, except for the fact that the game left me absolutely no time to enjoy any of it by badgering me about crap going on all the time.

Same for me. Except I have loaded it a couple more times to play around with the editors only.

Personally I think its missing the kind of build-up-everything-over-time-ness like The Sims 2 has. Like say your different races could actually meet each other, with the actual empires you created for them. If evolution had more depth, tribe and civ stage were more under your control, and every planet you worked on was in the very same galaxy, with more interactions...

Needs more 'legacy' play, IMO. Maybe planets should be like households in The Sims, and your species like the different families, with genetics that can continue to change in the space stage, and even interbreed with other races

 

[@nthony]

Spore was one of the worst purchases I ever made on a videogame. I played it for 4 hours tops. Had very very little re-play vaule at all. Was fun to create and colour a creature, but my god I could have done that at age 4 with crayolas and a piece of paper. It was just a good concept broken by no difficulty, no replay-ability, no imagination [in the sense of 'just one more game and I'll have cracked how to do so and so correctly'] which is what makes CIV and a lot of other strategy games so addictive. Which is evener odder given that the game was supposed to be about creating the creature of your imagination (back to the crayola for the 21st century I guess).

A real shame, and that's being kind to it.

 

[evirus]

id have to say that of the problems with spore the ones that cause be to die a little inside whenever i decide to play is:


lack of connectedness: aside from the fact that your creature is carried over, in lessor and lessor ways, the game is almost entirely compartmentalized, this is most evident if you look at how your creature moves in the creator and compare it to how it moves in creature stage. the stages don't feel like your creature is becoming more advanced it feels like your just moving on to a different game using the same characters.

linear game play: the stages all advance the same way; kill it/friend it, repeat. the only difference your choice makes is a few slight forgettable bonuses associated with your decision.

loss of previous abilities: once your done with the creature stage, say goodbye to controlling individuals on a whim, done with tribal stage? say goodbye to infantry. done with civilization stage? say good by to ground combat.


frankly you'd have a more compelling experience from playing a bunch of different games focused on their stage in history than playing spore.

 

[Pokurcz]

It's a big pile of sh!t with krap sprinkled all over it.

 

[Daftpanzer]

lack of connectedness: aside from the fact that your creature is carried over, in lessor and lessor ways, the game is almost entirely compartmentalized, this is most evident if you look at how your creature moves in the creator and compare it to how it moves in creature stage. the stages don't feel like your creature is becoming more advanced it feels like your just moving on to a different game using the same characters.

This is basically what killed it for me... It made a mockery of any kind of story you tried to make. My happiest memory is being able to visit the same landmarks on my home planet in the creature, tribal, civ and space stages, and take some screenshots. That says a lot really!

 

[Omega124]

frankly you'd have a more compelling experience from playing a bunch of different games focused on their stage in history than playing spore.

Agreed!

Cell: Actually, this stage was pretty fun. Mobile version got it right by only having the Cell Stage, leghtned to take up a good hour or two, not a short coffee break.
Creature: Diablo
Stone: Populous
Civ: Rise of Nations
Space: Galactic Civilizations or Masters of Orion, your choice.

 

[wamedh]

iam still playing cell stage, But the creature stage is boring ,Tribal stage is nice ,civilization stage is much better , space stage is the worst especially with the grox you cant do anything but defend yourself,its quite useless even if there is no grox whats the point of building colonies over and over and over

 

[The Almighty dF]

iam still playing cell stage, But the creature stage is boring ,Tribal stage is nice ,civilization stage is much better , space stage is the worst especially with the grox you cant do anything but defend yourself,its quite useless even if there is no grox whats the point of building colonies over and over and over

I'd still say Tribal is the worst. You have only -two options-. Dance at your enemy, kill your enemy. That's beyond dumb.