About to go into tribal stage. Playing it on normal, I'm getting fucking zerged with a maxed out animal unless I travel with 2-3 pack buddies by the epics that wander around. Shitty.

 

Yeah, the epics are hard. To kill one I had to maximize every fighting ability and travel with the best of those next-to-epic monsters I could find. Well, it also did help that I've got a bug that let's me take one more with me than I'm normally allowed...

Tribal Stage is shit. Only three or four things you can actually do there and it gets boring - but it's fast. Civ Stage is meh. A bit more to do but still way less than in any strategy game from the early nineties.
Space Stage is still pretty cool, but I've played that one for only an hour or so.

 

...

Finished creature stage:

I'd review it, but everyone here has already done a good job.

Tribal Stage:

I liked it, gather food, wipe out enemy tribes... of course it could have been better had they put natural disasters in, famine, disease, etc. not just villages to wipe out...

Civ Stage: One big MEH. You start out with land vehicles, then after taking two or three cities, can just start pumping out a Navy. You won't need those tanks anymore. When you've taken a few more ships, just spam high attack/health (low speed) attack planes and you can dominate the rest of the earth. Really, I never had to use any of those special abilities, or really think about what I was doing. This is the weakest part of SPORE, I think. They could have really polished this to be more exciting. The best part is dressing your villager lol.

Space:

I've only just started, but it looks awesome.

 

I'm just really disappointed it isn't more scientific. And the actual gameplay is pretty boring. And the camera controls blow fucking anus.

To be honest, once you get over the creature creation novelty, its a pretty bad game. I won't be buying it. Might keep playing the crack a bit to fool around with the creator, but actually playing...

I haven't been to space yet though. Is it much more fun than the other stages?

 

As I said in a post somewhere else in this thread, all the reviews I've read say that the Space game is the main part of Spore and that the stages previous to it are merely preparation. Apparently somewhere in the Galaxy there's actually the planet Earth to find.

 

Yeah, I've played Space for two hours now. It's pretty good. Actually, it's incredibly difficult. You have to have a number of allies to prevent enemy nations from gaining too much ground... pirates will raid your planets at the worst times (or diseases will run rampant, and you'll need to return to your colonies to stabilize them). You have to earn tons of cash by trading spice (and completeing missions from your people/your allies/plundering enemy cities) to unlock abilities for colonizations, weapons, etc.

It's pretty overwhelming. Right now, I only have one ally, and he's getting crushed. Thankfully his planets buffer mine, but I don't think I'll be able to hold out for very long -- the enemy nation has too much momentum, I don't have the slightest clue how to combat its numbers. And this is on "easy" lol.

The biggest flaw with the space game, I've heard, is that once you get far out into space, it's almost impossible to manage all your colonies. Pirates and disease will occur often enough you'll never be able to venture far away from your home base. You have to disable pirates and disease from a prefences file (to have any chance at getting to the center of the universe). Supposedly.

 

Interesting article on Space.

I'm really wanting this game now - I just have to figure out if I can afford it lol.

 

Heard that too, but I play as Shaman and the Return Immediately skill is pretty useful.

On another note: What are you selling your spices for? And do you collect the sets or sell the items as you find them? Don't know how much the price actually increases when you have the full set.

 

As it stands now, I hate this game. It was something that SHOULD of been awesome, and instead they turned it into nothing. When your entire game is basically Create a Creature.. you know the game that they released a few months ago for 10$... you have no fucking right to charge full price for this garbage.

The controls are the worst I've ever seen camera wise, and the game plays like it was designed by a bunch of young 4-5th graders. There is literally nothing to do early on but click on the same shit over and over, you go to tribal stage and that's boring as piss, and civ stage seems to be they took a RTS and ripped out 99.9% of it.

Maybe it'll change once I get to Space, but right now this is the failest game I'm ever played, and it actually hurts, because it SHOULD of been awesome. The animals are too cartoony, the body editor is absolute shit unless you spend a full time work load in it. Too few selection of parts that don't match together right, often leaving an ugly seam where they meet, etc. try to put nostrils on a mouth, or make a tail, as ugly as they are, and stick a tip on it.

Spit, charge, swipe, bite. How fucking exciting. Take Pokemon from 12 year ago, on the Gameboy, less exciting then the attacks in that.

I see epic shooting fire, why the hell can't I do that? And while we're on gay crap, why the hell do I have a bear's mouth, and yet I sing like a chicken?


4/10.

 

Just wait until they add on the $50 expansion packs, à la The Sims. One for each stage, I'd guess. Hello cash cow.

 

All the more reason to be glad to be a swashbuckler. EA backed games have gotten to the point where you may as well throw away 60$ and not waste your time

 

I finally bought this and played it through yesterday. I quite enjoyed it in the end, though sometimes I got tired of having to create everything from scratch and just used a load of stuff from the Sporepedia instead. I had fun trying to make a Goa'uld mothership for the space stage though.

Cell Stage - Quite fun, even though it's simplistic. I love the electric ability. I was a speedy herbivore surrounded by a protective bubble of electricity.

Creature Stage - Even though it was quite repetitive at times, this was actually my favourite stage, because of the customisability. More than any other stage, there is a real drive to improve yourself by getting the next bunch of upgrades so you can befriend the next bunch of creatures that were too high a level for you before. I used the addDNA cheat to take away some of the tedium, though I probably could have got by without it.

Tribal stage - My least favourite stage. Far too simplisitc, and only 3 upgrades per type. After spending about 2 hours trying to get every single upgrade and befriend every single nest in the creature stage, I spent about 15 minutes in the Tribal stage. This is also where the controls began to get a bit clumsy, especially regarding the camera.

Civilisation stage - I actually pretty enjoyed this stage gameplay-wise, but it was just too easy and quick. You just had to capture as many spice gysers as possible and then set up trade routes with all the cities and buy them out without having to fire a single shot. But despite the simplicity of this stage, I exited it wishing it had lasted longer, so that's a sign that it was at least enjoyable. The clothing creator thing I looked at and then didn't touch again, because all the clothing is suited for humanoids and my creature was far too odd for it to work. I couldn't be bothered with the anthem either.

Space Stage - I've only just started this really, but it's my second favourite stage so far, and could become my favourite after I play more. It's a bit annoying how I can't get to the terraforming tools yet though. Having to use the GUI to change the camera is very annopying too, as is the fact that you can't fly freely in space. It can get a bit confusing at times too, because all the planets are so close together. It's very easy to lose your place.

Overall it was pretty fun and I'm glad I bought it. After several hours of playing on it I was a bit tired of it, but this morning I woke up wanting to play it again so I'm glad that it has a longer lifespan than one day lol.

 

I agree with the upgrades bit, but what I really missed were consequences to how you create your creature. When I put horns on it's back so it can ram something and it still runs frontal into the enemy then there's something wrong. In the promo videos they released in the last year this was an often seen feature but in the final version the designer is essentially just a nicely done dress up doll.

But I still like it, though. Especially now I got the hang of it, I really love the space stage. You have to realise that you don't have to do every mission (if you're busy, just let the pirates attack - I can't understand why so many people complain about that happening too often) and take the time to build an empire before you go of to explore the universe. It's quite fun now.

 

Space stage sucking hard now. You wind up doing the exact same thing a hundred times. Terraforming is mind numbing.

I saved my sanity by getting the user made patch that scales back the constant whining from your allies who are totally capable of taking over a planet if you pay them 50K. But can't defend themselves against 10 pirate ships.

Takes forever to get Interstellar drive 4, which lets you go far enough, and get into black holes, to get to the center of the universe. That was an annoying hellhole to start with. I got into Grox areas, then I wound up finding a ton of places I couldn't cross with Drive 4. Frustrating as hell.

I wound up just cheating my ass off, spending probably over a billion bucks to get my empire the way I wanted. Running back and forth to collect spice is the failest thing I've done in a very, very long time.

The graphics when you find a new galactic object, or go into a black hole are good, but that's really the only thing I have to say about the space age.

Overall, once you get into space, do a few missions, then just spend an hour clicking back and forth to get to Drive 4 or 5, and then go to the center. Your pathetically weak allied ships ain't going to help you do jack, so don't bother unless you started out with a really weak ship due to your choices earlier.

Going to try to get to the center again, came close earlier, but got stuck juuuust outside it.

Oh yeah
http://www.destructoid.com/ea-would...ore-parts-i-bet-they-bloody-would-97301.phtml

EA wants to charge you for parts.

 

Yeah, I haven't touched the game since I hit the Space stage and got incredibly bored/frustrated. The empires needed to be much more spaced out from each other.

Roll on Galactic Civilizations II.

 

Yarly. That game was so much more fun. It's arguably better than Sins of a Solar Empire, which is basically the same exact thing.

 

...ug

I just "finished" it. By randomly clicking for an hour on solar systems with 32038328 grox ships trying to murder me. Your travel eventually goes back to to a level 2 drive basically, you can only move 2.00 parcecs at a time.

That means if you go in with a lvl 4 drive, you're going to tear your hair out trying to get to the center. It has probably the gayest ending I've ever seen or any game ever. Oh but it's a sandbox... fuck you.

This was one of the most anticipated games ever, and it blew. BAD. I feel I wasted the hours I spent fucking with this with the kids. It was fun to make our creature, and ships, but the rest, SUCKED. Oh, and trying to get back out of the center"? I can't. I can't find the one magical planet that was 2.99 and not 3.01 parcecs away so i can fucking get out and go back home and see if they do something for me. Gay.

Oh yeah, I found this to be true too,

 

Interesting, if these are legit sources...

http://kotaku.com/5054175/class-action-lawsuit-arises-over-spore-drm

and another link
http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/54887

 

Good for him. Giant waste of money, but good intentions

 

Necro, yyyyayaya!

I was bought this today for my birthday... I got drafted into playing it again for the kids. I "acquired" it before, and fuck me, I wish I had again.

EA, when a game is EASIER to play pirated, then buying it.. dude. I installed it, installed EA download manager. EA Download manager doesn't see the game at all. I log into Spore. Spore.com doesn't recognize me owning the game, so it won't let me search Sporepedia (or so I think) .

I finally wound up having to go to Piratebay to get the damned 1.5 patch, since the ONLY way to patch the game is to pirate patch it, or EA download manager it. Patched, and now the game can't connect to servers to search, even though it'll allow me finally to log into my account.

Horseshit. I can't be mad I guess, it's a present, but goddamnit EA, stop making game so hard to actually PAY FOR. The pirated version, download, install, drop 1 file (the crack) in, and go. Not hours looking around trying to figure out why shit won't work, and your tech help insists it's the drivers.