So, who’s getting (or already has) the full version? I have it pre-ordered from Direct2Drive, since if I order the boxed version, I won’t have any chance at all to play it before I leave for New Zealand in two weeks. 17 or so hours until I’m allowed to download it.
The only other DoBer I know who has it already is Dools, and he got it from El Corte Ingles, which released it two days in advance in Spain, because, as he explained, they are responsible for 80% of game sales in the country and basically brutally ignore release dates, much to the delight of their customers. Also, Dools reports that the vehicle editor is amazing.
Whoever grabs the game, be sure to post here, so we can be buddies onloins and invade each others’ galaxies and stuff.
Played it 7 hours last night until 5 AM. I haven’t done that in forever. At the tribal stage I couldn’t get the jist of how to make friends with all the other villages so instead I just murdered them all. I’d sit around tapping instruments but they’d just rate me yet it wouldn’t change my standing with them.
I really didn’t have any objective when building my creature or than to eat others.
The game is living art. Its amazing how much creative freedom you have, and how easily its performed, however the gameplay is best described as rudimentary. That said, its still an auspicious occasion as the inner designer in me grinned out of sheer satification as I designed my creature’s theme song in the city-state stage.
The part that leaves me concerned is if I’ll really want to repeat the process many more times, I wish they’d added a little more to the actual gameplay as the creative detail in the game is best described as FUCKING AMAZING.
I got to the 2st evolutionary stage, at which point my wife commandeered my laptop to play.
SECOST
Well, my download has crawled to something like 133 KB/s, so I probably won’t be playing until tomorrow. Luckily, my responsibilities for the next two weeks are as follows: run in the morning, get all my equipment ready for two weeks from now. Also play games.
I downloaded it not-so-legally but went out and bought it I could have awesome online play (along with my roommate) so my name is Champylose if anyone wants add me. I’m now in space, doing randomstuff. Seems like its the meat of the game.
Is it just me or does friend searching not work in Spore?
It worked for me with Doolan. My name is Rawsosaurus.
Also, this game rules. I am currently engrossed in the tribal stage. So far, I’ve had the same sort of inklings as Greg about not having enough “stuff to do,” but another part of me, the part that suffered in DoB Rise of Nations and Age of Empires games, is fat and happy because of the simplicity. In any case, I guess it’s too early to opine—onward!
edit - I added a Spore profile field to the forums for the enjoyment of all. It also links to your spore.com profile!
edit 2 - I just transitioned into the Civ stage, but haven’t done anything yet. Let me just say that the tribal intro cinematics are the best so far.
I’ve been fucking with the galaxy and I love and loathe parts of this game.
Once you get to the space part of the game it opens up but moves at a snails pace. You run around on errands to get new and improved parts. Anytime you setup a colony you have to layout your buildings the same as before, and even SELECT the buildings you’ll use. Its annoying it doesn’t default to the last used buildings. I don’t care what my colonies look like as I never interact with them. Notably, the space area consists of four main things:
Most of the time you’re just bouncing between galaxies. There’s a bit of a cumbersome nature as you have to ENTER a galaxy in order to trade with it making it a huge time waster. There’s load times, Nothing major but it adds up. After awhile you realize you’re just level grinding to buy the next bigger/badder spaceship. Meanwhile as you zip around buying and selling spice colors you occasionally have colonies raided by space pirates or infected with an outbreak which means you must drop what you’re doing and hope you can make it back in time to shoot whatever is causing a crisis.
The game’s owe ambition is its greatest weakness I’ve felt. Online doesn’t download creatures nearly enough as I still have mostly a maxis playset. The creatures as variable as they are in looks personalities and abilities are pretty much all the same. My buddy was playing it on his laptop, and his world looked vastly different, cool but doesn’t really help the game itself after a bit.
I know the inevitable content packs will arrive but I sincerely hope the expand the game, like a large amount of missions events and more species personality would make the game.
I’m gonna have to agree with most of what Greg said. Spore has a lot of problems, and theres a lot of stuff that needs working on. The constant pirate raids/disease outbreaks are freaking annoying and serve to do nothing but slow down progression and generally make the game less fun. That being said, Spore is a huge breath of fresh air in gaming. It’s just so innovative and fun. As someone in the chat put it, it’s one of those games that makes you go “I’ll sit down and play a couple minutes HOLY CRAP IVE BEEN ON HERE FOR 5 HOURS?!!?” Despite the flaws, Spore is an excellent game. Hopefully they’ll iron out some of the kinks with patches and expansion packs.
Speaking expansion packs, it seems like EA is determined to squeeze every penny they can out of Spore and go the route of the Sims when it comes to expansion packs. That’s right folks, we may be seeing Spore: Hot Date soon! also cocks
Okay, I was able to get my friends list working today. I think first day out == Server bog down. My roommate and I were able to friend and I was able to find to Ross.
So far list the list
Champylose = me
Rawsosaurus = Ross
I’ve found a few awesome creatures. I subscribed to a few random people including some guy who made Diablo from his self titled game.
In the Space there’s a story that’s progressing at a snail’s pace. The pirate raids are enough to drive me crazy. On my own colonies I’ve installed defenses but that doesn’t account for my six allies. Also the inventory management needs help. I can’t organize my cargo so I can never remember how many species I have. I’d other wise pack all my creatures/plants by type. When you teraform planets (which is next to impossible early on because of the sheer cost until you can afford the various beam rays as its cost prohibitive) you need to populate the planet with a sustainable ecology. Neat but since you’re sucking up creatures, you’ll end up populating the universe with the same 9 trees and 9 animals.
Also I wish there was more to do to mess with civilizations that haven’t achieved interstellar travel. I sent an obelisk to a planet of Diablos which caused it to join me in the stars. They thanked me and refer to me as the wise one with pleasantries as I accelerated their tech growth. It was a cool moment. Had they included more of those it’d been even better.
Anyhow like Mav, I played it 5 hours tonight and blown away I played it for so long.
Problem with a game such as this is it lends itself to the desire for so much more. Spore is one of the those games where its nearly impossible to separate what it is and what it should be as its obviously brilliant conceptually. Maxis really is the most avant-garde major publisher.
Lovisa bought the game while we were in London (which we happened to be the past week, hence my absence), and installed it when we got home yesterday. It feels a tad short on actual gameplay and a lot more big on creations and exploring so far, but we both stopped playing when reaching the civilization era (so much to edit at once, and since I had second go at it, I wasn’t gonna start that at close to 2am). The game is fun, but I have some gripes with it… especially how you can’t play one copy of the game from different accounts even though they’re on the same machine. If I want to use my Spore account we would have to install a second copy of the game on the same machine, since we only have one that can run it. That’s seriously bad. So all my creations now goes on Lovisa’s tab.
As far as I know it stashes all the game data under the Documents folder under /yourusername, same on Windows too. You might be able to do it with multiple users in OS X. Also you have the option to log in and out. Try playing with it.
