Spore Comments by Tom Bramwell

PC crap,The Mac is better.

It's not that it goes nowhere, it's that after initially being wooed with the very pretty presentation, you discover that four out of five stages of the game are rather shallow with the fifth being much deeper but not as deep as existing games out there.

Which is fair play, as SPORE seems to be more about being a toy than being a game (even though it has a proper ending and all).

Looks like it will follow a sims pattern - play it for 5 days then never touch it again.

Yeah, but the problem is that the spaceship editor - for me at least - isn't nearly as much fun as the creature editor, so one of the games biggest plus points plays almost no role in the game's bets part.

@FWB: I thought Germans liked minimalism and nihilism. A game that goes nowhere should be perfect, no?

No. And you forgot to mention beer, megalomenia, lederhosen and david hasselhoff. Well, there *is* megalomania in spore, but "The Hoff"? Now that would be a helluva creature! :-)

Am I smelling lobotomy to shift expansions?

Surely you can make the Hoff with the creature creator?

i've got to tell you, i've been having some real problems on wether its a good game or not, and you know, despite the cell frustration stage, i still don't know.

Hmm wierd. I just looked at the review on Gamespy, and in their pros and cons section, under cons it had:

"Space game can get repetitive; "

Completely the opposite to this review? It got a high score - 4.5/5 - but for different reasons.

First one to present a Hoff Sporecreature get's beer & cocktails on my money in Duisburg / Germany! I dare all of you out there to create this fiercest of all fiends and receive endless germanic worship forever!

...modelling KITT too is a plus. Oh and always remember: Don't drink and drive.

Edit: I misspelled KITT! Will wear paperbag on head for 3 days.

Ok so i had a look couldnt realyl find any decent hoffs. The best i could find was this Kitt.

http://www.spore.com/sporepedia#qry=srch...

Dont hate me.

Why were some people expecting some heavy, meaty, 'substance' to this game?

Have you ever listened to Will Wright?

Yay! My new iMac can become a genuine gaming machine!

(without BootCamp)

Think i might treat myself to this - Sounds like a cross between Civ, the sims and rollercoastertycoon sandbox mode - bang goes the social life

I just read all of that, and I'm still not particularly clear on what Spore actually is. What do you actually spend most of your time doing?

Surely this is just a more complicated tamagotchi

@secombe

parts 1+2 = running about, eating, avoiding being eaten
parts 3+4 = building up a settlement, cities, killing other civilizations, RTS style stuff
part 5 = similar to 3+4, but in space

I NEED REVIEWS OF SPORE CREATURES! Off to America soon and I know the DS version is completely different but it still sounds promising! When Eurogamer, when?

Why were some people expecting some heavy, meaty, 'substance' to this game?

Have you ever listened to Will Wright?

There's a lot of room between "heavy, meaty substance" and the first few stages of Spore. A lot.

9/10 just so that EA would let them get the game review out early methinks. Yet another game to suffer due to the massive hype I'm afraid.

The review reads like an 8. seems that game sites are scared to give it less than a 9, lest EA punish them.

No, won't be getting this

@y2rich: wrong. The worldwide online-embargo is due today....

thanks for the balanced review. it's more than the number 9, its reading about the balance between the different stages of the game.

i've already pre-ordered (and the digital download is waiting on my drive for it to unlock) but i'm trying to temper my expectations. we'll see. I've always loved Wright's Sim stuff, but never got to carried away with it either. The Sims did that to me--"why am i washing my Sim's dishes, when I should be washing my own dishes?".

I think the journey into space will be a bit more bracing.

Can you make sinister looking creatures, or do they all come out looking like happy, bouncy, rubbery limbed cartoons? Not that that is a bad thing, but I had a plan to make some of my favourite sci-fi villain species...

"Spore's happy to think of you as a God, but in the end your status is debatable. Perhaps you're just evolution itself. So endeth the contradiction in what, as is typical of Spore, turns out to be bright and amusing fashion."

or

"You are the intelligence behind intelligent design"

that'd piss all kinds of scientists off :D

Poorly written review in my opinion - far too fluffy, like the author was trying to justify the English degree and creative writing course. I much prefer the reviews that focus more on the "nuts and bolts" of the game, especially for games like Spore where it is very unclear what you actually DO in the game.

"Poorly written review in my opinion - far too fluffy, like the author was trying to justify the English degree and creative writing course."

Every so often these kind of comments come up. Quite annoying they are to.
Listen up EG, Simple writing and controversial comments are the order of the day. Don't forget that all game reviews should be written in exactly the same way. Shame on you for having no concrete basic structure, to which all reviews should rigidly follow.

MGS4 gets an 8 and people take the piss saying that an 8 is a shitty score. Spore gets 9 and people say that score is amazing.

According to gamers, there is a one point difference between a good score and a bad one.

We may as well just have a three-number scale LOL 1=bad 2=good 3=great. Easy :P

MGS and Spore are not even remotely similar though are they. No comparisson can really be made, and as such score and scales are different for each game.

You do have a point though with scores. I'd prefer if they were removed completely myself. Would make forums and comments a more pleasant place to be.

Never liked the Sims, so this isn't for me. Funny how 3 pages of "critique" aren't enough to describe how this plays.

I'll be missing out on this, not got a PC or Laptop. : (

Too bad, as I would've tried to make the Starship Enterprise NCC 1701-A as my space ship.

evilfoxhound : taken a break from moaning about the 360 to moan about the pc?

must no other system ever have a good game? lol

To cute for me, keeping my bucks for F3!

'Listen to the people who buy the games and play them for more than 3 hours, gamers, not people in the industry. Game is probably shit. It looks it anyway.'

or alternatively listen to people who obviously haven't played the game but say its 'probably shit'

+1 to paulf. I've ordered this anyway, so I'll form my own opinion tomorrow (assuming it gets delivered on time).

Game turned up today. Its for my son and his birthday isnt until Tuesday.... wondering if i should "Check" to see if it works or not... :D

Oh please...... lets note have MGS got 8, etc etc... use your common sense, the game is rated based on what type of game/content, you dont compare each game directly against each other. Otherwise you would compare all games based on Pong or something.

Yes kids, this is better than MGS 4. ZOMG Wright > Kojima!1

To be consistent, Tom Bramwell used to review only different types of games before this, yes?

One question: Is it possible to create/evolve into humanlike creatures?

I dunno, when sites like GameSpot and IGN, who typically over-rate shit often, review this game lower than EG you gotta wonder. Spore looks kinda good, but I don't see signs of it having that 'hook' Sims does, well, at least without expansions. I assume EA intended to make Spore kinda short for general gameplay, as there will be a thousand expansion over the coming months!

Hmm. You can't make the mouse inverted, nor change the controls. Compounds other crapness in the options menu, such as having to restart the game to change the resolution - made all the more annoying by the short but unskippable intro.

There is actually a dsicernable game in there somewhere, but if it wasn't wrapped up in all the customisation jazz, it wouldn't be a very good game.

And, of course, you can't make the damned mouse inverted!

Played a bit more of this today and decided not to pick up my pre-order at game. I'll get infinite undiscovery instead and maybe mercenaries.

I finally got into space and it's just a series of missions which nearly all have the pattern of:-

Find planet.
Scan planet
assimilate or steal tech.
upgrade ship
fight, trade with or form alliance on other planet.
rinse and repeat.

Oh and you can terraform barren worlds occasionally.

ho hum......

I'm playing it. Its very, very simplistic gameplay folks. I would take this EG review with a grain of salt.

NO WAY IS THIS BETTER THAN MGS4:GotP, SORRY TOMMY.

Will buy it when expansion no. 4 is out and the OG costs < 10 DOLLARS (lol almost free!)

I got it today (thank you shopto) havent played it yet but my brother has been on it for the past 6 hours without moving, so it must be ok. I like what I see, but feel that there could be alot more depth to the whole experience

it's lowest score so far is 79% got to be half decent at least.

What is up with all this hate for a game that is meant to be a lighthearted experience?

For all who wondered why uz Germanz have given the game a 79% Score in on of our leading magazines: They translated their review to english. Spore review on gamestar.de (english)
I really share their opinion, although I am not such a fan of customization features (in general) and would have thus given an even lower score.

t's lowest score so far is 79% got to be half decent at least.

Remember Black & White?

Well B&W was brilliant for a few days at least. All aboard the Spore express.

Question about the Tribal stage to people who have gotten to it/past it...

I was up late last night playing it and when I got to this stage, I followed the tutorial and created babies, collected fruit etc.. then it had the other tribe appear and I had the option of becomin friends and impressing or killing them to progress...

I have been a pacifist so far and want to impress but when the mini-game comes on to impress them, they show a picture of like a club or something and it tells me to press the corresponding key/button but there are none... My tribe leader is selected and tutorial says it gives options as him but nothing pops up - cant right click him or the button, cant left click him or the button..

Im at work right now so cant have a tinker but thought I would post and see if anyone can suggest what I wasdoin wrong. Have I gone too far ahead and need to discover the things they were showing me or am I missing something..

Cheers

"Do you really think so? I think the crowd who bought The Sims are precisely the people who couldn't give a stuff about a game like this.

Why do you think they'd be interested of all people?"

Well let's see:

Sims lets you customise your Sim's appearance.
Spore lets you customise your creature's appearance.

Sims lets you choose the path you wish your Sim to take
Spore lets you choose the path you wish your creature to take

Sims follows the development of little beings from birth to death
Spore follows the development of little beings from conception to galactic dominance.

Sims has cutesy graphics
Spore has cutesy graphics

Sims was designed to allow the publisher to rip us off with add-ons
Spore was designed to allow the publisher to rip us off with add-ons

Sims ultimately left you with a hollow feeling inside once you realised there was no real point to it all.
Spore ... well the jury's out!

How exactly do you imagine Sims players will not be the kind of people who'd want to play this?

Incidentally both myself and my GF enjoyed playing the Sims and we are also both looking forward to this. Yes that's right people, WE ENJOYED PLAYING THE SIMS AND WE'RE PROUD OF IT! I refuse to hide in the closet and pretend to be another of those Sims bashers.