Spore Gameplay

Lateralus · Post by **Lateralus** » September 5th, 2008, 19:32

So, since a fair few of us now have the game, I thought we could treat ourselves to a new thread to discuss it. Only made one animal so for, the Flid, and only it's just reached land. However, I'm enjoying it so far. Are you guys populating your planets with anything, or only 5punkers' creations?

Craig · Post by **Craig** » September 5th, 2008, 19:59

Good game, i don't own it but my friend does, although i'd only played it for around 2-3 hours and i reached civilisation level (half way through) and it that time still made a good creature, building and tank set, so all in all good game but seems to short for my liking.

Imperatore · Post by **Imperatore** » September 5th, 2008, 20:17

I feel like a twat for buying it but it arrives tomorrow and I'll give it a fair chance.

Shada · Post by **Shada** » September 5th, 2008, 20:28

The tribal and civilisation stages were pretty naff. I pretty much rushed through them because they were so boring.

Space stage and creature stage, though. Goddamn. They're awesome.

Hehulk · Post by **Hehulk** » September 5th, 2008, 20:30

I love the hell out of tribal stage, civilisation thought

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » September 5th, 2008, 20:31

Hehulk wrote:I love the hell out of tribal stage, civilisation thought

civ was great fun, mainly because i'm a murdering bastard.

space bored me enough to stop playing.

Hehulk · Post by **Hehulk** » September 5th, 2008, 20:42

I'd done the murdering bastard thing all the way to civ, so when I got there I wanted to turn my guys into a more enlightened race. After a good 30 minutes of bribing the 2 nearest cities it didn't seem to be working so I just started launching nukes and conquored everything in double quick time.

Launching ICBMs made me giggle though. Space though, yes, not sure I want to go back there.

Killavodka · Post by **Killavodka** » September 5th, 2008, 21:25

Space the final frontier, final as in you get ganged up on by two larger empires immediately

Post by **Roman Totale** » September 5th, 2008, 21:45

What's the general consensus on this then? My interest in it waned over the past couple of months and now I don't know if I can be arsed playing it or not.

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » September 5th, 2008, 21:51

Depends what you want from it, certainly worth a sweep and buy if you like it, failing that, wait and buy it once it's 18 quid.

Personally I'm not convinced of the replay value of it, and not so keen on the space bit.

shot2bits · Post by **shot2bits** » September 5th, 2008, 22:22

Dr. kitteny berk wrote: Personally I'm not convinced of the replay value of it, and not so keen on the space bit.

having got a few of my creatures to the space stage now ive noticed its very much a pot luck situation. my first creature i went to a few planets looking for moar space faring races and ended up being chased around for ages and having war declared on me just for going to a sun. second time around it was very different, found 2 friendly races populating the worlds around me and managed to set up trade and start terraforming planets and by the time i started getting attacked by people id actually managed to get some equipment on my ship and some allies in my fleet and found i was starting to enjoy this stage as much as the creature stage

Post by **Dog Pants** » September 5th, 2008, 22:24

Amoeba bit: Fun, but short. Still, longer and it would get boring.

Creature bit: Tricky and a bit slow, but quite amusing.

Tribal bit: Not bad, but I'd stomped across the map before I'd even finished my research. Zerg rush kekeke.

Civ bit: Quite enjoying, like the vehicle design (watch out for my arachnococks).

Space bit: Not got there yet.

I'm using buddy races, so I've had some odd encounters with some of FJ's bizarre creations. I ate them. A couple of my own, made deliberately to be nasty, proved a bit too hurty to eat.

All in all I'm rather enjoying it, but I'm with Berk on the replay value thing. We'll have to wait and see.

Post by **FatherJack** » September 5th, 2008, 22:41

I've only got to the tribal stage tutorial so far, but at last I'm starting to see the buddy creations appearing.

Was told to hunt for food, and found a little group of Grimmie's Doofusbutts nearby and gleefully snacked on them.

Then we had to make friends with Grimmie's Fatmouths in a nearby village. A quick blast on our didgeridoos was enough to convince them we were best friends 4eva.

Unfortunatey the tutorial then told us to wipe out the Fatmouths, so we all went up and started bashing on their huts. It didn't go well - we got wiped out and to add insult to injury, DogPant's Boken Bird came and nicked all our food while we were away.

As much of I've seen so far, this game could be rather annoying and simple, if not for the fact that you've crafted your own creatures from when they were little blobs, and that the world is populated by the creations of your mates.

buzzmong · Post by **buzzmong** » September 5th, 2008, 23:07

So, in other words:

It's not as good as it could be, and it's certainly not as good as we were led to believe it would be

No?

Hehulk · Post by **Hehulk** » September 5th, 2008, 23:13

I think your opinion on this one is going to be infulenced by how much hype you read, and how much you tend to enjoy stuff like this.

There's bits of it I love (celular phase is also inspired imo), and bits I can understand why others like, but don't quite appeal to me (If I want to go dominate some NPCs, I'll play soup). Generally it's nicely polished, and if you were looking forward to this, I'm going to agree with Berk in that it's definatly worth at least a sweep.

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » September 5th, 2008, 23:20

I think it depends on the person playing as much as anything.

I have no doubt grimmie will rate this as the game of the century, while others might see it as a good distraction and time killer.

Problem is it has quite a wide appeal, but not everyone will enjoy all of the stages.

Post by **Grimmie** » September 5th, 2008, 23:29

FatherJack wrote:Was told to hunt for food, and found a little group of Grimmie's Doofusbutts nearby and gleefully snacked on them.

Then we had to make friends with Grimmie's Fatmouths in a nearby village. A quick blast on our didgeridoos was enough to convince them we were best friends 4eva.

Awesome! :D

Post by **Grimmie** » September 5th, 2008, 23:30

Just reached Civ earlier today.
I'm the most overhyped of all the 5punkers, and it's better than what I thought it would be.
Really, really enjoying it so far. Great fun to see all the things I've made over the last couple months populate my planet

shot2bits · Post by **shot2bits** » September 5th, 2008, 23:48

something that im very interested in is the modding for spore. ive been wondering how difficult this is going to be for modders, what modders will be able to do and how EA will support that community with tools etc. i just think it would be good for those who know how to, to be able to make custom parts for the creatures. the main problem i foresee with this though is sporepedia, because if creatures with custom parts where put up to populate other peoples games then it would require them to go online and download the mods aswell

/brainleak end

Post by **FatherJack** » September 6th, 2008, 0:58

buzzmong wrote:So, in other words:
It's not as good as it could be, and it's certainly not as good as we were led to believe it would be
No?

Well, it depends what you want and what you were expecting.

Looking critically it's a series of mini-games similar to other game types, but not done in quite such a polished fashion as the games which have them as their only play modes.

I wasn't expecting it to be super deep in terms of the underlying game, what appealed to me was not only the fact you could design almost everything you see yourself, but share your buddies creations. It hasn't disappointed in that regard.

I played a bit of the Tribal mode and didn't get too far...

DogPants' Gremlins do not rate my musical abilities

...but I think the game took pity on me and opened up the Civilisations mode anyway.

This was the bit i was looking forward to most and it's almost overwhelming in what you can do. Before you even start you can design your vehicle for travel and your city hall, and when you start to place buildings - you can design each of them, too. Before it was like a treat to add new bits to your creature, now every little thing you do can be designed first.

This is the guy/team responsible for the Sims after all, and if you just pick stock buildings and plough through the scenario I can't help thinking you're missing the point. There are tons of RTSes out there where you can't design the infrastructure, which if you don't care about doing that, are better games.

While the designing is great fun, there does seem an element of min-maxing going on there with the stuff you put on them - more SimCity braininess than Sims artiness. I designed my SCC characters with no regard for the stats attached to each component - only to make them look funny. This might explain why DP has found them such an inviting snack in his games, whilst I regularly get smooshed by his and Grimmie's creations.