Trent Polack's site for cats, games, game development, and undeniably powerful sociological insight all with a healthy dose of narcissism.
The Landsharks Shall Inherit the, uh, Randomly Generated Planet
Published on September 7, 2008 By mittens In PC Gaming

After ending my very first Spore gaming session a few hours after I startedmany hours after I started I sat back and thought about what I just played. Spore isn't an easy game to classify so much as it is five different games to classify all wrapped in an incredibly polished, coherent content creation sandbox. At numerous moments in my session that took me from the very beginning of a new species up through the beginning of the fifth and final Space Stage I sat back and realized that I'm the only gamer in the world who will have taken a blue race that resembles land-sharks called the Asplodians through each stage of the game but, when I was done, I won't be the only gamer who has had the divine pleasure of seeing my little blue carnivores in a game world due to Maxis' endlessly intelligent and well-assembled online distribution of player-created content. If anyone wants to play with my beautiful little blue babies, add "mittense" to your Spore buddy list.

First, to anyone who has yet to play, I'd recommend doing what I did and getting as many friends' spore buddy names as possible before starting and then, optionally, disabling content from anyone outside your list. It's far more enjoyable for me to see a creature in the wild, click it, and see the name of a friend or coworker and silently judge that person based on their creation than it is for me to see a giant walking pair of tits from El337nubPWN3r. And there were a great many times where I was faced with skyscaper-tall "epic" instances of my friends' creations that picked up my baby blue dinosaur-shark hybrid, gnawed on him a bit, and then threw him into the ground and killed him -- such an instance has probably tainted my friendship with that person irrevocably.

The first stage, where you're a tiny little wormthing with chompers swimming about in a primordial ooze, is a surprisingly enjoyable fifteen-to-twenty minute game of lion-and-cat-and-mouse where the lions and mice get bigger with your player-controlled origin of an eventual species. It is during this period that a player can get accustomed to a simplified version of the Creature Creator that will power the stage following this introduction to the game. Going into Spore I assumed this stage would be the game's weak point but that's not even close to true. The cell phase is a rightfully short-lived blast and I'm looking forward to doing it again when I create my next species.

The creature-driven phase that follows this is best described as a mix of the Spore Creature Creator (can I use this retail subset of the game to describe this?) and World of Warcraft. The player takes his newly land-bound creature from its non-aquatic immaturity to its near-civilized phase throughout this hour-long battle for supremacy as the player bands with the rest of his species to eliminate the other new nests that populate the world. This stage is, hypothetically, about making new friends and enemies in a world and defining a species' eating habits in a learn-by-eating method of sustenance through plants (herbivore), other species (carnivore), or a mix of both (omnivore). Killing or befriending other species will increase your DNA bar (experience bar) and each major experience block gives your creature a larger brain with the final block setting off the light bulb in a creature's head that he can use sticks to roast marshmallows.

The third stage is a tribal stage which tasks, emphasis on the word task, the player with guiding anywhere from six to a dozen of his units towards tribal victory in a real-time strategy-lite game. The idea behind this phase is alright, what with all of the inter-tribal negotiations and/or warfare that yield an increased familiarity with tools as a means to slice people, gather food, and impress other species with but, much like the forthcoming fourth stage of the game, too little of tasks that the player has to deal with in this phase can be completed with very little thought or effort from the player. The only meaningful choice in this segment to be made is whether a player wants his species to progress to the next stage by killing all of the fellow tribes, impressing them with their culture and music, or, uh, a third option? The customization options given to the player in this phase are as hollow as the gameplay mechanics as the only things a player can do are to equip nine variations of "clothing" per each of the five clothing types (helmet/chest piece/shoulders/accessories/one other) to increase the tribe's proficiency in combat, gathering, and culture.

The fourth stage is the civilization phase that gives players access to city customization (city hall, factory, entertainment, houses) and various vehicles (land, air, and sea) to wage the same sorts of war as in the third stage on a bigger scale. This civilization stage is made far less tedious in that it not only makes players balance numerous cities, compared to the third stage's one-tribe-only management, but it also provides a wealth of, admittedly shallow, content creation segments for each of the vehicles and buildings. There are also super-abilities of types that depend on the species a player has created over the preceding stages (warfare, culture, and that pesky third thing I can't remember since I killed everything I came in contact with). I used a nuke at the end of the stage and won which, really, is the best way to win. The biggest disappointment in this section is the really shoddy implementation of the vehicle creation compared to every other aspect of the game; a player can deck out a vehicle with weapons and thrusters and feet and all that jazz but, when it comes to actually utilizing it, the unit just moves and attacks with a generic animation. I can't even express my disappointment that my Asplodius Puppius walker land vehicle didn't use his head-mounted missiles to blow things up. I almost cried. Then I realized I had a landshark in the cockpit (or so I imagined) and that made it better.

I was told by all of my non-US friends, since we were one of the last countries to get access to the game, that the Space Stage is where a majority of the game time will be spent and now that I've reached it I can see why. The player gets access to an interstellar spaceship and is given a variety of missions, quests, and a very, very large map to explore in what has been described to me as a sort of 4X (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate) game. I've only gotten about an hour in to this stage but, thus far, I've gotten missions to meet new alien life form, establish trade routes, and terraform planets. What I didn't realize was, when terraforming, I can't just throw the species in my cargo hold to the ground of the planet or they die. So, uh, yeah. Now I'm going back to my home planet and "borrowing" some species to populate this alien world.

At this point, I can safely say that my expectations for the game were met and exceeded on almost every level. For every fault the game has, like the stupid vehicle creation limitations and the yawn-casuing tribal stage, there are a dozen other game mechanics that aren't only fun but contain their own metagames for a player to discover. And every aspect of the game is archived and categorized in one of the most important game mechanics I've ever seen: The Sporepedia (below). Now, back to my interstellar landsharks.


Comments (Page 3)
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on Sep 08, 2008

Kaltes
how much does the game caust?

 

About 50 bucks.

on Sep 08, 2008

OckhamsRazor
763 reviews on amazon.com last I looked.  Out of five stars, it got an average on 1 star.

 

I read the first page of reviews.  DRM DRM DRM DRM.

 

It probably is a cool game, but giving money to morons that think DRM stops piracy as opposed to what it REALLY does, which is inconvenience its PAYING customers, isn't my jam.  And I'm disappointed.  I've really been looking forward to this, but EA won't have my bucks until they unwedge their collective heads from their collective colons.

I don't understand what the big deal is, I mean bioshock and Mass Effect both had the DRM, but got no where near as much opposition as spore has gotten. Did we all decide that spore would be the last time that PC games would have to put up with the DRM? What suprises me the most is the fact that no one really talks about the positives of this game. Sure, each section indivudally isn't perfect, but as a collection, it does some pretty intersting stuff. I am not here to say that the DRM is a good thing, it's not, not by a long shot, but there are still some aspects of this game that deserve some praise that all the hate of the DRM is  taking away from it.

on Sep 09, 2008

Excellent point Jenkas.  I'll explain.  You wouldn't piss on an electrified fence a second time would you?

 

Bioshock is released, revolutionary, but apparently impossible to lose gameplay.  The masses run out and buy it, the masses get home, the masses install it.  The end.  The activation servers crashed, so they didn't actually get to play it.

 

A short time later, the shit is sorted out, the masses have all played Bioshock.  Then the masses start running into a minor annoyance.  Bioshock stops working.  The masses bitch, an unholy fervor erupts, the powers that be shit themselves over their tech support requirements, and take out the activation limits that people were hitting within days and weeks of getting the game.  Of course, you're still fucked if the activation servers go down, but a partial retreat in the face of anihilation is at least something, right?

 

So, EA watches the horror, and says shit man, we should do that!  EA does that shit, EA's servers don't crash.  Ok, an improvement.  People still hit the activation limits within days and weeks of getting the game.  They bombard EA's worthless tech support.  Some of them wait weeks to get their game enabled again.  The game even tells you to buy a new license when you hit the limit, no mention of calling tech support.  Tech support that isn't an 800 number and only available during business hours.

 

EA bans DRM complaints to the off topic section to keep them out of the main Mass Effect forums.  The bitchfest goes on for hundreds of pages anyway.  Threads are locked one after another.  After months of unabated bitching, EA opens up their own discussion, locks the rest down, and asks for suggestions.  They get 50 pages of suggestions before locking it to start a new one, it's already on page 7 after less than a week.  They still haven't done anything intelligent about it.

 

Yes, no one bitched about it like they have for Spore.  We now have two glowing examples, one from the same company.

on Sep 09, 2008

as of today

amazon.com : 1200 reviews - 1100 1star - 28 5star

amazon.de : 66 reviews - 22 1star - 18 5star

amazon.ca : 13 reviews - 12 1star - 1 5star

'nuff said.

 

 

 

 

on Sep 09, 2008

Mittens:

But, frankly, I'm not sure how any of you guys could feel that you actually wasted money in buying this game. It has so much charm, it's so creative, and it gives a gamer so many options in how to play it that even me, a relatively hard core gamer, can enjoy it as much as I do. If you feel it's too casual/kiddy/simple then, well, you might want to take a moment to relax and enjoy a superb game.

All I can say is, I played way better games. I too can invent my games and don't need to be led by hand (which is, incidentally, what Spore does all the time), which is why I prefer sandbox-style games. And since I prefer them, I've played probably all of them. So I can say with some degree of authority that Spore indeed is a sandbox, but one so small you can barely fit your left foot in it. I would be inclined to call it a sandcup game.

on Sep 09, 2008

I don't understand what the big deal is

 

Psychoak made some good points, but since I played Mass Effect and Bioshock on the 360, they don't apply to me.  Here's what does.  Principle. 

 

The people that buy the game aren't the ones that are going to pirate it.  Derrrrr.  The copy protection involved, therefore, applies ONLY to the paying customers. See the problem here?  The thing that has to be dealt with is meant to thwart the pirates, but it isn't the pirates that have to deal with it.

 

Shall we compound the illogic?  Game pirates don't give a fuck about playing games.  Well, not the game itself.  The game THEY like to play is called "Crack the New Software™"  The cracked game they play after is just a bonus - if they play it at all.  The jollies they get from the game are the ones they receive when they get patted on the back from their cracker buddies for a job well done.

 

I don't know of any software yet whose copy protection is so air tight it hasn't been cracked.  Maybe there are one or two, but someone would have to list them and let me research before I believed it.  Whatever the case, copy protection invites pirates, it doesn't threaten them, and the number of people who purchase the game doesn't go up by adding copy prot, it goes down.

on Sep 09, 2008

Mansh00ter I cannot agree with all of your posts more.  You are led like a child so much and there is so _little_ to do in the actual game how can anyone call this a sandbox game?

Maxis did Sims, now Sims was deffinately a sandbox game, Spore isn't a patch on Sims.

on Sep 09, 2008

I bought Spore, you know the technology demo they made? Its quite fun for a technology demo, kinda expensive too.

 

Im just glad im not playing ultra-girly Sims which is for little girls. Operation Flashpoint (Arma) is my sandbox.

on Sep 09, 2008

Arma is great, yeah, unfortunately the AI is sort of... eh, daft? I frequently end up soloing the situation... not that I mind it, since I usually like to crawl in the grass and shoot bad guys from a mile away, but its kinds sad when you see your squad taken down so quickly. Maybe I'm just playing it wrong.

Anyway, back to topic.

on Sep 09, 2008

I don't rent games at $50 a pop, they can have my money when they remove the retarded 3 install limit.

 

And if I play ArmA and the Sims then does that make me some kind of hermaphrodite in Aractain's universe? Personally, in my world, we usually judge gender by genetics and genetalia rather than entertainment habits .

on Sep 09, 2008

God forbid someone enjoys ArmA and The Sims and Spore. Oh, and I like Battlefield, Counter-Strike, Call of Duty, Starcraft, Warcraft 3, Total Annihilation, Company of Heroes, Dawn of War, and so many other types of non-casual games.

The concept that The Sims and Spore are purely for casual players is a ridiculous misnomer. The Sims, in particular, is actually a fairly deep strategy game at its core and is one of the best examples of superb game design that makes people think they're actually playing something vastly simpler than they are. Spore is a bit less complicated in most of its phases (and I wish it was actually less constrictive than it is), but there are certainly deep and enjoyable game mechanics there for people who want to exploit them.

on Sep 09, 2008

If you say so... but I still maintain that a strategy game should not reward any single approach more than others, and Spore rewards steamrolling. Especially because you can't really lose, you you can spam, ram and slam the opposition all you want.

on Sep 09, 2008

I find myself agreeing with a lot of the criticisms about Spore, but the game is so original and has so many little moments of joy in it that I can't feel too harshly towards it.  Nonetheless, it's always fun to unload on criticism:

In terms of goals the game sets you, it is weak.  The cell stage is probably my favourite, because it's the only part that doesn't suffer from this and actually works as a game as well as a creature creation thingimy.  It's good that they kept it short though - I would like to play it for longer, but it would need more parts and a wider variety of challenges.

The space stage, which a lot of reviews have been saying is the best bit with the most depth, is my least favourite.  The 'collect a full set of x' part of the game is just artificial game-lengthening.  Finding 10 different coloured geodes on otherwise samey planets does not make for exciting exploration.  Why did they invent something new and very bland to search for when they have a whole set of really cool building tools and a system for sharing creations?  I would much rather be discovering unique player constructed objects.

The other problem is that their 4x-lite gameplay does not sit well with the sandbox gameplay, so that the challenges that the game does provide at this point are very repetitive and fiddly.  To solve this, my empire needs to automate some things: it should defend itself, should sell its own damn spice, should build its own buildings, and should expand colonies at least to fill a planet's colony slots and probably to fill all habitable planets in the solar sysem.  Also, it should not cost millions of credits (a number I don't have any chance of getting) to make peace with an enemy after I've fought them off over and over.

The space game mode also needs a diplomacy web screen (if it has one, I've missed it).

on Sep 09, 2008

I somehow managed to forget about the DRM. No chance I'm buying it. Not after what I went through to get Mass Effect working.

 

on Sep 09, 2008

First off, thanks for being so kind in your response psychoak, I love sarcasm when I am bringing up another side of the argument, really makes my day. Bravo. I never said that the DRM is a good thing, I actually hate it. I am just saying that there a few aspects of the game that are very good that are being overshadowed by pricks like you. I know it's not the best strategy game, but you have to consider that this wasn't made to be as deep as Civ or Galciv is during the Civ phase, the target audience is much larger then most strategy games.

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