Spore: Any Good? Why or why not?

[Felon]

Spore's the first game in a while to make me consider returning to PC games. There seem to be a lot of mixed opinions on the final product through, so I'm curious to hear what people have to say in a forum where I can ask questions.

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Personally, I'm loving it. The gameplay itself changes drastically through each stage of play as your creature evolves, and it strikes me that many of the pre-Space stages are, in essence, a sort of long tutorial FOR the Space stage. That's fine by me, but I can see that being annoying to people.

For me, what really clinches the deal is the creator. Yes, the creature creator is amazing, but so are the vehicle and building ones. In fact, the latter two have quickly become my favourite. After I made a four-legged Star Destroyer that was so loaded with guns and canons and lights you could barely see the hull, I was completely sold.

[Felon]

So, what is it that is annoying to folks? Does Spore take a "dumbed-down" approach? I know we're seeing a lot of games now come out that have decided to cold-shoulder their hardcore fans in favor of a less complex, detail-oriented game that will appeal to the mainstream (including Civilization Revolutions, Sim City Creator, and, of course, D&D).

But even if that's the case, since it's a PC game, won't we just wind up seeing mods for adding more controls?

[Blackrat]

Well there's not much bugging me about the game. It's pretty great. One thing is that the the middle phases, Tribal and Civilisation are quite straightforward, and you don't have much choice on how to do things. In Civilisation phase for example, you basically have three tactics to follow, two of which works exactly the same. The only difference in them is that your mighty army is either religious or military. Visually the effects are very different, but mechanically it's one and the same.

Other thing that bugged me is that it's too easy. Even on the Hard setting. But this was apparently fixed in a patch that was released yesterday where they made normal and hard settings harder. Haven't had the chance to test it yet though so I don't know for sure wether or not it made any difference.

[Woas]

I am soooo upset with Spore. Get ready for some serious steam...

For starters the game feels like I just paid $50 for a demo, plus another $10 for the creature creator back in June. Honestly each phase (save Cell) feels incomplete. Now I'll start up front here and explain that I had known and waited for Spore for a long time. Through two delays at least, as far as I can remember. But I also did my darnist to avoid as many spoilers as I could, especially in the past 6-8 months when they were really hitting the gaming websites hard. Sure I knew the gist of what each stage involved before getting the game, but not the specifics.

Right, so secondly for a game that is was pegged as the some sort of Super-Sandbox the game is horribly restrictive! Each stage has the bare bare essentials to fulfill its theme. Despite how many times I play through the stages, and no matter what my creature ends up as... 4 arms, 2 mouths, 8 legs, walks on its head. Doesn't matter... the stages play the same. Play them once and you'll probably hit all the highlights. I can get more in depth as to why I think this if you want me to. But in essence each stage boils down to "sing at it or eat it" and that's really all there is to do.

But really the reason I think Spore is a complete dud is that is lacks what I'll call "Legacy"... or Game History. If you look back at Will Wright's greatest works: Sim City, The Sims, SimEarth-Ant-Tower-Farm-etc. Sure there were some losers in there, especially back in the early 90's. Sim Isle anyone?
Anyway, what Spore lacks is that Legacy that those really famous Maxis games have. Take The Sims for example. When you play The Sims, you feel like your Sim is actually affecting the world around him/her. Your Sim builds a house... has children... leaves their spouse for a new one... the EX keeps the house... the kids grow up... eventually you have this story, a life story and you can load up a Sim and know that your original Sim you made months/years ago in the game is this new Sims' Grandparent! And vola the Sim already has a 'Legacy'.
The same goes for SimCity. You start off as a little rural hick town and built up to a huge megatropolis. But along the way you can look back and see those old neighborhoods... do you really want to bulldoze through that old part of town to make room for a new highway?

So far I have found none of this Legacy in Spore. Each stage feels very disconnected from the next. There are things that change between stages though, I'm not denying that. From one stage to the next your creature might... have an extra pair of legs or change its color. And you may even move slightly on the Good-Herbivore/Neutral-Omnivore/Evil-Carnivore slightly. But I've found that to be a very fickle system.
No, what you do during a stage really does not shape the next at all. Every stage is set in place. When I try to hunt off and extinct carnivores in creature stage, no matter what in tribal stage there will be a handful of randomly chosen herd animals placed around the area. Apparently a world without predators for a few thousand years always turns out the same in the end...

I mean, maybe I'm just not the target audience for this game or something. I dunno. The only reason I fire the game up now, other to grab that patch that just came out, is to play around with the creators.

[mrtauntaun]

I totally agree. Spore was a colossal disappointment to me. The gameplay is too simplistic and each stage is is very basic, except for space. I really enjoyed created vehicles, planes and ships. Then, I use them for that one stage, never to be seen again. I can't have more than one kind. Then, after all that fun customizing my vehicles, you get to design a space ship. Except, even though it's bristling with guns, they're cosmetic only. Why such a shift?

And space is just a micro-mangement nightmare. I can only have one ship? We're supposed to maintain a huge empire with one measly ship? You can rebuild it fast enough when I die, so why not just build more? I know you can, I see them whizzing by on the trade lanes I set up.

And going from planet to planet to collect spice, find a seller and then sell it is tedious at best. Throw in all the eco-disasters and attacks from other empires (I know this was tweaked, but it's still annoying) and it's just too annoying to be fun.

It's a shame, I've been looking forward to this game for so long now. As much as I love the creature stage, I make a creation, think of the space stage and say to myself 'whats the point'?

I was done with this game after 3 days. Huge huge disapointment.

[andargor]

I was disappointed as well. A series of mini-games is not what I had bargained for.

And the space stage was so annoying. I started exploring and stuff, getting the hang of terraforming... Before I knew it all planets were taken by sentients and I was being asked more money than I had, and then being attacked by swarms of ships to my... one and only ship...

Bah.