I'm obsessed already!

Multiple Installs and Gameplay Issues | Spore

pc & video games:


	• Spore Windows, Macintosh \| Electronic Arts, 2008 view larger image
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Great game

I purchased Spore the first day it came out. I think it is one of the most entertaining games to come out in a while.

This game allows you to live out mankind's fantasy: to be a God. From a tiny single-celled organism to a galactic spanning universe, you control and guide almost everything. Yes the game has crashed a couple of times on my computer, but the same could be said for pretty much any newly released game: THEY HAVE BUGS. That's what patching is for. It works fine for me now.

People need to stop whining about the small cons and realize the game for what it is, an ENTIRE GALAXY filled with hundreds of thousands of stars waiting for you to explore.

I would strongly recommend this game.

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I'm obsessed already!

I've spent the last 24 hours making creatures and exploring Spore. I even set my alarm early so I would have more time to play with it this morning. I really like that it's so easy to work with and that my 12 year old and I can both play it. How often is a game cool enough for the kids and still mom friendly?!
As for the license issues everyone seems to be up in arms about: This is a game from the Sims people. Look at the amount of tinkering and user-created content and modifications that have popped up for that game. I have faith that the geek gods will have a patch, crack or some other way to solve the problem --probably even before the sun sets on the seventh day.

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Multiple Installs and Gameplay Issues

Spore is an innovative game from the creator of the Sims, which lets you take a creature right from the one-celled amoeba type stage all the way through space flight. It has great potential, but also can be very frustrating.

First, a word about the copy protection scheme. There have been literally thousands of anti-Spore reviews posted on a number of websites solely ranting about the copy protection scheme. Many good gaming companies have gone under because of piracy, so I certainly understand that software should never be stolen. Piracy damages a creator's ability to pay their rent. That being said, Spore went overboard. You can literally only install the game 3 times before having to talk to the Spore company to ask for permission to install it again. I get a new PC every year, and usually I install games on my PC and laptop to test on both platforms. This would mean after a year I would be stuck.

It gets better than that, though. When installing Spore on my laptop, my built in anti-virus software saw Spore's attempt to install its copy protection software, thought it was a virus and silently blocked it. This meant Spore finished installing and didn't work. I hunted around but finally just installed it and reinstalled it. This meant I already "lost one install" because of that. Even so, the anti-virus software kicked in again and I had to manually go in and fix some links and add some files before it would run properly. I can't imagine most average gamers doing this just to get their game to run.

So finally I had Spore installed. Now to start playing! In cell mode I wanted to be an herbivore. Big mistake. While there are lots of enemies around to eat if you're a carnivore, and an omnivore can eat anything, a poor herbivore can only eat plants. Once those plants are gone, you're pretty much doomed. Everything wants to eat you. I found out quickly through trial and error that an omnivore was your best bet. A few "upgrades" later, and I was moving on to creature mode.

In creature mode you take your same basic cell shape and move up onto land. Again, it became apparent through several replayings that plant eaters had a rough life. You want to be an omnivore so you can eat your enemies when you find them - and also fall back on plants if you're surrounded by things too tough to attack.

On you go through the higher levels, and the game morphs along to let you build tribes, gather food, get space flight. At each level you switch to a new set of skills and have to learn new gameplay.

I really love the idea - but I wish the game carried more over from level to level. When you go from cell to creature level, you are left with a bunch of "useless body parts". You need to in essence completely redesign your creature for the new challenges.

Also I wish the game did not seem to heavily biased towards omnivore. Maybe they are trying to each us a lesson here :) It is only through an equal balance of aggression and pacifism that you can survive.

I definitely find this game to be a time sink, and can lose myself in it for hours. However, compared with other games I play, the time does not pass in a "stress release" fashion. For example if I play Halo or Age of Empires or Starcraft or other games I get caught up in them, have a lot of fun and feel quite happy when I'm over. Most of the time when I'm playing Spore I'm feeling frustrated with the enemies, stressed about finding more food, and annoyed that my people are off migrating or being attacked by wild animals and needing help. It's a "demanding" game. I love challenges and tough opponents - but it shouldn't be stress inducing.

I'll give the game a 3/5. It is certainly fun in a way, and I give it a ton of credit for being innovative. However, the evolutions could have been handled far better, the balance on each particular level could have been much more even, and that copy protection scheme is just awful. I only have Spore installed on my laptop and this is the first time I've ever had to do that - do a single-system install because I am afraid of running out of reinstall options once I switch machines. I shouldn't be in that situation with a game I paid for.

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The creators of The Sims present the next big bang - SPORE. Create your unique creature and guide it on an epic journey through a universe of your own creations. Play any way you choose in the five evolutionary phases of Spore: Cell, Creature, Tribe, Civilization, and Space. How you play and what you do with your universe is entirely up to you. Spore gives you a variety of powerful yet easy-to-use creation tools so you can create every aspect of your universe: creatures, vehicles, buildings, and even starships.

PC Minimum - Windows XP/Vista, 6 GB Hard Drive Space, 2.0 GHz P4 processor or equivalent, 768 MB RAM, 128 MB Video Card, with support for Pixel Shader 2.0 Mac Minimum - Mac OS X 10.5.3 Leopard or higher, 4.7GB Hard Drive Space, Intel Core Duo Processor, 1024 MB RAM; ATI X1600 or NVidia 7300 GT with 128 MB of Video RAM, or Intel Integrated GMA X3100

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