Spore. There was so much hype. It was nearly as bad as the Brawl hype. I never could see what appealed to people. It didn't look like it did anything new. It didn't redefine any genres, it was just there. I'm not saying that this is bad, but it isn't hype-worthy.
As you probably know, there are several stages in Spore, and I will explain them all, giving an individual rating as well as recommendation. Before you say "No, you haven't had enough time", I say "I don't care". I've played through one game, and I've finished one game. Most reviews are from one watch of a movie, and one play through of a game. Just read on...
The Cell Stage
Spore first offers you a nicely made menu screen, from which you can choose a planet to start on. Each of these offer a new game, while the planet itself offers minor changes, such as colour. It really doesn't matter what you pick. As I was using Spore's image capturing (there is also video capture) I haven't been able to catch the logo, or menu bars. However, I would like to point out that the logo itself looks like something Inphoar has created. I'm not saying it's bad, but it doesn't look professional.
You're an ugly cell, what do you do? You choose which you would like to be, a carnivore, or a herbivore. Of course, this doesn't matter as when you've eaten around 5 of whatever it is you eat you can swap your mouth piece. In fact, when a new cell is born, you can create an entire new species, so it doesn't really make sense. What I found in particular, was that this stage is a mini game. It's, what should be, a tiny segment of a game. It's essentially a mini-game which you're forced into in order to go back to the Creature Creator page for the cells. You can find various upgrades (6 of them, actually) which will help you out on the next stage. I was looking around for close to half an hour for the last damn component. Not only does the cell stage become very boring very quickly, but it's graphically horrible in places, and has pretty poor growth details.
Growth details? Yes, for example, you can eat 10 pieces of whatever that plant it and grow 5 times the size you were before, this will make you so big that you then consume the entire plant. Yuo also find that your worst enemies can barely harm you as they're smaller and that any that were your size before of slightly smaller seem to be completely gone. Have an example:
The third picture is of a new plant that's introduced later, one which you will not see until then. The first time you hatch is by far the best, it isn't too frantic and it has the best scenery. There are giant Jellyfish, massive plants and...more Jellyfish, but the Jellyfish are very well done. When you begin to grow, the rest of this disappears. Horrible graphically? Yes, when you grow the backdrop changes to large fish, so you may have lots of bright colours going on with lots of fast movements. There is also a blur on the edge of the screen. It isn't fun to look at.
Boring? But the hype! The hype can do, say and sleep with whoever it wants, it doesn't change a thing. This section is so terribly repetitive that few people will actually stay around for a long time to find that last component which is floating around somewhere.
Instead of this, try Feeding Frenzy [50%]
The cell stage obtains: 43%
The Creature Stge
Well, this stage is definitely unique. I can't name a game like it.In the creature stage, after you've designed a creature in a larger creature creator, you're off to click on other creatures. Youhave to hunt (which, as a herbivore is close to impossible for most "angry" species') or make allies with other creatures. At first you basically just click on them to sing. There's no reason for you to even upgrade your sing levels as you'll pass the first milestone, then go back to creature creator. You will realise that there's no chance of charming more species without more parts, so you're off to look for skeletons and charm other species. Of course, while there are lots of skeletons out there, to gather parts from (mainly eyes, which aren't even useful), you can't impress any other races. So, you're off home to the creature creator to drastically change your creature to an all-out offensive. This is easier said than done. Although it's far easier to do this (then switch back to a "kind" creature later) the other species will not be easy to kill. You can't build up power if you put three level 1 parts on your creature, you just get a level 1 attack. Anything under level 3 is useless and level 3 isn't particularly good. After milestone 2, you will need to completely change again, to an all-singing all-dancing...thing. Of course, you'll need to find many more creature parts.
The creature stage is so incredibly boring it's unbelievable. You can spend 3 minutes walking to another nest, be attacked and killed by a random wandered and need to start all over again. The combat, and charm sections, are both turn based. Wait for them to dance, sing, charm or pose, then copy what they did. If your level isn't high enough, however, you can't do anything. This stage can take up to two hours, and is boring after 10 minutes. Not just boring, so much so that I wanted to turn the game off. I did. I hated my next half an hour of playing that awful stage, and will never return to it.
The creature stage obtains: 15%
Now, I want to thank whoever decided you didn't need to complete the entire stage before you could more on. If you had to, I couldn't finish this play-though, or this review. Thank you, whoever you are!
The Tribal Stage
This is the first stage which didn't get boring within the first 20 minutes of gameplay. It finally starts to show it's "true" colours, as the strategy game that it was marketed as. It isn't quite there, but it's much better than the last stages. You send your creatures to attack other tribes, or make friends. This is the first stage where killing is actually more fun that befriending. There are very few things you can actually do in this stage. Think of it as the tutorial stage of a RTS. A tutorial stage which takes an hour or two to complete, but tutorial nonetheless. I think that a screenshot explains this stage as well as I ever could, so this will do:
Instead of this, try The Lord Of The Rings: Battle For Middle Earth[61%]
The tribal stage obtains: 49%
The Civilisation Stage
Finally. A stage that you can enjoy. There isn't a lot of depth, and the world is set out in the annoying round Animal Crossing style, but there's more game to play than the other stages. You will spend your time securing resources and building a town. As the big selling point of Spore is its ability to customise (even though that has been severely lacking in previous stages) I decided to have a go at building designs. I found that, in this stage, there are many more creature options, too. The building construction doesn't make any difference to gameplay, as there are no stats etc. You're doing it so you have something nice to look at. There are plenty of options, and you can create something which looks quite good overall. This stage is aimed at artistic people who, for every 3 minutes of gameplay want to spend 10 minutes building designing. However, some appeal will be lost as the only colour is in the stock design styles. For example, you can't have a background colour, as well as a pattern or two. Two different sections can't be different colours, either.
The best stage so far, as there was no point at which I started to hate it. In fact, I quite enjoyed it. It turns into a spam after a while, as there's very little variety and very little actual strategy involved. If you play it, rather than design it you will only be spending 10-30 minutes on the planet, depending on the difficulty.
Instead of this, try Command and Conquer Red Alert 2 (Review coming soon)
The civilisation stage obtains: 75%
The Space Stage
Now this, I can enjoy. It brings back great memories of a game I used to play, a PC game. I can't remember the title but it was like this, but there was more to do. In the space stage you become a trader. Your colonies produce Red Spice. They can produce a certain amount an hour depending on how you set up the town. For example, there will be a low production rate if there aren't any entertainment buildings, but if there aren't enough house/factory combinations then there won't be produce. Each of these can be sold for a nice 300+ Sporebucks. You may be able to guess that Sporebuck are the currency. You will need this to buy colony set-up packs, with a value of 150,000 each. It's a large number, but it's well worth it as an investment, because that extra +2 Spice an hour is very useful. The start of the space stage is slow. Very slow. But it isn't bad, in fact, it's fun. The problem is that it offers very little variety. You have two options. Stick around your home planet (which you should do for an hour or two) or head to the middle of the galaxy, where you will encounter a lot of resistance. The space map is massive, and the amount of toold you will need to buy for your ship is massive, too. Hours need to be put into this section, but it, partnered with the civilisation stage, is the best. By far. I see no reason to ever return to the stages before this. I was actually annoyed that I had to spend 2 hours finishing those crappy areas (especially the creature one).
The space stage obtains: 83%
So, an overall score. The horrible first hour or two, playing through the first three stages is going to take it down a few marks. Who would I recommend Spore to? Hmm...
Did you buy all 16 expansions for The Sims 2?
Did you really like the Creature Creator?
Actually, if you really liked the creature creator stick with this. The first three stages seem to be boring tasks required to unlock creature parts. It's like an extended Creature Creator but you start with less freedom, and are heavily restricted. The later stages, with building and space ship creator are smaller creators, which I enjoyed using more (the ship creator mostly, as it gives the right amount of freedom, even though the look you're going for could be difficult to find with the limited amount of base shapes. The space stage will appeal a lot more to most gamers, and I would recommend it to most, if you can play a slow game in half hour sections. It has a higher score than I originally intended to give, because I have some strange love for achievements/pins/badges and Spore is full of them.
Spore: 65%
As you probably know, there are several stages in Spore, and I will explain them all, giving an individual rating as well as recommendation. Before you say "No, you haven't had enough time", I say "I don't care". I've played through one game, and I've finished one game. Most reviews are from one watch of a movie, and one play through of a game. Just read on...
The Cell Stage
Spore first offers you a nicely made menu screen, from which you can choose a planet to start on. Each of these offer a new game, while the planet itself offers minor changes, such as colour. It really doesn't matter what you pick. As I was using Spore's image capturing (there is also video capture) I haven't been able to catch the logo, or menu bars. However, I would like to point out that the logo itself looks like something Inphoar has created. I'm not saying it's bad, but it doesn't look professional.
You're an ugly cell, what do you do? You choose which you would like to be, a carnivore, or a herbivore. Of course, this doesn't matter as when you've eaten around 5 of whatever it is you eat you can swap your mouth piece. In fact, when a new cell is born, you can create an entire new species, so it doesn't really make sense. What I found in particular, was that this stage is a mini game. It's, what should be, a tiny segment of a game. It's essentially a mini-game which you're forced into in order to go back to the Creature Creator page for the cells. You can find various upgrades (6 of them, actually) which will help you out on the next stage. I was looking around for close to half an hour for the last damn component. Not only does the cell stage become very boring very quickly, but it's graphically horrible in places, and has pretty poor growth details.
Growth details? Yes, for example, you can eat 10 pieces of whatever that plant it and grow 5 times the size you were before, this will make you so big that you then consume the entire plant. Yuo also find that your worst enemies can barely harm you as they're smaller and that any that were your size before of slightly smaller seem to be completely gone. Have an example:
The third picture is of a new plant that's introduced later, one which you will not see until then. The first time you hatch is by far the best, it isn't too frantic and it has the best scenery. There are giant Jellyfish, massive plants and...more Jellyfish, but the Jellyfish are very well done. When you begin to grow, the rest of this disappears. Horrible graphically? Yes, when you grow the backdrop changes to large fish, so you may have lots of bright colours going on with lots of fast movements. There is also a blur on the edge of the screen. It isn't fun to look at.
Boring? But the hype! The hype can do, say and sleep with whoever it wants, it doesn't change a thing. This section is so terribly repetitive that few people will actually stay around for a long time to find that last component which is floating around somewhere.
Instead of this, try Feeding Frenzy [50%]
The cell stage obtains: 43%
The Creature Stge
Well, this stage is definitely unique. I can't name a game like it.In the creature stage, after you've designed a creature in a larger creature creator, you're off to click on other creatures. Youhave to hunt (which, as a herbivore is close to impossible for most "angry" species') or make allies with other creatures. At first you basically just click on them to sing. There's no reason for you to even upgrade your sing levels as you'll pass the first milestone, then go back to creature creator. You will realise that there's no chance of charming more species without more parts, so you're off to look for skeletons and charm other species. Of course, while there are lots of skeletons out there, to gather parts from (mainly eyes, which aren't even useful), you can't impress any other races. So, you're off home to the creature creator to drastically change your creature to an all-out offensive. This is easier said than done. Although it's far easier to do this (then switch back to a "kind" creature later) the other species will not be easy to kill. You can't build up power if you put three level 1 parts on your creature, you just get a level 1 attack. Anything under level 3 is useless and level 3 isn't particularly good. After milestone 2, you will need to completely change again, to an all-singing all-dancing...thing. Of course, you'll need to find many more creature parts.
The creature stage is so incredibly boring it's unbelievable. You can spend 3 minutes walking to another nest, be attacked and killed by a random wandered and need to start all over again. The combat, and charm sections, are both turn based. Wait for them to dance, sing, charm or pose, then copy what they did. If your level isn't high enough, however, you can't do anything. This stage can take up to two hours, and is boring after 10 minutes. Not just boring, so much so that I wanted to turn the game off. I did. I hated my next half an hour of playing that awful stage, and will never return to it.
The creature stage obtains: 15%
Now, I want to thank whoever decided you didn't need to complete the entire stage before you could more on. If you had to, I couldn't finish this play-though, or this review. Thank you, whoever you are!
The Tribal Stage
This is the first stage which didn't get boring within the first 20 minutes of gameplay. It finally starts to show it's "true" colours, as the strategy game that it was marketed as. It isn't quite there, but it's much better than the last stages. You send your creatures to attack other tribes, or make friends. This is the first stage where killing is actually more fun that befriending. There are very few things you can actually do in this stage. Think of it as the tutorial stage of a RTS. A tutorial stage which takes an hour or two to complete, but tutorial nonetheless. I think that a screenshot explains this stage as well as I ever could, so this will do:
Instead of this, try The Lord Of The Rings: Battle For Middle Earth[61%]
The tribal stage obtains: 49%
The Civilisation Stage
Finally. A stage that you can enjoy. There isn't a lot of depth, and the world is set out in the annoying round Animal Crossing style, but there's more game to play than the other stages. You will spend your time securing resources and building a town. As the big selling point of Spore is its ability to customise (even though that has been severely lacking in previous stages) I decided to have a go at building designs. I found that, in this stage, there are many more creature options, too. The building construction doesn't make any difference to gameplay, as there are no stats etc. You're doing it so you have something nice to look at. There are plenty of options, and you can create something which looks quite good overall. This stage is aimed at artistic people who, for every 3 minutes of gameplay want to spend 10 minutes building designing. However, some appeal will be lost as the only colour is in the stock design styles. For example, you can't have a background colour, as well as a pattern or two. Two different sections can't be different colours, either.
The best stage so far, as there was no point at which I started to hate it. In fact, I quite enjoyed it. It turns into a spam after a while, as there's very little variety and very little actual strategy involved. If you play it, rather than design it you will only be spending 10-30 minutes on the planet, depending on the difficulty.
Instead of this, try Command and Conquer Red Alert 2 (Review coming soon)
The civilisation stage obtains: 75%
The Space Stage
Now this, I can enjoy. It brings back great memories of a game I used to play, a PC game. I can't remember the title but it was like this, but there was more to do. In the space stage you become a trader. Your colonies produce Red Spice. They can produce a certain amount an hour depending on how you set up the town. For example, there will be a low production rate if there aren't any entertainment buildings, but if there aren't enough house/factory combinations then there won't be produce. Each of these can be sold for a nice 300+ Sporebucks. You may be able to guess that Sporebuck are the currency. You will need this to buy colony set-up packs, with a value of 150,000 each. It's a large number, but it's well worth it as an investment, because that extra +2 Spice an hour is very useful. The start of the space stage is slow. Very slow. But it isn't bad, in fact, it's fun. The problem is that it offers very little variety. You have two options. Stick around your home planet (which you should do for an hour or two) or head to the middle of the galaxy, where you will encounter a lot of resistance. The space map is massive, and the amount of toold you will need to buy for your ship is massive, too. Hours need to be put into this section, but it, partnered with the civilisation stage, is the best. By far. I see no reason to ever return to the stages before this. I was actually annoyed that I had to spend 2 hours finishing those crappy areas (especially the creature one).
The space stage obtains: 83%
So, an overall score. The horrible first hour or two, playing through the first three stages is going to take it down a few marks. Who would I recommend Spore to? Hmm...
Did you buy all 16 expansions for The Sims 2?
Did you really like the Creature Creator?
Actually, if you really liked the creature creator stick with this. The first three stages seem to be boring tasks required to unlock creature parts. It's like an extended Creature Creator but you start with less freedom, and are heavily restricted. The later stages, with building and space ship creator are smaller creators, which I enjoyed using more (the ship creator mostly, as it gives the right amount of freedom, even though the look you're going for could be difficult to find with the limited amount of base shapes. The space stage will appeal a lot more to most gamers, and I would recommend it to most, if you can play a slow game in half hour sections. It has a higher score than I originally intended to give, because I have some strange love for achievements/pins/badges and Spore is full of them.
Spore: 65%
0 comments:
Post a Comment