I had some fun, but this is probably the game that shattered my illusion of hype. Cell stage is good, but not enough parts with different mechanics. I like kinda physics-based stuff like that. And I think that stage didn't use player submitted creatures, which sucks.
Other stages are meh. Creature stage is reduced to either pressing attack hotkeys on cooldown with no strategy, or pressing social hotkeys when prompted, yay. Similarly building your creature in mechanical terms just translates into sticking on the parts with the higher numbers, none of the anatomy actually matters. There aren't any larger or smaller creatures really, except for the giant epics.
Tribal stage was hard for my young brain, because I'm bad at RTSes and everyone hates you by default and sends parties to murder you without prompting. City stage is the same, but with no threat of death, so you just roll over the world and take it over, yay. Space stage had some more potential, but you need to babysit your colonies to not lose them, and attacking other empires just got me blown up. Too grindy to inch my way to the core, I never saw the Grox or the end of the game.
I might like it better if I wasn't comparing it to that first demo, with controlling underwater creatures, larger predators and tiny vermin you can just swoop up an eat whole, dragging around creature corpses that were ragdolls if I'm not mistaken, the shape of your creature matters to stuff like how it moves and interacts with the world, procedurally generated dancing (
), sticking cities underwater in bubbles.
Overall the final thing lacked lots of the physics-based and procedural stuff I had assumed would be part of it. Oh well.
well the demo was from three years earlier (2005 or even 2003, i cant remember). maybe the technology was there at an optimal moment, it would have costed more than what EA was wanting to fund for the development and deployment of the game. yeah it was a huge letdown to see the game was much more Sim than how it came up in the end.
maybe in this decade or the other a developer will try to reinvent what Maxis wanted to do without coming to issues like fast publishing, i follow Thrive but they are still on baby steps (allthought their Cell stage simulation is good albeit too realistic). and Species ALRE is more of a true simulation rather than a game on itself (you can mutate your creatures but they evolve on their own).
so for now there's not a real contender for spiritual sucessor of SPORE. even copying the formula and improving on what the final product came with would be enough (at leas for me), i mean:
-Cell Stage could have been a well replacement for the Acuatic Stage if it had the same level of grind (justified of course) as Creature Stage, making your brain larger is a no brainer but unlocking all the parts is a much better challenge, the stage on its own was fine for a starting scenario but it felt too short. adding the acuatic creature parts and the hidden cell parts and balance their stats from the pass between microbial to macroscopic creature could have made this stage much more fun to run. points if there was the possibility to see player made cells/acuatic beings as well as some maxis defaults just for comedy.
-Creature stage defined by archetypes from the Cell/Acuatic stage mentioned before would mean much more interesting gameplay choices regarding what parts to use. carnivore/herbivore/omnivore could have been 3 of several different feeding methods, Scavenger creatures could do well eating rotten carcasses and fruit that other creatures couldnt consume, Autotrophs would give a use for those plant-like parts, Detritivores would feed from different soils (maybe even snuffle spice?), Hematophage creatures could be an interesting play style by feeding on other live creatures via sneak. as for parts, there's a lot that wasnt covered (gas bags for floating, a continuation of electric parts or even defensive spikes would have been cool). there's also the thing with animations (gaits were a fine system but it still lacks properly slithering creatures).
-Tribal stage as a whole shouldnt have even existed because its basically an entry lvl to civilization. however, if it was meant to exist it should at least play on the personality of each society and the starts of civilization rather than be just a bunch of settlements that kill/praise each other. getting a crop system from the game's plants would have been a good alternative for gatherers, breeding cattle for meat should have been a possibility for carnivore tribes, fishing with nets in order to get better fishing or even fishing in the sea would have been a good addition (the sea is barely used in the whole game, nothing really interesting and you cant even dive). befriending tribes should allow for basic trading of goods (bartering resources or even equipment). there's also strange that the religious civilization comes out of nowhere because of a lack of spirituality in the tribal stage (no shamans, no priests, where's Spode at that moment?, at least let players fullfill a random need of their tribe members with totemic rites or altars.
-Civilization should be a seamless transition from Tribal (in fact, all stages could have been made seamless as complexity milestones rather than divided gameplay modules). maybe once the player's tribe had grown large enough or had assimilated the other tribes (something aking to Stellaris with a civilization made of different races would be cool). its relations unlocking the traits of its supposed civ stage archetype. also, instead of focusing on capturing cities the stage should have been focused on the advancement of society instead. something akin to Age of Empires or Civilization would have been better, the player made buildings would be a problem (because making several sets for different times would mean a lot of additional work from the player, unless it was a small pool of needed buildings. however, this could mean a system where the player has to edit its buildings each time it reachs a milestone in order to check the unlocked building parts.). all cities by that time should be trading, not being limited on the archetype, religious nations would of course have a single cohesive religion, industrial nations would of course better at getting trading deals and forming an economy, militaristic nations would have an edge on combat but that should limit them to do other stuff (its more important at this time than any other stage in the game because its here when the Knight, Scientist and the other dual archetypes should get born), Spice should be only 1 of different goods that can be traded, they could even date back to the tribe stage with vegetables, fish, eggs and meats, or something like that. there wasnt many stuff to do at this moment. there's also the lack of infantry, at least in tribal you can have your members have different lvls of social/combat and defens but here everything is in vehicles, which is lame because even in the most advanced sci fi universe the use of militia is still a must (even if they're drones). so having a military outfiter for all the civilizations would have been good (this would also help compensate the meta of religious nations being more or less bad at combat and industrial nations actually not being capable of combat unless you capture other cities, which again, shouldnt be a requirement to advance.)
- and finally Space Stage, where its supposed that the galaxy opens to you, theres so much to fix here, your space empire should follow the formula of the revamped civilization stage. you've already defined your initial society, but there's so much to do here in the galaxy. for starting, your empire should be capable of organizing their own planetary defense or even bring fleets into staging system during wars with another empires, the player should be forced to conquer systems on its own with a puny squad of ships. trading as complex as in civilization, perhaps some empires enjoy certain foods/goods made out from certain species of plants and animals? Spice shouldnt be the only good to trade here. many of the missions could be deduced onto the trading system (something like in EVE Online maybe), slaves, specimens and other stuff like that could be put on an empire wide billboard for the player to fulfill instead of having to ask in every effing system of the galaxy (unless you want the whole details). there's also the lack of menaces in the galaxy (biosphere breakdowns mean nothing, and the Grox dont do much, they should be much larger players in the galactic scene taking in account everyone hates them). and of course, we dont need Galactic Adventures if missions could be made on planets by default by beaming down on to them (GA should have been part of the core game, again, as i said, complexity scales and seamless transitions between content, you're a single captain in Space Stage anyways, the Empire should go on its own and give jobs to you, you could be exploring that huge galaxy while your empire deals with its daily trading and diplomacy, if there's a war brewing or an ecological hazard you could get the notice but they should figure that by themselves, a better system on this with using the adventure features on normal planets and it would have been good to go).
.................
sorry, i got myself carried. TL:DR we have the technology, while there's no options that follow the game's formula, we can hope someone at least copies what we had and makes it better, even at an early access stage.
Author
Topic: SPORE: an almost decade old but gold (Read 3248 times)