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[Soulwynd]

I bet the poor dudes who said it sucks played it on easy. Play it on hard, it gets more frustrating and DF-like. =p

[Okenido]

Also I just like the idea as starting as a bloody amoeba and eventually conquering the universe with said creature that started as that amoeba.

Shame this game has no blood, ichor, goo, etc or any type of bodily fluid.

What? I was pretty sure there was blood. But I guess they took it out to keep the E10+ rating...

(But that won't stop me from buying the game officially tomorrow...)

[Asheron]

Frustrating on hard? I've played every stage but space on hard, and I went through them without breaking a sweat.
Yes, I can beat spore on hard. I'm so hardcore.

[Brendan]

Hard mode in Spore basically means 'it takes longer' rather than 'it is more challenging'.

[PTTG??]

24 Hours until Detonation Launch!

I'll admit I am excited, but there's no real reason to be; I already have DF. I'll admit the the DF creature creator is a little more difficult to use...

Arr, you scurvy pirates!

[Eagleon]

Hard difficulty appears to be the only worthwhile one, and it's still too simple. If you play on easy mode you'll never die unless you intentionally provoke something bigger than you. Worth mentioning. I'd recommend the hard difficulty for your first play-through. No, really. You'll be sorry unless you're four years old.

My impression is they started to make an amazing game, put in the framework for such, and then did an about face and tried to go for the money that Sims players would bring in by making it as charming and memorable and "family friendly" as possible.

One problem: It isn't charming. I could play the Sims and enjoy it, and I kind of understand the mindset of people that have paid $100 + on expansions to get more out of it. But what Sims has, Spore lacks. I never related to my creature past the creature stage, and that's really key for interest to last. In the tribal stage, your creatures gain generic caveman impression #12, and it's just really pretty boring to play through - the clothing is a joke, and none of the buildings are remotely customizable. I enjoyed making my city hall thoroughly for the next stage, but that's about it. Then came the space phase, where I made my ship, expecting to be somewhat impressed. I wasn't. My creatures sounded like overly enthusiastic loud gossiping jewish stepmothers. I literally turned off my speakers when talking to them, and it isn't often that a game makes me want to crack open the data files and start recording my own (horrible yet still much better) voice acting; expect to see a replacement for the carnivorous avian soundset, assuming the .package files aren't hashed or something stupid like that.

The trading was boring, the combat irritating, and I ended up just cheating to get to the tools. Only they didn't even do that right - it seems they literally slapped the badge system on top of it at the last minute, and neglected to fix the cheat that gave you all your tools, forcing you to go through a large number of hoops to get tools like the Monolith. Ick.

Then of course, the random missions forcing you to abandon what you're doing just to kill four creatures or hold their hands as they fend off an invading fleet with the turrets I bought for them so that I didn't have to ghghhhhkdjfgd NO SCREW YOU VARUS, THE PIGGLES ARE INFINITELY MORE COMPETENT AND I LIKE THEM MORE. *continues terraforming*

Ahem. Anyway. I really doubt this is going to end up being Maxis's new profit-monster. Which is too bad. If they had made the game an actual game, instead of a poorly mashed together $50 disappointment, maybe other games would have followed in its path. As it is, looking at this, I can't see more serious genres jumping on the "content pollination" bandwagon. I can't imagine how disappointed Will Wright must be to see his vision butchered like this. My brother works at Gamestop, so he cheated a little and got his early. I was going to buy it for myself, but now it's looking a lot less likely.

Anyone want to help start a Spore roguelike project?

[Okenido]

What I'm hoping for is for someone to hack Spore, and make the phases better... Or EA stops being cheapskates and allows us to make our own parts...

In other words the hacker is one of my few hopes left...

[Asehujiko]

Had this game been 75$ cheaper, it would have been acceptable. It plays like a bad india game. Instead of dong 1 thing well, it sucks at everything. 2/10. Would have been 3/10 if not for the insane price. $85 for the collectors(read: non crippled) version...

[wallish]

I've played it but I could never find it in the stores here (was it even published?) The text adventure parts were epic. Particularly when you got arrested and you had to text-adventure your way through your prison sentence. This is a lot more interesting when you consider it's the 'rough justice, rat on your cellmate or the warden will break your legs' kind of prison.

They've got it on Stardock's Impulse thing, which is sort of like Steam.

[Soulwynd]

A lot of people here seems to speak some serious non-sense about the game. Except... Clothing is sad, yes... But not being able to customize buildings? You can customize all of them. And having all tools from space age in a couple days? Have you been playing non-stop, it takes ages to get the real nice tools, which is bad in itself since the initial tools you get aren't all that fun.

Yes, the game is kiddie oriented, but you seriously didn't expect that from Maxis? Please, it has been ages since SimEarth and they learned fluff makes things sell. I knew it would be that way, I bought it, I didn't expect any extreme complexity and I'm having fun with it.

Would I rather have a more serious sim like SimEarth, yes, no doubt about it. I know how frustrated you all are, but really, don't make things up.

By the way, plant and terrain editors should become available via free patches later. At least that's what I read in an interview earlier this year. So stick with it a while longer.

[Deon]

A lot of people here seems to speak some serious non-sense about the game. Except... Clothing is sad, yes... But not being able to customize buildings? You can customize all of them. And having all tools from space age in a couple days? Have you been playing non-stop, it takes ages to get the real nice tools, which is bad in itself since the initial tools you get aren't all that fun.

Yes, the game is kiddie oriented, but you seriously didn't expect that from Maxis? Please, it has been ages since SimEarth and they learned fluff makes things sell. I knew it would be that way, I bought it, I didn't expect any extreme complexity and I'm having fun with it.

Would I rather have a more serious sim like SimEarth, yes, no doubt about it. I know how frustrated you all are, but really, don't make things up.

By the way, plant and terrain editors should become available via free patches later. At least that's what I read in an interview earlier this year. So stick with it a while longer.

Read more carefully before accusing somebody please. It was told about tribal buildings, not civ ones.
And the game is really customizable in many aspects, bu not in all we were promised. And the gameplay is dull, you can't neglect it.

Cell phase: great as carnivore, not bad but a bit less fun as herbivore species. This phase is made good.
Creature phase: many things were skipped but it's still fun so I rate this 4/5 because it can be really fun. Many aspects of important "creature" life are skipped though.
Tribal phase: here our Personality becomes an "ant" and while it offers some variety it's still a bad rts. No ability to customize anything but a few clothing pieces, bad pathfinding and no ability to form squads (at least I didn't find it) and a very bald diplomacy makes it <<< settlers. Tools variety is near 0 (weapon, gathering, musical instruments) and they are always the same... This phase looks unfinished.
Civ. phase: doh. << civilization, <<settlers, << (!) space rangers 2 rts system. Meh, this rts system is really bad. The only funny thing is the ability to make "trade routes" with actual moving vehicles. One of the worst RTS systems I've ever seen (NO SQUADS AGAIN?).
Space phase. Well, it can be fun and isn't bad at all in many aspects, although it's not balanced in many ways. No ability to really "die", again that dull diplomacy and no ability to manage your empire other than building cities is weird. Where's the promised epicness? And terraforming is really cut and "childish", I've already told that I don't want "chololate rivers", I want surface-cutting lasers and different types of atmosphere. Also I want diplomacy, at least simple technology development (the "badge" system while somewhat fun is totally arcade-ish, it's not evolution!)...

The result is: 1 good phase, 1 above average phase, 1 undecided (good/bad/dull?) and 2 terrible phases (in comparison with the things that were promised) = (my opinion) 1+ 0,8 + 0,6 + 0,4 + 0,2 = 3/5 for a game we were expecting for years... Too bad for me.

I still play it because it's unique in it's way and it's good for people who weren't expecting it for years and who hadn't read the info about this game in the beginning of it's development, but it's definitely a game which was damaged by the EA opinion "make it for all" IMO and also it has noticeable problems like unfinished phases. I think Will needed more time but EA hurried him.

[Areyar]

I bought this game immediately instead of first previewing it illegally as I normally do beforehand, based on the credibility WR still had with me for his earlier 'sim X' games. I will never do that again. As Will (or EA) obviously is more simS than simulation oriented now.

still small hope for improvements to come.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Yes, I was talking about the tribal buildings. And if you ever bother to look in the main menu, it has all, ALL of the tools in all possible configurations, available from start. I thought about it for a bit, and decided that it was probably done for "ease of coding". So that you could create something with a certain editor, and only that same editor will load your creation then. But why not go the better, more difficult way? Why not make one editor for all clothing and just filter stuff out by the parts available? I see absolutely no sense in all the differentiation. The editor system could have allowed us to do great things - and instead they chopped the idea's head off and gave us its lifeless body. Why can't we take advantage of all the parts in the editor to make vehicles that go on both land and water? Why are all the parts unlocked at once, unlike the creature phase where you were rewarded with them? Why in the seventy-nine gods of Hell did they ever make a game that allows designing, but does not favor good design? It loses its whole point when all that matters in the design is the looks.
It's actually the reason I stopped playing Galactic Civilizations II. I was thrilled at first with their ship creation system. But then I realized that 90% of the available parts are just stuffing and play no role in the ship itself, they only alter design and provide points to stick the other 10%, the useful parts onto, again disregarding all design considerations. I mean, you could put the engines on the ship facing backwards, and there would be nothing to punish you for doing that.
That's the sole reason I still keep games like Remember Tomorrow and Robot Arena 2 on my HDD. These are games where design is interesting, and it matters. Inefficient design of a spaceship in RT will drastically reduce its usefulness. I learned a few tricks the hard way, like learning to arm heavy cruisers with bozon cannons up front and barrion rifles in the back ports, because the range of the two is wildly different, and the length of the ship doesn't allow it to use the devastating bozon guns until the enemy is firing all of its guns at point blank.

[Deon]

There'll be expansions with plant editors etc. Just wait.

Also guys, if some of you spend time and make awesome creatures, share some please. I can't get creatures from sporepedia for particular reasons so I'm looking for PNGs. If you know a place where I can get more or if you want to share, do it here please.

Here are my Predator Deonis species (inspired by Predator movie, however I didn't try to make them too similar).
Full stages of clothing evolution for the sentient creature (no clothing, tribal, civ, space). I tried to make them unique.
creature:

 tribal clothing:

 civ clothing:

 space clothing:


If you put them in the game they will progress using these schemes.

[Brendan]

Have you been playing non-stop, it takes ages to get the real nice tools, which is bad in itself since the initial tools you get aren't all that fun.

If you look on the 'My Collections' page for 'All Badges' you get to view the badges you haven't unlocked yet, and it tells you what tools those badges would unlock. Using that you can focus your efforts only on the things that get you more tools and I suppose you would get it faster than just doing everything in the space phase.