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[Sean Mirrsen]

I don't know about "full" customization, but Earth 2150 had some nice customizable units.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

I loved those games.  I have all three.  Was Earth 2160 any good?  Did it have custom units?

[Soulwynd]

I loved those games.  I have all three.  Was Earth 2160 any good?  Did it have custom units?

The best part of earth 2160 were the songs. But yeah, it did.

[Okenido]

The fact that there's already a mod that increases the length between events in the space stage already improves my hope....

[IndonesiaWarMinister]

That fails.  There was an RTS from like 1997 that had full vehicle customization that mattered, and it was great.  It's freeware now, I don't remember the name, someone help me out here.  It was made by Eidos.  That's all I remember.

Warzone 2100 yes.
I get it. Good, yes.... (My brainz hurt. Shoot, I'm a zombie)

[Makrond]

Q: Is the game worth buying? Is it fun to play? A: NO and NO. The game is so simple and uninspiring only children find it fun and challenging. But in later stages even them can find the game to be very frustrating and unrewarding.

I love this. Not only has the guy contradicted himself, but he's implied that every single person who likes the game must be a child. So, it's easy and completely boring, and yet at the same time it's frustrating? (I'm assuming due to the difficulty.)

There is no problem solving, no strategy or any thrill whatsoever. During the course of your creatures journey, you are reduced to pressing one to four buttons or doing simple tasks repeatedly to proceed. Some people have referred the game as a tool designed to help autistic children.

And this is why I replied. As an autistic myself (albeit a high-functioning autistic), I find his throwaway comment that this game is only good for autistic children extrememly inflammatory. Not only does this imply that the mind of an autistic child is simple (lumping autism together with mental disabilities, which anyone who knew anything about autism would never do), but that all we want is pretty flashing colours to amuse us for hours on end.

Seriously, people, grow up, learn a bit about autism in general, and don't bandy about terms like autism unless you're using them with a great deal of hesitation - even the most experienced doctors are loath to diagnose something as autism until every other option has been exhausted.

[Servant Corps]

Alright, since I don't like spending money or breaking the law, here's a summary of the "Story So Far" of Spore (that I know of):

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

There is a major intergalactic empire known as The Grox, a bunch of cyborg monkeys. The Grox hate everyone and don't understand diplomacy, but you can do missions for them. They still will attack you anyway.

The Grox loves death. To defeat them, you just need to terraform their world with life, thereby causing the Grox to die off. You can also use planet buster bombs as well. It does take a long time to grind the destruction of The Grox though. You'll be best off terraforming planets, then guiding the evolution of sentient races on that planet, gaining a military alliance with that sentient race, and then sending that race to attack other The Groxs.

Some people reported that The Grox has landed UFOs on their planets while their race was still in the Creature stage, and then kidnapped some of their Creatures. These Creatures would later appear as seperate races on totally different worlds.

The Grox has a homeplanet, but if you terraform or destroy it, they'll just move their homeplanet.

The "secret ending" is in the center of the galaxy. Go there to find the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, 42. It is heavily defended by The Grox, but a speed-run through using your UFO should get you what you need.

[wallish]

No, seriously. Same damn game. I know I said earlier that they switched the emphasis to content creation -- which is true, although that's probably less because they realized that content creation == more sales with casual games and more because they realized their base game wasn't that hot and they needed to start focusing elsewhere because it was already something like five years into the development process at that point and they couldn't entirely change it -- but what the gameplay is now doesn't appear any different from what was shown years ago in the demo reels.

Again, though. I haven't played it. Just going from reviews and modern demos v. old demos. But as I said, going from the reviews, Spore still IS exactly what they promised, and this is more or less why I never knew why people were making such a fuss about the thing anyway. I've been saying for years that it was just going to be a bunch of lite-version RTSes queasily strung together, and apparently, that's exactly what it is.

No, it isn't.  Just looking at the old GDC 2005 demo would show you that it isn't.  Here's a few points:

• They practically removed the procedural walking.  In the old demo the size and shape of your creature would actually affect the way your creature moved.  In the new version the only difference between two legs and twelve legs is that the animation of the twelve legs is sped up so that the two move at the same speed.  Have you read any reviews for the game?  They all say pretty much the same thing: it doesn't matter one bit how you make your creature.
• While it isn't exactly the biggest loss, the graphics have been taken into a different direction. The old graphics actually looked better than the new ones, not to mention they removed some of the "realism" (blood and such).
• They changed/removed so many of the stages that the game has become more gutted than a cheap fish at the market.  There was an entire underwater stage that would allow you to even keep your creature underwater and develop an entirely underwater civilization.  That was removed (officially in 2007 I think).  The "city" phase was practically cut, leaving a few of its features for the start of the civilization phase (which was also cut up).  And they removed so many features from the space phase it's not even funny.
• They took what started as "SimEverything"(their working title before switching to Spore), a game that was supposed to be the most comprehensive and free-form game ever made by a big publisher/development team and, well, destroyed it.  Then they released a set of mini-games with the same title attached to a "build-your-own-stuff" editor.  You seem to be under the impression that the whole focus of the game was, from the start, the editors, that they switched focus to the content creation because the base game wasn't "that hot".  The base game was "that hot", it was going to revolutionize the entire gaming industry.  We were wowed not by the editor but what we could do with the things we made.  We would be able to craft our creatures into niches we wanted.  We could make fast creatures and strong creatures and hell, even flying creatures.  It wasn't about aesthetics, until they changed it.  Now how you design the creatures means nothing.  It is about aesthetics now.
  
  The final word is that they did not release the game they announced in 2005.  They released something similar in the way that NetHack is similar to Dwarf Fortress.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Sometimes I just can't avoid having the impression that EA is the Uwe Boll of the gaming industry.

[Jreengus]

Dont forget attacks, in the vid he put a hand on his creatures tail (another now impossible thing) and it worked that his creature would attack by hitting stuff with the hand now it's just 4 seperate attack types with a stupid animation for each.

[Duke 2.0]

 Do they have the bite+drag option still? Likely not. I remember in an early video showing how if you bite a dead creature and make your creature move, you would drag the prey to wherever you want. And it looked good.

 The old early-development Spore is to DF like the currently released Spore is like Adventure Quest. One has deep features, things that make you say "Wow, they actually made THAT? Awesome!" , the other has a few pretty effects in hope that you won't realize that their 'features' are really rather shallow. Now some people like that, but when you promise a game to be from the first category, you can't serve the second.

[Jreengus]

Nope you can click on corpses to eat them, that is all.

[Duke 2.0]

Nope you can click on corpses to eat them, that is all.

 Can you even toss creatures into orbit with the tractor beam?!

[Tormy]

Nope you can click on corpses to eat them, that is all.

 Can you even toss creatures into orbit with the tractor beam?!

I did not tried, but I doubt that you can..

[Soulwynd]

Nope you can click on corpses to eat them, that is all.

 Can you even toss creatures into orbit with the tractor beam?!

You can. It's funny too.