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[hemmingjay]

It's definitely one of those games that grows on you more and more as you invest more time. It's counter-intuitive in this age of instant gratification and disposable content but felt like a solid investment as a subscription-free co-op/pvp hack & slash. I'll never begrudge anyone who doesn't care for something after spending an hour with it. As for writing a review after a few minutes,......it would be like reading the first page of a novel and throwing the book away because it didn't grip you.

[Reelyanoob]

I just hate Diablo.
Sorry for all you guys that love it to death. I honestly tried to play it and enjoy it, but hell. It has to be the most repetitive time-sink I've played.

Diablo is a Rogue / Nethack clone with graphics. Especially diablo 1. It has the "town level" with the shops (from late 80's roguelikes), then a square dungeon going down to a "hell" level. It has no more or less depth than nethack. Characters even move on a grid in Diablo 1, which they try and hide with animated movements.

As for spore, I enjoyed stages 1 and 2, and thought the space stage was ok for just sandboxing (quite liked attacking planets, fighting with the UFO you build)  , but the RTS stages sucked completely. THe very idea of "stages" seems to have carried over from The Sims 2. It sucks in the sims as well. Maybe this will be fixed in some future Spore game, after they add a "Stageless" version of The Sims (maybe Sims 4 or 5) as a gimmick to get everyone to spend another $100 on their latest creation. Spore lost me with "Tribal stage" and "Civ Stage". I want all these at least flowing seamlessly from Creature stage, which is what I envisioned. Maybe the tech wasn't there to support this, or it's because of constraints in game production methodology.

Can't say I'd pick up Darkspore at all, given the descriptions.

I dled the beta and tried it out. I played for a good fifteen minutes, saw what little the game had to offer and proceeded to uninstall it. Never have I been so absolutely underwhelmed by a game, honestly, I came in completely unbiased even though the lukewarm Spore had hurt my wallet a few years prior. All I can say is, JESUS these people can NOT get the point. Come on, make a procedurally generated dungeon crawler on multiple worlds, let it be multiplayer, let there be loads of loot (borderlands, anyone) and for christ sake, let ME make my creature.

Duhhh, just making a decent RPG with the Spore 1 creature creator would be a better idea! At least that would give the owners of Spore 1 a reason to dust off their creature designs. They really do not get the point it seems. Or perhaps that is the point: using the common format would allow Spore players to "leverage" the new game and basically mod all the races using Spore 1 creature creator. Can't have people able to mod TOO much it seems. The developers fear for their wallets, and couldn't care less whether you bought their last game, just want you to cough up more money.

[jnecros]

Downloaded, installed, entered beta, saw no skill trees, lol'd, uninstalled

[Draco18s]

So skill trees make a game?

[jnecros]

Half of a diablo clone is not a game, not at a 50 $ price tag

[Draco18s]

Half of a diablo clone is not a game, not at a 50 $ price tag

That I'll agree to, but what does skill trees have to do with it?
(And don't tell me skill trees are the missing half, because skill trees are not half of a game)

[Soulwynd]

I'm going to make a game that is a giant skill tree, just to please jnecros and take his money from him.

You will have to climb the tree and you unlock skills that are required to climb to the next skill.

[Duke 2.0]

I'm going to make a game that is a giant skill tree, just to please jnecros and take his money from him.

You will have to climb the tree and you unlock skills that are required to climb to the next skill.

I want to make a variation on this. Instead of a skill tree it's a skill maze. Can you find your way to the exit of this labyrinth of abilities that unlock other abilities only in conjunction with other unlocked abilities but not others while balancing out stats increased by unlocks that affect some unlocks and lock others?

 One of the skills will be the ability to actually play the game.

 Every other skill blocks it.

[BigD145]

I'm going to make a game that is a giant skill tree, just to please jnecros and take his money from him.

You will have to climb the tree and you unlock skills that are required to climb to the next skill.

What, you mean like Minecraft 'achievements'?

[Draco18s]

I'm going to make a game that is a giant skill tree, just to please jnecros and take his money from him.

You will have to climb the tree and you unlock skills that are required to climb to the next skill.

What, you mean like Minecraft 'achievements'?

I'm pretty sure not.  Minecraft's achievements are basically its tutorial.  I had to go to the wiki when I first started, as I didn't know to punch trees for wood (and that with wood you can do all kinds of things).  My first "safe house" was actually dug into stone with my bare fists.

[BigD145]

You can't skip any of the achievements, so you are required to do the bottommost before moving on. Feels like a skill tree.

[Neonivek]

Diablo is a Rogue / Nethack clone

Naw I wouldn't go that far. It would essentially say that Nethack is randomisation and hack and slashing.

This is like those people who say Diablo is a MMORPG... (though I'd accept that before the above)

[Andir]

I was rather disappointed in Darkspore... two friends and I played it one night and practically ran through all the content that was available in the beta.  I remember thinking at one time, "Haven't I been here before?" and felt a sense of overly generic game play throughout.  The different unlockable creatures were not so different and the main purpose I saw to unlock them was for looks only.  The fact that you had to "restock" your "toolbelt" with those orbs every level sucked major ass as well.  If you could carry them from level to level it might not be a bad feature, but since they reset each area they were pointless.

[Reelyanoob]

Diablo is a Rogue / Nethack clone

Naw I wouldn't go that far. It would essentially say that Nethack is randomisation and hack and slashing.

This is like those people who say Diablo is a MMORPG... (though I'd accept that before the above)

Well they nicked the format (from Angband, maybe Moria) and dumbed it down for the mass market, would you agree with that?

Diablo I has MANY more roguelike elements than Diablo II, so clearly showing the roots.

- Death is Real / no save scumming (without cheating). Though it allowed you to restart the game with the same character if you got stuck.
- Finite Monsters per Level / no level grinding / no unlimited item drops / no infinite XP - forcing you to play conservatively and think a bit, you can get "stuck" in Diablo I and it's too hard to continue, this never happens in Diablo II because you can level-grind on easier monsters.
- Square Map, descending to Hell
- Town / Shop Level
- Grid-based movement (and turn-based movement in early Alpha)
- Classes, but all players can learn all skills / spells

So Diablo I is clearly much closer to it's roguelike roots than Diablo II. Diablo II seems to have added telnet MUD ideas (like a modern MMO too) :-

- respawning dead players with loss of XP
- expansive areas which respawn set monsters
- level grinding / item grinding
- classes with unique roles and rules (e.g. tank , archer, mage etc)

There have been plenty of bad ascii roguelikes, eg Alpha Man or whatever it was called. Being a bad example of something doesn't preclude it being a derivative, or say anything about the original. e.g. Doom the Movie is a rip-off of Aliens (and others), very bad, but a clear rip-off.

[Trevasaurus]

Not sure if this is considered a necro or not I apologize if it is. So I played this in beta and had a bit of fun with it but wasnt willing to pay the $70 on release. Now that its 50% off for the sales Im thinking about picking it up. Is anyone still playing this? If so what are the player numbers like these days? Am I going to struggle to find a group to play with or are there still enough people around? Im guessing there will be a bit of a grind until I can PVP competitively but thats not too much of a big deal to me.