Spore, release date announced

[DeeBye]

This game is a huge disappointment :(

[Taem]

This game is a huge disappointment :(

I wouldn't go quite that far... Much, much, much more could have been done with the creature mode to be sure, but roguebanshee was correct about space; it's massive with lots of things to do. I have not been past tribal mode on my game, but my son is having a blast in space. Still my favorite part has been creating my creature.

I wonder if this game is moddable? If so, I would propose the following changes:

>When you earn enough DNA to "evolve" to the next Stage, i.e. water to land, land to tribal, etc., then you should be able to still earn more DNA points to continue making your character how you see fit before you go to the next stage.

>You should be able to continue evolving in the water if you so choose, even when evolving to the next stage. A message should come up, "Congratulations, you have reached the next stage of evolution. If you wish to continue on land, you will need lungs. If you wish to continue in water or land, you will need both gills and lungs. Good luck." But that's not all, it would be cool to even be able to develop a sea-worthy creature complete with arms and underwater tribes if you so choose, however the drawbacks to evolving underwater as opposed to on land would be substantial (i.e. no fire to melt metals, etc.) (see second note below on water changes to body parts).

BODY PARTS:
>Some changes should be permanent once put on and your creature born. Some should be able to be removed only after ''x'' amount of evolutions. Others should be removable after every evolution.

>Gills and lungs should be an attachment. Gills should be required to evolve to the next stage of evolution after the cell stage, but before the land stage. Lungs should be a requirement to enter land.

>Eyes, like other body parts, should be improvable with benefits as follows: the better the eyes, the more stuff you should be able to see such as food, hidden enemies before they strike, and body parts; this would require lowering the current finding rate for regular eyes.

>There should be alternatives to vision such as Sonar, Infravision, Tremor sense, all with similar benefits.

>On that note, ears could also serve similar functions, perhaps providing a boost to certain abilities.

>There could be a stomach or mouth addition which makes it so you get more health from eating food. Perhaps even certain items which weren't even selectable to eat before become edible with said body parts; this would require making food more scarce and give less of a health bonus when consumed.

>The bonuses received from body parts should be fully stackable so long as they are not the same body part or from the same evolution of that particular part (I don't mean the same tree, that's fine, just not the same evolutionary path that particular body part took; what Walkiry said actualy didn't influence this thought as I just now edited this to comment about it; I suggested this course of actions a more of a balance issue, but you could use Walkiry's reasoning as the reason same body parts don't stack!

>The social aspect of the game (i.e. making allies) should not be learnable until the next stage of evolution, which should be set between land and tribal. So now you have the CELL stage, the FISH stage, the LAND stage, the SOCIAL stage... Then you have the TRIBAL stage. This would lengthen the game and make the creation aspect of the game, which is so very fun, even funner with much more options. Instead of SOCIAL and COMBAT, there should SOCIAL, SURVIVAL, COMBAT. SOCIAL would not be accessable until the SOCIAL stage, much like it is not accessible now until the LAND stage. SURVIVAL would not be accessible until LAND stage and would encompass where you make your nest and possible influences the environment has on the nest, as well as skills your creature should learn to survive including: Guard (to guard the nest eggs), Pack mentality, etc.

>There should be a limit to the number of deaths you can suffer before you become extinct. Also, your

>>>I need to play more of the tribal stage and above to make any suggestive comments about them. Perhaps a confirmation notice when your tribe understands and begins doing the order you sent them, and a quick zoom in showing them starting to do what you ordered them before zooming back to wherever the camera was last. Ability to micro-manage tasks better.

[RTM]

I wonder if this game is moddable?

Maybe? I wasn't into many of the previous Maxis games (aside from The Sims), but I don't recall a lot of user-created mods being available for them aside from extra content such as buildings, wallpapers, etc. Nothing that altered the gameplay mechanics to any huge extent.

My guess is that they deliberately "dumbed down" some of the stages to leave themselves room for lots of expansion packs.

[Delc]

I wonder if this game is moddable? If so, I would propose the following changes:

>When you earn enough DNA to "evolve" to the next Stage, i.e. water to land, land to tribal, etc., then you should be able to still earn more DNA points to continue making your character how you see fit before you go to the next stage.

You can, at least in the creature stage. Just don't push the button in the lower right and you can keep playing forever.

Overall, I'm really not impressed with the game. All of the stages are too short, except for space. The default controls are horrible, and apparently you can't change them (at least that I saw). I got to space on my first sitting with the game, and haven't really played it since, except for the creature stage. There is just no depth to the game.

[Kevin]

You can, at least in the creature stage. Just don't push the button in the lower right and you can keep playing forever.

Overall, I'm really not impressed with the game. All of the stages are too short, except for space. The default controls are horrible, and apparently you can't change them (at least that I saw). I got to space on my first sitting with the game, and haven't really played it since, except for the creature stage. There is just no depth to the game.

I'm kinda in the same boat as you. Though I've played a few more times with some of the stuff in space and have had some fun with it.

I do like the creature stage a fair bit though and I might have to see if I can kill an epic creature on that stage one of these days. :)

The RTS parts are pretty meh. The interface is poor and the controls are non intuitive.

Space for me was not really a saving grace either. It's got some fun stuff, but I'm more engaged by other galactic conquest games. I've made some alliances bought some planets conquered some others, done a bit of terraforming (still getting the hang of that and honestly don't have all the tools for it yet). But the space interface is bugging me and I have to be missing something. The hoping from planet to planet to get to the one you want because I don't have the range to get there bugs me a bit. I really want a quick way to get in and out of the solar system and in and out of planetary orbit.

I don't see increasing the difficulty making the game more fun either, it looks like it will just make it more frustrating since there doesn't seem to be a ton of strat to it anyway. The choices you make in earlier stages don't seem to have as much impact on the rest of the game as I'd like. That is good and bad in that you can easily make purely cosmetic choices for your creature and get through all the stages, it makes it harder to gimp yourself if you will, but it also means that you don't feel like what you did really mattered. Ah well.

I think my biggest problem is that it plays a lot like a console game but isn't on a console. The controls just don't fit me.

I'd give it about 65 / 100. It provides some entertainment, and if you like the space part of the game (which appears to be 90% of the game) you'll like it more than me. Again, this is a bit early review as I'm not that deep into the space part of the game. But all that work I put into building my creature seems lost since all I ever see now is my space ship. I want ground troops, I want to be that epic creature I saw running around when I was in early stages so that I can stomp around on other little creatures. :) I want to potentially "go back stages". Play "God" by being a space fairing race that can take over and guide the evolution of creatures in the earlier stages of the game (i.e. go back and play those stages again). You can kinda do some of that because it will use stuff you made in other games, but it's not quite what I want.