Create universal wonder in Spore, an exciting new simulation game that lets you develop your own personal universe. Work your way through five evolutionary phases, including Cell, Creature, Tribe, Civilization and Space, that offer unique challenges, thrills and goals. For example, you can start in Cell and nurture one species from a simple aquatic organism all the way until it becomes a sentient life form. Or you can jump right in and begin building tribes and civilizations on multiple planets. What you do with your universe is totally up to you.
The powerful creation tools of Spore are easy to use, allowing you to effortlessly design every aspect of your universe. Creatures, vehicles, building and even starships are all within your grasp. While Spore is a single-player game, your creations and other players' creations are automatically shared between your galaxy and theirs, offering a nearly limitless number of worlds to visit and enjoy. You can also go online to view the incredible things other players have made and can even pull those items into your universe. Spore gives you the chance to make worlds and beings that evolve, grow and delight you every step of the way.
SPORE CREATURE CREATOR
TAKE YOUR SPORE ONLINE
Minimum System Requirements
- PC Minimum - Windows XP/Vista
- 6 GB Hard Drive Space
- 2.0 GHz P4 processor or equivalent
- 768 MB RAM
- 128 MB Video Card with support for Pixel Shader 2.0
- Mac Minimum - Mac OS X 10.5.3 Leopard or higher
- 4.7GB Hard Drive Space
- Intel Core Duo Processor
- 1024 MB RAM
- ATI X1600 or NVidia 7300 GT with 128 MB of Video RAM, or Intel Integrated GMA X3100
Customer Review: Multiple Installs and Gameplay Issues
Spore is an innovative game from the creator of the Sims, which lets you take a creature right from the one-celled amoeba type stage all the way through space flight. It has great potential, but also can be very frustrating.
First, a word about the copy protection scheme. There have been literally thousands of anti-Spore reviews posted on a number of websites solely ranting about the copy protection scheme. Many good gaming companies have gone under because of piracy, so I certainly understand that software should never be stolen. Piracy damages a creator's ability to pay their rent. That being said, Spore went overboard. You can literally only install the game 3 times before having to talk to the Spore company to ask for permission to install it again. I get a new PC every year, and usually I install games on my PC and laptop to test on both platforms. This would mean after a year I would be stuck.
It gets better than that, though. When installing Spore on my laptop, my built in anti-virus software saw Spore's attempt to install its copy protection software, thought it was a virus and silently blocked it. This meant Spore finished installing and didn't work. I hunted around but finally just de-installed it and reinstalled it. This meant I already "lost one install" because of that. Even so, the anti-virus software kicked in again and I had to manually go in and fix some links and add some files before it would run properly. I can't imagine most average gamers doing this just to get their game to run.
So finally I had Spore installed. Now to start playing! In cell mode I wanted to be an herbivore. Big mistake. While there are lots of enemies around to eat if you're a carnivore, and an omnivore can eat anything, a poor herbivore can only eat plants. Once those plants are gone, you're pretty much doomed. Everything wants to eat you. I found out quickly through trial and error that an omnivore was your best bet. A few "upgrades" later, and I was moving on to creature mode.
In creature mode you take your same basic cell shape and move up onto land. Again, it became apparent through several replayings that plant eaters had a rough life. You want to be an omnivore so you can eat your enemies when you find them - and also fall back on plants if you're surrounded by things too tough to attack.
On you go through the higher levels, and the game morphs along to let you build tribes, gather food, get space flight. At each level you switch to a new set of skills and have to learn new gameplay.
I really love the idea - but I wish the game carried more over from level to level. When you go from cell to creature level, you are left with a bunch of "useless body parts". You need to in essence completely redesign your creature for the new challenges.
Also I wish the game did not seem to heavily biased towards omnivore. Maybe they are trying to teach us a lesson here :) It is only through an equal balance of aggression and pacifism that you can survive.
I definitely find this game to be a time sink, and can lose myself in it for hours. However, compared with other games I play, the time does not pass in a "stress release" fashion. For example if I play Halo or Age of Empires or StarCraft or other games I get caught up in them, have a lot of fun and feel quite happy when I'm over. Most of the time when I'm playing Spore I'm feeling frustrated with the enemies, stressed about finding more food, and annoyed that my people are off migrating or being attacked by wild animals and needing help. It's a "demanding" game. I love challenges and tough opponents - but it shouldn't be stress inducing.
I'll give the game a 3/5. It is certainly fun in a way, and I give it a ton of credit for being innovative. However, the evolutions could have been handled far better, the balance on each particular level could have been much more even, and that copy protection scheme is just awful. I only have Spore installed on my laptop and this is the first time I've ever had to do that - do a single-system install because I am afraid of running out of reinstall options once I switch machines. I shouldn't be in that situation with a game I paid for.
Customer Review: The game plays fine, DRM does not break the gameplay
I'm not one to join in on an internet argument, but I felt that I had to speak up about this. The whole issue of DRM is an important one, but as long as it doesn't interfere with the game itself, I generally don't have a problem with it.
Not that long ago, there was anti-pirating software that actually made the games run slower, but now, EA has opted to go with limiting the amount of installs before you have to call them. I am not one of those that constantly breaks a computer down and reinstalls things every weekend. I plan on installing Spore maybe ONCE. So, I don't personally have an issue with the 3 install limit.
Some have said that the game crashed their system; I think that there's no PC game sold today that carry with it the possibility of crashing a PC, that's just a problem inherent with PC gaming. That being said, the Spore Creature Creator crashed my PC a few times, but with an update of the sound card, it was smooth sailing. I have yet to have a problem with the full Spore game. As long as your hardware drivers are up-to-date, then you should be fine.
The game itself is fun. Not the greatest game ever made, or even the greatest game Will Wright has ever made, but it's certainly not bad and worthy of a least a PC Game of the Year nomination. All of those nerds that give this game a 1 star based SOLELY ON DRM are stupid. I can understand knocking a point or so because of the DRM issue, but the GAME ITSELF IS FINE.
No comments:
Post a Comment