WarKirby Magojiro

I've heard the boxed version has the same Securom system that ruined Mass Effect. Is this true?

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Decadent

Well, tell him he sucks. We missed him at the Duchy this weekend.

Oh! And tell him that having his online status hidden in SL is a bit redundant when he flies past my skybox at 90 miles per hour.

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Candide LeMay

I have the galactic version and it doesn't require the dvd in the drive once it's installed

Eirik

*whistles innocently* I won't know until I get my new job and first paycheck (that is, if the game still is fun to me at that time).
But yes, AFAIK the game does try to 'activate' when it connects to the web. There's a reason why the crackers of the game say very clearly: "block Spore in your Firewall or unplug your router when playing the game"


That's a pretty good review. And I guess he's right that you should look at the other stages as an advanced character creator.

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Malachi

I eagerly anticipated Spore, from what I'm reading it was probably in vain. Ars Technica was pretty down on it overall.

The Good

• Creature Creator tool is user friendly and fun to use.
• Varied gameplay with something for everyone
• Play at your own pace
• Impressive Space Phase
• Will play on most PCs

The Bad

• No autosave feature
• Mediocre graphical presentaion
• No real Multiplayer
• Slightly buggy

The Ugly

• The possibility of waiting two years and spending $200 on expansions to play what Spore should have been at launch.

Verdict: Rent

Mukatsuku

The lack of autosave annoyed me - I played from cell to space in one go and then it crashed, sending me all the way back to the creature stage. At least I then chose a different path but the only difference it made was unlocking different achievements

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Sobriquet Kryakutnoy

I am not quite sure why people claim DRM ruins their games? Sure it is annoying, sure I can see why people feel it is absolutely ridiculous to have a set number of activations (they eventually gave into pressure and disabled it in Bioshock)

But I'm sitting at my computer right now, playing the game without issue.

Mukatsuku

The problem I have with the game needing to access the net is when I want to play it on a train - apart from that, no SecuROM issues for me.

Eirik

And my own CD drive never blew up while using DRMd software either.

Doesn't mean it never happened.

And yes, those links all talk about another DRM than is on Spore, but if you want I'll do a google on Securom also. You want to bet I'll find tons of problems with it?

Sobriquet Kryakutnoy

Sure, there are myriad problems with DRM, But it is the prerogative of the developer to include what they will on that disc.

If you want to combat it, don't purchase the software. If a zillion people abstain from purchasing their product, their sales numbers will fall and they will want to know why. I personally don't mind SecuROM, as it has not yet burned me. Though Spore does operate a little differently in a Cider/WINE sandbox than it does directly installed on Windows.

Eirik

I only spoke with people in two developer companies myself (Bioware and Obsidian, for games released with Atari and LucasArts as publishers)

In both cases the decision to add DRM was NOT the developer. It was the publisher.

Sobriquet Kryakutnoy

I use 'developer' as a loose term. The point I intended to impress was that poor sales figures are the public's best tool for carrying a message across to the companies.

Though as I said, after enough complaining 2k was able to convince those who needed convincing to disable the SecuROM check on Bioshock, so obviously these changes can be made ex post facto.

Beau Perkins

I am going to pick this up tonight, but after reading this thread I am not sure I should. I am a bit reluctant. Lucifer keeps telling me how awesome it is so I feel maybe you people are just stupid and don’t know a good game when you see it. Then again, Lucifer is evil and he would want nothing more than me to spend $50 that should be going towards a college fund for my kids or something.

Decisions, Decisions.

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Dancien Graves

Get the game Beau. Please ignore the crybabies. The space part is the only part that's a little annoying. Everything else results in you playing it for 16 hours straight.

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Mukatsuku

Now you're to blame for him wasting his money.
I will never trust Will Wright again...... until The Sims 3

Aaron Edelweiss

I like it so far. It has all the issues people have mentioned so far. Specially the shallowness. but it's very pretty, and I like building things, and the editors are everything I hoped for. It's not a "take over your life and ruin your marriage" type game, but it's fun to pick up and play for an hour or two. It's not an RTS, but it's still fun to conquer the world. It opens pretty good with the primordial soup level, tapers off gameplay wise up to the civilization level, then takes off again once you get to the galactic level. I was dissapointed at first, because it's not what I was lead to expect from all the years of hype. But once I backed off of that and just took it in, it's good.

Beau Perkins

You are making this decision so tough


Maybe I will just get the new Mercenaries

Vlad Bjornson

I'm having a great time playing Spore. Played from cell to the beginning of the space mode as a social species yesterday and enjoyed the whole experience. Started over today as an aggressive species.

Some of the RTS style game play elements are a bit simple. If you're looking for a deep RTS, Civ 4 or something similar would be a better choice. This game is more about creating and exploring, the other gameplay elements are really just providing a supporting role.

I'm having as much fun creating creatures and other elements as I am discovering new species and planets. Lots of Holy Crap and WTF? moments when discovering new critters. I especially liked seeing one of my Creature Creator guys stomping around as an Epic monster.

Mukatsuku

Don't get me wrong - I really enjoyed the first day with Spore.
I got up the next day, though, rushed onto it again and was like "wow, after the initial enjoyment wears off, there's not much left."

Also, once you're into the space level, all the created creatures are so small that they stop looking totally unique unless you use "spyglass" to view them from the pause menu. You need to be able to get out of your ship and wander around on foot because, isn't that what we spent all that time making creatures for? Not to just end up represented as a spaceship with a crappy screenshot of your face, in the bottom left.

With the vehicle creator, whatever happened to the clever way creatures are made to walk? How can that not be carried across to wheels and tracks (and the legs you can attach)? Why do you have to position wheels exactly, or else have them all hovering at different heights? Surely it was harder to work out how legs work, when all they need to do is work out where the wheel is in relation to the land.

Anyways, those aren't gameplay issues, but they did annoy me - I really didn't enjoy designing vehicles nor buildings and just wanted to spend all my time creating creatures and seeing how they interacted, but after the creature stage, the creatures seem to spend all of their time standing around in groups and not interacting at all with other species. In fact, they never seem to interact with other species in any stage, except the rogue grox's and epic creatures. I have watched groups of herbivores standing right next to groups of carnivores perfectly happily - neither moving from the tiny circle around their nest. I've never seen another creature eat or mate, or do anything apart from run away from me/grox/epic creature.

Bahhh, Spore is the first PC game I've bought in ages and I think I'll stick to consoles for buying games and bittorrent for PC games from now on.

Mecha Dinosaur

A friend who has this game pointed out that when they chose not to put on legs that was the end of the content for water. No water based creatures/civilization. (and they got eaten when the bumped onto land.)

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Aaron Edelweiss

Ya, I was pretty disappointed with the no water civ's. Something I've been hoping for durring the entire hype period. oh well, here's hoping for a future expansion.

Cristiano

Ok, someone please help - I am stuck in the creature stage - at first I could impress other creatures and earn DNA that way, and also fight some, but now I can't seem to impress anything and everything else is stronger than me so I can't get any more damn DNA credits. I keep reshuffling my creature, but nothing seems to work. Any ideas?

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* slu stuff *

Sobriquet Kryakutnoy

Have you got any other creatures in your pack with you? Make sure you pick ones who have all of the necessary parts for the social moves, at high enough levels.

Vlad Bjornson

Yeah, you pretty much have to roll with all your pack slots filled. Can't really impress or fight another group by yourself.

Make sure that you are paying attention to the stats on the parts that you add. I was in the habit of adding the stuff that I thought looked cool with the Creature Creator demo - but you can't really do that in the game. Gotta pick the things with the highest stats you can afford, and concentrate on socializing or fighting. It also took me a few tries to realize that 1 part with a level 3 Stat was all you need, not 3 level 1 parts. Adding more parts with the same stat doesn't improve the stat overall - the stat will be equal to the one part with the highest level.

Lordfly Digeridoo

I think one of the much later unlockables in space is a sort of "holo scout" that lets you beam down to a planet for a closer look.

Although I'm a bit disappointed that the creatures don't do much, they just stand around. There's no dynamic ecosystem, although I did accidentally trigger a carnivore ripping into two lone herbivores when i beamed them all down from space in a tight area.

In conclusion it's probably a good thing there's such a huge online component of it, because otherwise I would have just pirated this one. It's not nearly as dynamic and gee-whiz as I thought it was going to be, especially with the tech demos and the hype. Still nice though.

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