SLUniverse Forums

Sobriquet Kryakutnoy

Uggh, now I can't decide..preorder the galactic edition (and make myself po' in the process) and try picking it up at the mall on Sunday? (With the added advantage of having a DVD of both the PC and Mac versions.)

Or just pre-load it from the EA online store in Windows, and forsake having an OS X executable.

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[20:25] Mocksoup Graves: I am just like that.. I am a judger
[20:26] Mocksoup Graves JUDGES YOU

Mukatsuku

EA was generous enough to give me the game for £24.99 on the 5th as a digital download, since I'd bought the creature creator.
Play.com offered me the full disc and manual and box for £26.99 and sent it to me on the 4th - 36 hours before EA's digital download.

Seriously, how can EA justify charging full price for a file, compared to the game on disc, in a box with a manual, and then they dare charge more money for them to backup the file for you!?!

Developers need to ditch EA and send them bankrupt - it's all they deserve

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Tyche Shepherd

MUKA ... ... Sorry to go OT but it hand to be said

Edit: and I was thinking about what you were up to today as well


But back OT ... I saw a TV advert for Spore today for the first time - cool (ish)

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Mukatsuku

Mukatsuku

Not up to anything.
met some Japanese people in the UK and am applying for Japanese courses and photography courses, but the Japanese ones are way too basic.
Can't find a way to do the exams for a degree course, without doing the 3 years of the degree - I want to just take the exam and get the qualification.

Meh.

Anyways, that's way off topic - thanks for thinking of me. Missed you.

Daman

EA is not exactly the only one you know.

Personally I refuse to pay for digital files not on a physical holder in general because of reasons like that.

Besides, I very much like the clutter of stacks of CDs and DVDs in my room, and I love the feeling of holding the game I've waited years for in my hands. And I'm also one of those nuts who still buys LP versions of his favourite albums.

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Mukatsuku

I totally agree - I hate having a digital (as in non-physical) version of a game. I want to hold it.
Anyways, you may have seen my rants about Steam in other threads - I know it's not just EA, but was really annoyed that EA sent me a "special offer" of getting the game more expensively and later than mail order, in a digital form - fantastic, pay more for something they've not packed or posted when I can have the physical version earlier.

BTW, just want to say I played through Spore from cell to space in one sitting and my least favourite part is the civilisation stage - it was just like a demo version of an old RTS and felt way too shallow and repetitive.
Space is more fun, though. Although combat could be made better and when your home planet is attacked, you just respawn infinitely with no punishment for dying and since it's your home planet under attack, you just rejoin the battle - it makes it feel really pointless. Shoot, kill, die, appear instantly next to the aliens, shoot, kill die, repeat. At least make you respawn at a later date so the attack is over and you failed to help.
I think that is Spore's one huge failing - no consequence of dying at any time in the game so you never feel excitement or worry.

One more thing - there are things in the game which show who created them (Maxis) which have no creator. Such as 153 plants, all say created by Maxis and there are no new ones to download. Is a plant creator coming out? Will we have to pay?
Why can't we share the early creatures we create? Why do we have to wait until tribal stage? Maybe because there are only a handful of parts to use to make a creature.

Love the building creator for one silly reason - one of the roofs is called Himeji, and is in the shape of Himeji Castle, near where I used to live in Japan (^^) made me homesick

Rebel Television

Spore is one of those games that seems to have a huge disparity between player and critical reception, similar to other recent titles like Bioshock and Oblivion.

I've been waiting for this game for three years though, I'm not going to not buy it because of what people on forums say.

Tess Whitcroft

Poor QA is almost never the cause of buggy games. It is almost always the lack of will on the development side to fix the bugs that QA found that is the cause.

Delays are fine in my book especially from the larger companies. It usually means more fixes and tuning before release.

Tess

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Shenanigans will ensue

Fmeh

I used to have positive feelings towards purchasing a download--not so much anymore:

The game Delta Force Extreme--if you purchase a downloaded version, they put a bunch of extra security or something in it that make loading a map take 30-45 seconds longer than the CD version, so I ended up torrenting the CD version and used the key and login from my legitimate version.

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Edav Nomad

If I download a game its usually through Direct2Drive, but the problem with using that is that when a patch is put out for the boxed version you have to wait for one to come out through D2D. In some cases it can take up to a week for the patch to be released. Steam works better for patch releases though.

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"Please do not nuzzle the instrument of my vengeance." - Rok'tar

LoganBauer

And isn't the "extended download" still only good for like 2 years? I'd like to be able to reinstall the game I played $50+ for if my machine dies or has to be reformatted after the 2 year mark.

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Mukatsuku

Oh and I just notice - I read the price on the EA site wrong. Play.com is selling it for £26.99 whereas EA, without the extended download, is selling it for £39.99 a whole £12 more or £15 more with the extended download!

Mukatsuku

On the forums for Bioshock and Oblivion, you had people raving about the games and very few people saying they were a let-down.
Look in the spore forums to see how many people are really annoyed with the constant pirate attacks. It makes the space stage so frustrating.
BTW, there are achievements to unlock for completing each stage of evolution in under one hour and an achievement to unlock for going from cell to space in one sitting (which I got). Before it came out, it sounded like each stage was a full game which would compete with the equivalents out there. Imagine completing any RTS game in less than one hour!

Candide LeMay

If the pirate attacks are such a grief - I didn't get to the galactic stage yet so I can't tell - then EA can fix it with a patch. Which is more than can be said about forums posters on the internets.

Mukatsuku

Yep and people are demanding that patch is release ASAP.
It's got to have been so badly play-tested to allow something so harmful to the gameplay in, but then again, EA was in charge and I've seen first-hand how they love to add features that gamesplayers will hate.

Daman

I think one of the reasons for the disparity is that critics are on a deadline. Hence it's:

Start game, play game until the end, quit game, write review. - they don't need to notice the repetitiveness of the game

I know for me it went like: Start game, play game, restart game, replay game (get the impression it's still the same even with a vastly opposite creature),restart game, replay game (mh, I swear this time I took the completely utter polar opposite, how come it still plays the same?), play game until the end anyway.

And only then you start to notice the weak points of Spore.

Yes, you can make a multitude of creatures. Yes, you can make a multitude of vehicles and buildings. Yes, every stage has three different paths to it.

And no - none of your choices really affect gameplay. Whether you're military or religious - whether you're herbivore or carnivore: it's still the same game and it still lacks depth.

Sobriquet Kryakutnoy

I wanted to make religious omnivores, but my impatient/vengeful streak means my first planet was solidly in the realm of militant carnivores from the outset :/

Sobriquet Kryakutnoy

...I made the mistake of letting my roommate play while logged into my sporepedia account.

Her first creation?

A blue spotted duck named "Twat Waffle"

Sean Gorham

I'm hopefully picking a copy up tomorrow. Has anyone gotten a physical copy of the game? If so, is it a PC/Mac version like the Creator Creator CD was?

As for reviews... meh. Too early. I did like this one though: Spore: Things To Know… | Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Sobriquet Kryakutnoy

It is PC/Mac on the DVD, a Cider port in typical EA fashion. Though I must admit it is running surprisingly well in OS X.

Has anyone figured out how to do these stupid "kill infected citizens" missions?