I’m not a gamer, but I was looking this up on Amazon last night for my son, and as of this morning it has 1,335 one-star reviews. People seem to be upset about the DRM.
Yes, they are; you can only install the game 3 times (4 if you call and beg). There’s an effort to bring this to EA’s attention by giving it 1 star reviews on Amazon.
In principle, I agree - it’s totally bogus that you spend $50 on a game and then can’t install it multiple times. Yes, I understand piracy is an issue, but it’s pretty much been proven that DRM like this doesn’t do much to abate piracy. In fact, it sorta encourages it, because you can pirate a non-DRM version, making the pirated version superior to the purchased version.
In reality, it doesn’t bother me enough not to buy it. By the time I get to my fifth installation, there’ll be a newer, better Spore. And even if there isn’t, another copy will be cheap enough. Plus, there’s always the reality that I’ll have lost the disks and will have to buy a new set regardless.
I bought it and I’m having fun, but I am a bit disappointed at the lack of complexity in the ‘game’ part.
Cell was fun, but not many options, just a quick little arcade game.
Creature was my favorite, until I figured out something obvious which made it too easy.
member of your species are really easy to charm into your pack, If you have a decent preditor, then once you gang up with more of you, you can rip right through any nest
Should have some replay as a herbivore for me.
Kind of funny though. One of the freaks I made when I was first messing with creature editor was an Epic running around as uber-preditor, and he was a tough bastard, ripped me a new one a few times.
Tribal. Fun but a lack of complexity, not sure if it’s too replayable.
Civ. This one was the easiest by far, obnoxiously easy. There was only about 3 minutes of figuring it out and having things in doubt, then about 25 minutes of mop up. claim mines, build houses and factories, build whatever vehicles, overrun city in whatever way, repeat.
Religous conversion is kinda cool looking though, I love the big ghosty God of you attacking the city. 
On to space after work
Got game last night, played until about 3 in the morning, which is some indication that I rather like it.
It’s definitely a good casual game. I got to Tribal with Herbivores after a lot of hard work in the Creature bit. I could have spent more time there… maybe playing on the higher settings makes it take longer? Anyway, I didn’t really play with Tribal. I just went back to cellular to make omnivores and carnivores. I will have moon dragons infesting my world!
And as far as the DRM, I’m wondering what effect my purchasing the sucker on D2D will have. I like not having manuals and discs cluttering my desk.
Fortunately, my husband got me hooked on Lord of the Rings Online a couple weeks ago, so I’m not tempted to buy anything else yet. I’m planning to hold off until after I get tired of LoTRO and then Fallout 3 and then see how the game’s been holding up. Hopefully, I’ll find it for around $35-40 then, too.
It sounds like a great game to play while eating dinner. I usually like to have a more casual game to play while I’m eating and another to play when I have more time to devote.
I picked it up Sunday, and spent a few hours that night and last night playing through cell / creature / tribe. I’ve gone through them twice now, both taking the “herbivore / friendly” route.
The first three stages seem pretty straightforward.
Cell: eat stuff to earn DNA, get new parts from rocks / killing other creatures.
Creature: add the highest social / combat part for whatever route you’re taking, and keep your pack as large as is available (either with others of your species or friends). Find new parts in skeletons and by befriending / killing alpha creatures in other nests. One thing I’m not sure is if you befriend another species with a social you don’t have (say you befriend one with hands that can pose), and you add them to your pack, is that social available in other interactions? One trick I discovered: if you end the creature stage with other species in your pack, you automatically start the tribe stage with them domesticated.
I really liked the Creature -> Tribe cutscene, with the 2001 homage. And I totally called the “stick to the head” joke at the end.
Tribe: Gather food, buy buildings for tools, equip clothing for bonuses. When going after other tribes, it’s best to start with their farmers, since it’s easier to befriend / kill smaller groups. Since there’s no loss buying / selling clothes, you can swap between social / combat bonuses with no penalty.
I just got my second creature to civilization phase last night. I was planning on shutting down, but I figured “well, there’s only one more village to finish off, I’ll do that then quit”. And they dumped me straight into the building and vehicle editor. That sucked another hour of my evening. After the “body / coat / detail” limitation when painting creatures, being able to lay down colors / textures on individual components felt freeing.
One thing that felt a little off was starting up the Civ stage as a “religious” city. I understand that was determined by my mostly-friendly tactics in Tribe (only killed one village when they wouldn’t even let me drop off a gift), but I’m wondering if a more neutral label like “Cultural” would sit better with me. “Make friends with me because I’m better” sounds more appealing than the (implicit) “Convert, you godless heathens!”. On the other hand, the religion label has led to the converting vehicles being dubbed “Popemobiles”, so maybe it’s not so bad.
In some quarters, yes.
There seems to have been a pretty big campaign against it among the customer reviewers at Amazon.
Here are the stats, for those who don’t want to click the link:
1,663 Reviews
5 star: 2% (38)
4 star: 1% (28)
3 star: 0% (12)
2 star: 2% (36)
1 star: 93% (1,549)
If you read the reviews, while quite a lot of people criticize the gameplay, most are angry about the DRM. It’s not clear to me whether this is the result of a concerted attack by an organized group of anti-DRM folks, or whether people in general are just really pissed about the SecuRom.
I have a couple questions for people who have the game
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can creatures be crossbred?
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like a lot of dopers, I bought the creature creator. How do we play with our creatures if the point is evolution? Clearly we created things that are at the creature level ,not single-celled animal. To use them do you need to skip the cellular level all together, or are they broken down to be more simplistic for you and then evolve to what you created?
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No.
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You don’t play as what you created, those creatures simply populate your game world, you play with/against them in a sense, but not as them.
I am rather enjoying this game immensely, although I’m going to echo the complaint on how some of the game play is very easy. For example: all you have to do to win the Civ portion is to save up for ICBMs then wipe out all of the other cities. That’s it.
I’m playing the space stage now and already planning what type of creature I want for my next game.
I played Aggressive so far, what other types are people using?
Oh, one more thing: every creature I use will have wings. Those things make it so easy to move around, and not just for the creature stage. In tribal when attacking another tribe your creatures will fly to them, saving so much times.
Ok, I’ve been playing the space portion and I’m not really liking it. For one thing, I keep getting attacked. I don’t wanna be at war! I just want to screw around with terraforming and giving sentience to other animals.
I’m only up to civilization stage so far, mostly because I spend so much time in the editors tweaking and creating. That’s what I’ve always liked best about Sim games, the creative aspect, and that’s done very well here. For me, the game playing part mostly just serves to give structure/context to all the stuff I’m making. If the gameplay also happens be fun as well then that’s just a bonus. And some of it is fun…I like exploring and seeing/interacting with other folks’ creatures in-game and I’m surprised at how much I enjoy having my creatures sing and dance to befriend other creatures/tribes. Like sciguy, I found it a little grating, though, that this play style lead to being forced to convert another city to my creatures’ religion in order to advance in the civilization phase. However, I did find the giant holographic projection “preacher” rather amusing.
I’m finding there’s lots of little things that are either hidden or not mentioned in the game/editors that I’m only finding out by talking to other people or reading places outside of the game. Like the whole domesticated creatures laying eggs you can gather thing…I totally missed that. Or in civ stage, when designing buildings, I kept thinking “Man, this really needs an eyedropper tool”. There’s not a button for one, but there is a keyboard shortcut (hold down ALT). Same for scaling things in the editors with the scroll wheel. I guess they wanted to simplify the interface but not having buttons or in-game explanations for these for me this was mostly just annoying/frustrating. Yeah, yeah, RTFM, I know.
I would like to see the (originally planned) aquatic stage between cell/creature if only because the jump your little-basically-2D-with-cilia-and-a-filter-mouth creature makes when it suddenly grows huge and sprouts legs and starts walking on land is a bit jarring. Plus, I enjoyed “rising up” through the levels of cell, seeing the bigger creatures in the background come to the foreground, at first huge and scary and then as I grew to their size eventually becoming just competition and later as I outgrew them being so small as to be insignificant. I liked this sense of progression and when the stage ended, there were still more big creatures in the background I wanted to see and interact it with and it felt like it just cut off right in the middle.
I’m sure this will be an expansion pack eventually so I look forward to that.
But overall I’m enjoying the game and I think it will have good replayability trying out different creature types and play styles.
My profile: Mirasol's Public Spore Page
I got it and it looks interesting… my son played it for several hours.
My co-worker still has not received his pre-order and got frustrated so went to WalMart and got one. This is probably why I do not pre-order.
I’ll probably give it a bit more of a whirl in the morn.
but… how can my Spore meet your Spore and have Spore-creature-sex if you dont have a Spore??? 
C’mon babe, I gotta great mating call and dance!
And, if you do not Spore with me, I will have to Spore with someone else :eek:
I must go forward and procreate! 
Here’s my page.
Pleonast, how did you make your guy with the springy legs?
OMG thank you for this! It was driving me NUTS!
(Fixed your url.)
If you remove the foot from a leg, you can copy just the leg segments (Alt key, I think). Attach the copy onto the end of the leg. Repeat as long as you like. I made the creature for a SDMB competition we had for a “spiral” creature.
I pre-ordered last week, it’s only just now been shipped. I’m a little frustrated, but since I’ve been adding all of you as Buddies, I’ll have lots of nifty creatures to interact with once I finally do start playing. 
I’m seeing plenty of creatures/wild animals from other users. Even banned a couple, one weird thing that I found had been downloaded before I even started playing and one wild animal that looks a little too much like Sporn.
Let’s try that link without the search parameters.
http://www.spore.com/sporepedia#qry=sast-500025506056
Important safety tip- the game does NOT autosave!
If you are playing for quite a while, and you get a crash, as I did last night, everything you’ve done is GONE.
Imagine my frustration, as I’d already spent about two hours getting the Xeplins to the brink of sentience only to see the game crash, leaving me with nothing but two hours wasted.
Save early, save often, people. It’s just like voting.