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You know what?
( Spore Rant (Prior to playing the game) )
(EDIT 2 - 1:40am)
Ooookay. Now that all the issues with installations and other such crap are out of the way... I'll talk a bit about the game itself.
I've only made it to the end of the Creature stage so far, deciding not to go on to Tribal stage tonight since it's so freaking late. Where does the time go?
Cell phase was decent, but nothing to write home about. Pretty much, if you've played flOw then you've played the Cell stage of Spore. That's about all there is to it. I played it as a straight herbivore. It only lasted maybe 20-30 minutes at most, probably.
As for the Creature stage. Well, there's honestly not a whole lot to it either. However, there's much that can be said for simplicity. I pretty much just went around and befriended every freaking thing on the planet that wasn't completely hostile (and those I just avoided, because most of them were scary and huge). It was pretty funny after a while. There'd be two (sometimes three) groups of creatures fighting each other, all of whom I'd befriended in the past at some point, and then I and my posse would roll up and they'd all stop to wave at us as we passed, before getting back to killing each other again.
If I had actually stopped to seriously consider what I was doing, I might have been all like "Man, this is boring. Why am I playing this?" I mean, really, all I did was go from one group of creatures to another, clicking on three out of the group each time in order to either sing, dance, charm, or pose them into friendship. Over and over again, pausing only to grab some fruit from a nearby tree as needed. But seriously, there's just something about it that completely sucked me in and caused several hours to just completely disappear. I don't know what it is...
Well... that's not entirely true, I guess...
I'd say most of it was due to this. (EDIT 3) Because EA is shit, none of those links work anymore. (/EDIT 3)
Spore is not for everyone. It's not for people who loathe pointless, retarded DRM and who will refuse to play a game on general principles that contains it, obviously (honestly, I respect people like that, because I myself simply do not have the inclination to avoid playing a game that I have been waiting years for, just on principle [EDIT 3] Oh, what a difference a few years makes. [/EDIT 3]). It's probably not going to be for people who don't like goal-less sandbox games like The Sims and such (and really, compared to what I've played of Spore so far, The Sims would be mind-bogglingly complex). It's probably not for people who don't like cutesy stuff. (Though, with that said, some of the creatures I saw were just vile, and I'm not even talking about the Sporn monsters and such. All of the stuff I've seen so far has been Maxis-created. They all still like to sing and dance, though, no matter how nightmarish they may be in appearance, and that kind of takes the edge off of them.) And it's probably not for people who are easily bored. If none of those apply to you, you might just like it, at least a little bit. While it doesn't live up to the monstrous hype that has surrounded it for, like, over four years now, (nor did I expect it to do so) I'd have to say it's been worth it so far. Even if it did fuck up on the initial install for me and require me to reinstall it, amidst much gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair. And even if it does come packaged with bullshit malware.
(/EDIT 2)
( Spore Rant (Prior to playing the game) )
(EDIT 2 - 1:40am)
Ooookay. Now that all the issues with installations and other such crap are out of the way... I'll talk a bit about the game itself.
I've only made it to the end of the Creature stage so far, deciding not to go on to Tribal stage tonight since it's so freaking late. Where does the time go?
Cell phase was decent, but nothing to write home about. Pretty much, if you've played flOw then you've played the Cell stage of Spore. That's about all there is to it. I played it as a straight herbivore. It only lasted maybe 20-30 minutes at most, probably.
As for the Creature stage. Well, there's honestly not a whole lot to it either. However, there's much that can be said for simplicity. I pretty much just went around and befriended every freaking thing on the planet that wasn't completely hostile (and those I just avoided, because most of them were scary and huge). It was pretty funny after a while. There'd be two (sometimes three) groups of creatures fighting each other, all of whom I'd befriended in the past at some point, and then I and my posse would roll up and they'd all stop to wave at us as we passed, before getting back to killing each other again.
If I had actually stopped to seriously consider what I was doing, I might have been all like "Man, this is boring. Why am I playing this?" I mean, really, all I did was go from one group of creatures to another, clicking on three out of the group each time in order to either sing, dance, charm, or pose them into friendship. Over and over again, pausing only to grab some fruit from a nearby tree as needed. But seriously, there's just something about it that completely sucked me in and caused several hours to just completely disappear. I don't know what it is...
Well... that's not entirely true, I guess...
Spore is not for everyone. It's not for people who loathe pointless, retarded DRM and who will refuse to play a game on general principles that contains it, obviously (honestly, I respect people like that, because I myself simply do not have the inclination to avoid playing a game that I have been waiting years for, just on principle [EDIT 3] Oh, what a difference a few years makes. [/EDIT 3]). It's probably not going to be for people who don't like goal-less sandbox games like The Sims and such (and really, compared to what I've played of Spore so far, The Sims would be mind-bogglingly complex). It's probably not for people who don't like cutesy stuff. (Though, with that said, some of the creatures I saw were just vile, and I'm not even talking about the Sporn monsters and such. All of the stuff I've seen so far has been Maxis-created. They all still like to sing and dance, though, no matter how nightmarish they may be in appearance, and that kind of takes the edge off of them.) And it's probably not for people who are easily bored. If none of those apply to you, you might just like it, at least a little bit. While it doesn't live up to the monstrous hype that has surrounded it for, like, over four years now, (nor did I expect it to do so) I'd have to say it's been worth it so far. Even if it did fuck up on the initial install for me and require me to reinstall it, amidst much gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair. And even if it does come packaged with bullshit malware.
(/EDIT 2)
