So, I finished Spore. In a manner of speaking.
After playing in space for about a week, experiencing both fun and frustration, I finally got to the center of the galaxy. Won’t say what’s there or spoil anything for anyone, I’ll just parrot what Tom said in his review: it wasn’t what I was expecting.
Space, is really really big in Spore. Like, huge. I only last night found you can visit the other planets you have games on: all your games are part of the same huge persistent universe. Though you can’t attack them, you can visit and trade with them. That’s pretty neat and demonstrates just how big the game is — only after playing in space for probably 30 or 40 hours did I find another of my planets.
I wish, with all that space, there was a bit more to do. Sure, you can explore tons of worlds: there are what must be a couple thousand stars, and most stars have more than one planet, and many planets have moons. There are artifacts and tools to find, which you can beam aboard your ship to save or sell, but it seems pretty random what you’ll find and where you’ll find them. You can hunt for rare galactic formations, and there are some unique planets (I’ve found one), and some planets are just interesting in an of themselves. They may contain new lifeforms or even remnants of an ancient civilization long lost to history.
Again, it seems random. Maybe you’ll find something, maybe you won’t. I think some direction would have been neat: find a clue in one solar system that leads you to another, sort of a galactic scavenger hunt rather than a dice roll.
There are plenty of missions to fly for other spacefaring creatures, but they are pretty much the same missions over and over again. Visit a nearby planet for them, scan/abduct/destroy members of another species. Occasionally, seach a few planets for a relic and bring it back. Other times, they’ll ask you to attack another planet. That’s about it. It’s repetitive, but easy, so it never feels like a grind but never really feels like fun, either.
Terraforming planets is rewarding, though expensive. If you find a planet you’d like to colonize but the conditions aren’t quite optimal, you can transform the planet in a number of ways. If it’s too cold or there’s no atmosphere, you can call in a meteor shower, set off a volcano, or drop some machinery to warm up the planet and raise the atmosphere levels. You can also transplant flora and fauna from other worlds. You also acquire tools to build mountains, create rivers, or change the color of the atmosphere. This is fun but doesn’t give you nearly the freedom of the rest of the creation tools. A Planet Creator along the lines of the game’s other editors would be a welcome addition.
Combat with other races is inevitable. Your homeworld and colonies will be attacked by spice pirates seemingly every few minutes, and you’ll have to race back constantly to defend your swag until you can afford planetary turrets, which are pretty pricey. And Spode help you if you make enemies with another star system, as they’ll launch near-constant attacks on you as well. There were plenty of times I got annoyed because I had to curtail my exploration because my colonies were being attacked. Eventually, I just flew so far away from home that I couldn’t get their distress calls. I lost seven colonies that way.
Playing as a peaceful race, I really found the combat annoying. I was extorted into war with one race, with another, I shot up one of their citites accidentally while trying to defend them from some attackers. Then, there’s the Grox.
Spore has an interesting dual concept. It combines a single-player experience with the elements of a huge multiplayer community. Yes, you’re playing on your own with no direct interaction with other players, while at the same time your game is filled with the creativity of thousands of other people. It’s really quite amazing. You get the benefit of surprising, charming, and ingenious content created by both friends and strangers, yet none of them are actually around to ruin your game, as they do in other multiplayer games, with mic-spamming, spawncamping, and griefing in general.
Luckily enough, EA realized this would be a huge problem. A game isn’t really a game unless, at some point, you yell FUCK and throw your mouse through the nearest wall. So, they thoughtfully designed their own greifers and stuffed thousands of them into Spore. They’re called The Grox.
The Grox don’t like you. They may not hate you, but they don’t like you. When I first encountered them, they didn’t like me but didn’t fire on me, they just followed me around. Which was fine. Unfortunately, I was traveling with some other ships at the time, and my friends and the Grox got into a firefight. I also had my auto-turret on, which automatically started shooting at the Grox once they attacked my friends.
From that point on, the Grox hated me. I tried to rectify this. I never fired another shot at them. I flew dozens of missions for them (which was not easy, as they followed me around, shooting me the entire time I was scanning planets and abducting creatures for them). I paid them hundreds of thousands of space-dollars. I bombarded their cities with happy rays. I built up absolutely every shred of positive influence on them I could. They still hated me enough to shoot me on sight.
The Grox own thousands of planets around the galactic core, so if you want to visit the center of the galaxy, you’re going to have to deal with them in one way or another. You can fight them or, if you’re more careful than I was, raise their disposition enough so they don’t want to kill you. Or, you can just make a mad dash for the core, swarmed by their attacking ships every single step of the way. That’s how I did it. It took many, many tries, and was absolutely no fun. But I did it.
I was rewarded for this in part with an achievement, which you can’t see because, for some reason, all of my achievements were totally deleted from the Spore servers yesterday. No idea why, but it kinda sucks.
Anyway, I’ve started over to try playing again as a new species with a new gameplan, though I imagine I’ll be giving less time to Spore from now on. Hopefully, I’ll get back onto TF2 a little more, and once I figure out how to get STALKER: Clear Sky to run (it currently hangs when loading) I’ll have a look at that too. And, I supposed I’d better give Nondrick a little love before I start getting death threats.
Also, RPS interviewed the lead designer of Spore, and it’s worth a read. Definitely answers a lot of questions I had about the some of the design decisions EA made.
26 responses so far ↓
1 Level // Sep 22, 2008 at 9:41 am
This kind of what I expected of spore, it’s a complex game, lots of intricate little things, but genuinely boring in the long run, as many sandbox ‘games’ are. Kudos to Maxis for making it with such complexity and so many features, but when a game isn’t fun, it just isn’t fun.
I did play it for a bit a my friends house, I made my own planet and got into the tribal stage, and I didn’t enjoy it a whole lot.
2 Killa-Ewok // Sep 22, 2008 at 9:50 am
Holy shit Chris you’re fast.
3 Niteowl // Sep 22, 2008 at 10:10 am
That’s what she said!
4 a westie // Sep 22, 2008 at 10:13 am
So, all you get for visiting the core is a pidly achievement? That’s kinda… depressing. I was hoping you’d find something like a super black hole you could take to another galaxy or dimension or something.
5 Eother // Sep 22, 2008 at 10:14 am
Heheheehe.
6 Naurgul // Sep 22, 2008 at 10:28 am
The more reviews I read, the more conflicting my opinion on Spore gets. It’s like a mind disease, making it more and more difficult to figure out whether I want it or not.
PS: Spice pirates?
7 Christopher // Sep 22, 2008 at 10:29 am
No, westie, you get something else too.
8 Ronin08 // Sep 22, 2008 at 11:01 am
“After playing in space for about a week, experiencing both fun and frustration, I finally got to the center of the galaxy. Won’t say what’s there or spoil anything for anyone, I’ll just parrot what Tom said in his review: it wasn’t what I was expecting.”
Is it the fifth Cylon?
9 Kowl Slaw // Sep 22, 2008 at 11:38 am
The Grox sound like they have major people problems.
10 Sentry Gun // Sep 22, 2008 at 2:29 pm
The Grox are very hard to appease. I tried everything that wouldn’t make others hate me, but they just wouldn’t take it. Eventually, I figured out if you use planet-destroying weapons to break the galactic code, the Grox like you, but everyone starts disliking you. Not that this matters anyways, ally with the Grox and the entire galaxy goes to perma-war with you. It was a smooth flight to the center, but now that everyone else hates me, I can’t really do much on that file anymore. Also, you get a badge called “Dance With the Devil”.
11 Sentry Gun // Sep 22, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Oh, almost forgot, you do get an actual award for reaching the center. Not saying what, but it’s not just a dumb achievement.
12 Sum Guy // Sep 22, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Say hi to Steve
13 rammingspeed42 // Sep 22, 2008 at 3:02 pm
I didn’t read the entire post (not really interested in spore), but I thought the name was clever. And punny. And kinda dumb, but it’s your blog.
Also, we all know that Chris found proof that Paul is dead…
14 Kernel Panic // Sep 22, 2008 at 3:15 pm
Spice Pirates, eh? Stellar
15 W // Sep 22, 2008 at 5:52 pm
No tags? I’m disappointed, Chris.
16 Itrade // Sep 22, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Too late about the death threat thing, Chris. If you don’t update Living in Oblivion soon you’re going to die! Maybe not now, maybe not even soon, but one day, perhaps when you are an old man in a hospital bed surrounded by children and loved ones, you will feel the life leaving you and think “Oh, if only I had updated Living in Oblivion, then this would not be happening to me!”
You have been warned.
Anyway, I found rushing through the dense Grox empire to the center of the galaxy pretty fun. You had to find the right route and everything, so it was a bit like those maze things on the back of cereal boxes. Also, your description of terraforming leads me to conclude that you haven’t got the heat ray and refrigeration ray and cloud vacuum and cloud seeder and hot cloud vacuum and hot cloud seeder and cold cloud vacuum and air conditioning. Because those just cost energy to use.
17 FishyBoy // Sep 22, 2008 at 7:55 pm
4 years ago, there was a blog writer. Then he got eaten by ghosts!
If you don’t want to be eaten by ghosts, then update the Living in Oblivion blog!
Then press F5 and (this is freaky) your page will RELOAD.
18 Bootsie_B // Sep 22, 2008 at 10:26 pm
Yeah, I just made a mad dash when I went. Used all of my health packs, and I had about 1000 health left by the end.
19 Arsenis // Sep 22, 2008 at 10:44 pm
Your Sap Fappers are at war with me.
And continually attack my homeworld and my colonies relentlessly.
It is annoying.
No matter how many planets I take or destroy, their little orange ufos, just keep on coming.
I wish you could make them stop. Too bad they wouldn’t listen.
20 Jetamo // Sep 23, 2008 at 1:01 am
Apparently, there is a way to ally them…for the price of everyone else hating your guts.
All you have to do is planet buster a few none-grox planets near them, and they’ll start to like you enough to let you do missions for them.
(PS. Erm, is it possible to change the comment form a tiny bit to say you need an email address? danke.)
21 Nibwoddle // Sep 23, 2008 at 1:03 am
Download this.
http://www.xspore.com/community/modding/9991-release-space-fun-mod.html
And space will be fun.
22 Gothic // Sep 23, 2008 at 1:19 am
I find that terraforming them to hell is much easier.
And more satisfying, when you see their planet melt into a hellish wasteland.
23 Gothic // Sep 23, 2008 at 1:22 am
OH AND THE AWARD FOR GETTING TO THE CENTRE OF THE GALAXY IS A- oh look, cookies!
(Also, maybe we should death-threat Chris into reinstating tags)
24 Gothic // Sep 23, 2008 at 2:09 am
I meant reward. Not award.
Also, Grox are shit. I hate them.
25 Bootsie_B // Sep 23, 2008 at 7:29 am
I totally agree. The Grox suck. And Steve’s cookies were DELICIOUS!
26 Dan // Sep 23, 2008 at 4:57 pm
I stopped playing at the space stage. It’s both tedious and frustrating.
Some bitches were like “we worship the balls. do you worship the balls!?!” I was like “I believe in science” and now they bombard my cities every waking moment.
I need to find out how to upgrade my Rolls Royce Cruiser i guess.
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