Spore

[tomas]

Dunno who else might be knocking around on this, but incase anyone wants to add me as a "Buddy" i'm down as tomasnavarro

For anyone else who might be pondering this:

I'm loving it, I've only got as far as the Civ phase, but i'm enjoying alot of it. It's not perfect, but its hard to imagine it being better.
If you've seen the creature creator then you've got a basic idea what you can accomplish. In the game there are also creators for Buildings, Vehicles, and Spaceships. These creators are so much better, they're more flexable with what you can do, and the results look amazing; where I sometimes get the impression with the creature creator that things are wrong.

Phases:
Cell Phase: Swim around lots, not alot of options. It annoys me a bit that I want to make more complex creatures but can't. I swear some of the creatures you see floating around are too complex to ever make yourself. Considering how difficult it is to become an Omnivore, the entire progression on the "Meat eater or Plant eater" seems a bit pointless. Well, when I say difficult, you'll not end up as an Omnivore by accident.

Creature Phase: After finishing the cell phase you get a nice little timeline of your creature, and how it has evolved. Which I thought was brilliant, but was instantly dashed as after 2 minutes in the creature phase you alter your creature so much in 1 step it's hard to imagine it as Evolution.
You run around a fair bit, and the game is very involved. You obviously evolve your creature to attain certain traits that you want, which is how evolution works, which is nice. I really did love this phase.

Tribal Phase: I had a bit of trouble with a couple of things on this phase. The weapon I started with was "Fire Sticks" or something, which ment I could burn down buildings easier. This didn't help much when I tried to attack a tribe with throwing spears... This phase is quite short, and felt a little forced to me. The entire phase is 5 other villages, which doesn't seem like alot, but I think many more and the entire phase would be very tedious.

Civ phase: Only played this properly for about 10 minutes (after spending half an hour creating!) and it seems very nice. The main trouble I had was that it seemed to be along the lines of taking over the planet, and in games like that I usually like to blow things up, or send assassins. I'm not a big fan of trying over and looking after loads of citys, I like to be a small city state. This option doesn't seem available to me, as my current "Mission" is to take over the other cities on my island...

Another couple of problems I had with the evolution being life like were that I had bits on my creatures for fighting, dancing, whatever. With the introduction of Instruments and Weapons you'd imagine that huge spikes wouldn't be needed. But they still are useful for fighting, so you keep them while evolving, which means every fighting creature will be covered in spikes and things. I'd like to imagine they'd be less useful when you've got a huge spear...
I also went for some sort of Stalk Eyes (last option, where they're grouped) and because I have stalk eyes I can't wear any sort of hat or mask properly. Which I think leaves my creatures lacking in character.

Maybe I've leaned too far to the bad things about the game in what i've wrote, but I do love the game. Like I said, its not perfect, but what is? I might as well complain that carrying around 3600 arrows would be a nightmare for a hunter.

For the creators, I spent 3 hours solid doing nothing other than making vehicles last night. I love how good you can make them look. I started off with 1 base, and 1 cockpit, and added a few things and was reasonably impressed with what i'd managed. But cos you can have objects going through one another, you can have say 3 bases, all different shapes and different angles, all in each other to get some really interesting shapes. It really is amazing what you can build in 10 minutes, and how wonderful it looks. The only real downside that I can see is that the entire thing has to be symetrical, I'd imagine it makes everything look better, and some of the controls might be a nightmare otherwise, but its slightly disappointing.