SPORE

[nforce_infinity]

Sure...i didnt search for it before i posted...will do it hence forth,.

[Somebody]

Spore Exclusive Hands-On: From Civ to Space to the Spore Secret Ending

 

Entire worlds are your oyster in the final stages of the anticipated strategy game from EA Maxis.

 

Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos. These words from American philosopher Will Durant also hold true in the civilization stage of Spore, the upcoming strategy game from Will Wright and EA Maxis. We stopped by EA last week to get hands-on time with the civ stage as well as the final space stage as part of our exclusive coverage leading up to the September 7 release date. Be sure to check out our Spore Launch Center for additional coverage of the cell, creature, and tribal stages, plus a look at the game's innovative community features.

 

After your tribe conquers rival tribes in the surrounding area via wooden flutes, throwing spears, or a combination of both, the chieftain will see the need to create order among the ragtag group of villages and advance to civilization stage. Depending on the choices made in the cell, creature, and tribal stage, you will develop into an empire with one of three focuses: military, economic, or religious. The main goal of this stage is to convert, conquer, or purchase the other main cities that were established by other tribes on the planet.

 

The focus of the civ stage is in the city planner. Plan accordingly.

 

No matter what kind of civilization you are, the name of the game is still money. Spice is the world's most valuable resource, and spice geysers dot the planet's surface. The one who controls the spice geysers controls the world. To gain control of a geyser, simply send over one of your vehicles--created by you or ripped straight from one of the thousands of creations on the Sporepedia--and begin mining. Vehicles are rated in speed, armor, weapon strength, and religious-conversion power. In addition to menacing tanks and land cruisers, coastal cities will be able to develop naval vessels to reach sea-based spice geysers. The more spice geysers you own, the faster your treasury fills.

 

Early on, you're the only civilization on the planet and almost every geyser is yours for the taking. Soon other tribes will get civilized--some friendly, some hostile--and begin competing for spice. Your treasury will grow as you process the profits from spice trade, which is done automatically. That money can be spent in the city planner. The city planner is a multifaceted creator tool, very similar to the creature creator, with which you design your city hall, houses, factories, entertainment centers, decorative gardens, and statues. Houses let your population grow, factories increase your profits, and entertainment buildings keep your citizens happy after a long workday. Finally, defense turrets can be added to city walls to ward off would-be invaders.

 

We played as a religious civilization and immediately outfitted our boats and land vehicles with religious-propaganda accessories such as giant loudspeakers and horns. You have three options when you reach a new city: conquer, contact, and convert. By clicking convert, your vehicles will emit a hologram of a high priest who will preach to the city, slowly tipping the religion meter in your favor. Of course, no one likes being preached to, so the enemy city will begin to defend itself and start blowing up your vehicles. But with money from the spice trade continually rolling in, it's an easy process to buy more land vehicles and keep sending them over until the religious conversion is complete.

 

After half of the cities in the world are conquered, you'll gain access to aerial vehicles, which are also produced in the nifty vehicle-creator tool. Our planet featured three large landmasses, and our rocket-propelled vessels (shaped like dragonflies) were the only means of reaching the distant continents. The jets were not equipped with any religious tools, so we were forced to blast the final cities to smithereens by continually purchasing new jets and sending them into the fray.

 

Overall, the civ stage plays out like a very simplistic real-time strategy game in which you gather resources (spice), grow your population (build houses), and expand your territory (send vehicles to convert cities). When the final independent city on the planet surrendered unconditionally, the world was ours. But the world is not enough. It's time to advance to the space stage.

 

After you design your spacecraft (very similar to the vehicle creator, save for the much cooler arsenal of parts), your entire planet will bask in glory as it celebrates its new status as galactic explorer. The budding space travelers on your home planet have several simple missions to complete early on, such as opening up a trade route with an alien race or searching a strange planet for the wreckage of a downed spacecraft. Whereas the previous stages of Spore feature only one or two main goals, the space stage has several: discover the center of the galaxy; become a renowned trader with other races; expand your empire by colonizing and terraforming new planets; or simply explore the vast reaches of the galaxy. To fathom just how big space is, you zoom out from your home planet to the solar system to see your sun. Then scroll all the way out to see the entire galaxy, composed of millions of stars. Orbiting around many of these stars are planets, more than four million in total.

 

Initially, however, you begin in the neighboring solar systems, trying to open trade routes with new species. Some will agree right away, whereas others will ask that you perform missions to prove your worth as a trading ally. One race asked us to whisk off to a distant planet and retrieve several types of plants known to have healing properties. Using our trusty abduction beam, we quickly filled our cargo hold with trees, bushes, and even a few species for our own personal study. Another race simply asked us to kill five innocent creatures with our onboard lasers. Keep in mind that these missions, unlike space, do not exist in a vacuum. There will be consequences with other species if you encroach on their territory and abduct valuable artifacts or, even worse, innocent pedestrians milling about in their cities.

 

Your spaceship is equipped with only standard weapons, radar, and scanning ability, but you'll quickly earn new, more-valuable parts as you complete missions and earn badges. Aside from a repair rating, your ship is powered by energy, and every bit of space travel will drain the gas tank. To refill, simply head to your homeworld or colonies for a free refill, or you can purchase energy and repairs from friendly species. Your ship's energy level will limit you to jumping from system to adjacent system, but later, technology upgrades will let you traverse a much larger portion of space in one warp jump.

 

This is one planet... of four million.

 

Colonies can be formed on many planets, but not all of them are suited for life. On one volcanic planet, we planted a colony next to a large, yellow spice geyser, but the colony couldn't expand because the terrain was too hostile and we didn't have enough terraforming points to transform this fiery rock into an Eden. But if you finish enough missions and purchase terraforming tools and parts upgrades, you'll be running your own Genesis Project in no time. Exploring new worlds will also lead to the discovery of extremely rare items, and you can show off these trophies of exploration to your friends who are also playing through the space stage.

 

Finally, EA did confirm that there is a secret ending to Spore, but the company said that only the most hardcore players will discover it. Does that mean you'll learn the true nature of the universe once you discover the center of the galaxy? Begin seeding new worlds with your own cells to restart the process of evolution? We'll find out when Spore finally hits stores on September 7.

[Angad]

Anybody know the release date and price for India? Can I preorder this somewhere?

[Tyler]

EA games usually hit the stores pretty quick. I would expect it to be in stores within the first week of release. Assuming the price to be 1299/-

[Somebody]

Spore Cracked And Torrented, Already

 

Well, it had to happen - Spore has hit the intertorrents. Pirates are downloading spores through the intricate series of tubes we call the internet.

 

It seems as though some stores in Australia have been selling advance copies of the game a few days before the official release date.

 

Over the weekend, a Warez group called “RELOADED” has managed to crack the copy protection on the game and now it is being downloaded by hundreds of cheapskates over bittorrent.

 

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

it's already got like 3000 seeds and 25,000 peers

[Tyler]

Eurogamer Review: 9/10

[nash]

So what no anal copy protection this time round EA? What gives...

[Bulovski]

Umm they have found enlightenment...

[ctrl_alt_del]

I thought SPORE has a copy-protection where it will allow you to install the game only 3 times.

[KingCease]

I am still buying a legit copy. Btw when is out in india and how much?

[nash]

September 7th onward is what I heard last.

[Bulovski]

GS Review

 

Spore Review

Spore merges multiple run-of-the-mill building blocks into a big, entertaining game.

 

The Good

Intuitive and comprehensive customization tools

Oozes charm at every turn

Impressively broad scope

Great audio and art design.

 

The Bad

Individual gameplay elements are extremely simple

Early stages aren't very engaging.

 

8.0

[HundredProofSam]

^^ how can you be so sure? why should we believe you?

 

 

 

peace

[nash]

^^ how can you be so sure? why should we believe you?

peace

 

[Somebody]

Spore: My Time in the Gene Pool

Added by Jeff on Sept. 4

 

One of the many dangers that comes with taking a long time to develop a game is that the story of the game's development becomes more interesting than the game itself. Spore first came to light way back in 2005 and would probably make for an exciting tale of ambition and huge budgets. But it's a bit easier to forget the long road Spore has taken to stores now that I have a copy of it for myself. While Brad is currently playing it in much more depth for our review, I finally got around to playing a couple hours of it last night. It seems fun almost immediately, but so far I'm a little startled by what Spore is and how Spore works.

 

The game starts out simply enough at the cellular level. You pick a planet, name it, decide if you want to be a carnivore or an herbivore, and then watch as a meteor crashes into the planet. Life springs forth from the meteor in the form of you--a cellular organism.

 

You'll start the game by swimming around and eating stuff to gain size and abilities.

The first stage is mostly about clicking on meteor chunks to eat them. This fills a bar at the bottom of the screen. As you eat, you also grow bigger, and a Katamari Damacy-like change in the scale of the world occurs every time you go up a size. If you're a meat-eater, you can also attack and eat other creatures, some of which have unlockable parts that you can use. At any time, you can sound a mating call to go into the editor, which is effectively the Creature Creator in full-game form. You can spend your DNA points to slap on additional items, such as spiked horns to defend against incoming attackers, flagella for extra propulsion, and so on. You can also remove items and sell them back at the same cost you paid--this means you're able to mess around as much as you want with all the different parts with no penalty. You can also die without fear, as you'll just reappear as another member of your species.

 

Over the course of the cellular stage, my carnivore got a pair of spikes, an electrical charge that shocks nearby opponents, and a jet-like propulsion system. But after 30 minutes or so, it was time to rise up out of the ooze and take to the land. You can stick around in the cellular stage for as long as you like, but once you've reached a certain size and filled the DNA meter at the bottom of the screen, you stop earning more currency to further customize your creature.

 

The second stage is the land stage, so the first thing I did was slap some legs on my guy. Like the previous stage, you can hit the mating call button at any time to drop into the editor and mess around. But the gameplay here is pretty different. You start out in a nest full of your species. There are other species roaming around their own nests, and it's up to you to explore. As a carnivore, I explored by fighting and eating many of the other creatures. If you go in and clear out a few creatures, you'll make the entire species extinct.

In Phase 2 you'll take on other creatures to become a dominant species.

The fighting itself has an MMORPG-like quality to it in that you're mostly using hotkeys. Depending on which parts are on your creature, you may have a basic strike attack, a bite, or something a little more complex, like a charge that rushes faraway foes and stuns them. Each attack is mapped to a number key on the keyboard, and each one has a different cooldown time. It's pretty simple.

 

But it isn't all violence. You can switch out of your aggressive stance and into a social one, which lets you get close and attempt to impress other species. If you impress a set number of creatures, that species will become one of your allies. So far, the only thing I've needed to do to impress other creatures is to sing with them. Eventually you encounter better singers, so you'll probably need to team up with your allies for a full-on group session. As you fill the DNA bar in this stage, your brain gets bigger and you eventually gain the ability to recruit allies. They'll follow you around and help out with fights and singing.

 

That's about as far as much as I've seen so far. The DNA bar for this stage is around halfway full, so there's still more to see before moving on. The thing that really surprises me, though, is the game's approach to evolution. I sort of figured that my creature would change in accordance with my play style, so if I decided to fight a lot, I'd eventually get a meaner, tougher, battle-tested creature. Or if I decided to be really friendly, maybe I'd end up becoming an herbivore or something. Instead, I chose carnivore very early in the game, and now if I run up and click on a tree, the game says that, as a carnivore, I shouldn't be eating plants.

 

You get to dictate every aspect of your creature manually, yet you also seem to get locked into some of your early choices. Not to get into some kind of ridiculous debate here, but that's way more intelligent design that I expected. It's definitely interesting enough to keep me going, though. We'll have a full review next week.

[Hahaman]

awesome m tempted to ......but wil wait two weeks for the game to arrive

[Somebody]

Bad Game Pitch #1: EA Spore-ts

Added by Jeff Gerstmann on Sept. 5

 

OK, this is something that's been milling around in my head for a few days (it even made it to the office to-do whiteboard alongside "more beers"), but a report from Kotaku's Brian Crecente on EA considering the future of Spore and the possibility of using it as a platform for other, different types of games cemented it in my head.

 

So, if I may make what may be the first of many Bad Game Pitches here, I present the following.

 

Two-Sport skeleton athlete, Bones Jackson.

 

EA Spore-ts

 

OK, every month or two, someone jumps on a message board and types some form of this sentence: "Hey, remember Mutant League Football?" This is almost always met with "dude, they should make another one of those!"

 

The time is now.

 

Mutants are played out.

 

The platform is Spore.

 

At the beginning of the game you'd work with a basic, low number of DNA points and attempt to create a creature that might be able to play a low-rules game of football. When you first take this team onto the field, chances are it'll get crushed. But you'll learn how to work your basic creature and earn DNA points along the way.

 

Can this devil frog catch a pass, or what?

 

DNA points, obviously, would be used to enhance and upgrade your different players. Naturally, you'd want your quarterback creature to eventually develop terrific vision and a cannon arm. Your wide receivers could eventually get sticky hands and extending arms that reach out and snag passes out of the sky with ease. Linemen would develop into bulkier, spiked creatures. Brain power and upgrades would be required to ensure that your players could remember routes and coverage assignments. And your own personal strengths as a player would end up determining what your optimum football team would excel in.

 

The creatures you create would, of course, be uploaded into the EA Spore-ts-o-pedia, which would be used to generate random teams on the fly for you to play against as you attempt to make all other football teams extinct.

 

I don't know about you, but I would spend all my DNA points to create a reasonable facsimile of Bones Jackson.

[Somebody]

SPORE REVIEW : 1up

 

Score: B+

[KeezNah]

Was thinking to pick up SPORE for the DS, but it's been getting mixed reviews so far. Will try to hold out a bit moar

[Bulovski]

Spore on DS will just not be anywhere near the same as on the PC. The processing power required is immense.