With Spore having just been released (in Australia at least) I thought I'd start this thread so we can keep all first impressions discussion together.

I'm still installing but thought I'd launch a pre-emptive strike against the potential thread bombardment this section of the forums is about to recieve.

So... who has it and what do they think? My thoughts coming in about four hours time.

I wasn't home when they called me this morning, so I am now going to have to wait as the stores close in an hour. Looking forward to hearing from anyone that has the game.

edited to add; got it this morning.

That's awesome! Yup. I live in America... so no Spore yet. *sigh* It's preordered and paid for, though... so I'm just waiting.

Im in the UK so no spore for another three days! Can't wait!!

Okay so I lied about the 4 hours thing. I've been sick and played the game solely with my mouse from bed and then passed out.

Having said that I'm currently near the end of the creature stage and the game is surprisingly compelling. I'm not quite sold on the longevity of the title but so far it has been a lot of fun.

Cell stage is surprisingly addictive considering it is little more than a fl0w clone with upgrades and sans the beautiful music. There is something quite compelling about swimming around the primordeal ooze and getting jealous of another creature for having genetic parts and abilities you don't. Suddenly you start customising your organism to counter the threats of others and so on.

The beginning of creature mode feels like an epic journey. As you set forth from your nest to expore your environs there is a definite feeling of discovery. Especially as you begin to interact with other life forms and continue to evolve your creature.

Perhaps my biggest complaint here is that outside of special abilities learned from previous stages based on your eating habits, socialising habits, governance, etc you are free to effectively strip down your creature and start all over again. It takes away somewhat from the feeling of evolution when one step in the evolutionary chain can be as big as the difference between a garden snail and a T-Rex.

The other concern I have is that after the initial feeling of wonderment does wear off you realise that there are not a lot of tasks in the creature stage. It is basically wandering around the landscape, picking up creature upgrades, eating food and either befriending or fighting other creatures.

It is worth noting this is as far as I've gone in the game so far. Considering the difference in complexity between cell and creature stage (not that the latter is expecially complex) it is likely further stages will continue to increase in complexity and provide more replayability.

So far the game is excellent... my concerns lie only with longevity. This game may be more expansive conceptually than The Sims or Sim City but of Wright's creations I'm concerned this will have the least of that ellusive quantity we call 'gameplay'.

Thanks for the words, Prez. I was anxious to know your opinion(s).

Having decided to replay from the start again and having made it to tribe mode my enthusiasm is dwindling. Everything seems so binary - make war or peace, war or peace. The controls are obsucre for the more complex areas of the game and frankly, how you design your creature has very little impact on gameplay.

I will keep playing til the end but something tells me I will be returning it upon completion.

Oh well.

My opinions are similarly mixed. I'm about 3/4 of the way through the creature phase, playing with a herbivore. The creative aspects are still fun, but having played with the full creature editor that's a bit passe now. The gameplay is entertaining enough, but tends towards the repetitive - Find another species. Play the "repeat what we're doing" game with them. Click on skeletons and fruit trees periodically. Given that I'm playing a peaceful herbivore there's not much fighting (defensive or offensive) but I imagine that's different with a carnivore.

I'm quite looking forward to getting some wings though!

It's still fun, not sure how repeatable the fun will be though. Time will tell!

I just got it (and HP did too) - just finished the slow install phase. Will update with my thoughts soon.

I'm nervous Delphy!! I hope you like it!

I have watched another family member play, so from that perspective it's been entertaining. They are still in the creature stage, nearing the end. So far there has been meteor showers, aggressive gigantic beast picking them up and throwing them around and a spaceship abduction.

Unfortunately that is all the surprises it has to offer outside of rogue versions of other creatures (HIGHLY recommend befriending those guys and adding them to your pack, they tend to be twice as strong as anything else).

I added one to my pack, but I don't understand how to add anymore. Maybe I am only allowed one at first...?

WANT!!! lol! I hate you all now, not the big H hate, just the little h. Is it Sunday yet?! It better be out on time in the US. And that Flow game...totally addictive too!

You get one at first. As your brain size grows, you can have more creatures in your pack.

I'm installing now... but I'm sick and sleepy so who knows what will happen.

ElPres, yeah if you befriend those Rogue creatures you can go around and annihilate everything else on the map - especially if you have 3 of them.

So far I'm quite liking it. I got to civilization stage and got my ass kicked (this is in the same game where I owned the Creature and Tribal phases easily).

Initial thoughts:

- The graphics are nice, cute, but not really "Wow". The downsides are a lack of microvegetation, low quality texturing in some areas, but also the draw distance is fairly low - I would have much liked it if I could have seen further and zoomed out more.

- As noted above, the game as a whole tends to be very black and white. Carnivore / Herbivore / Omnivore, Aggressive, etc. You also can only Social or Combat things. Still, it's interesting to deliberately try and do different tactics. I'm an agressive militaristic herbivore.

Should hopefully finish the Civilisation phase later and then it's onto the Space Stage.

Well, I played it for hours last night until like 1:30 before flopping into bed, so I must like it some...

I didn't really go "WOW!" until the civilization stage, where the ability to paint different parts of your vehicle with different textures extremely easily - along with the amazingly lovely textures they have to use (including some awesome steampunky ones!) made me all weak in the knees. That, and the bit where you can compose your own national anthem (!) with its lovely little intuitive interface is fantabulous. I believe I actually said "Holy shit!" out loud when I found that.

I sort of wish each part were more developed though. To me, it feels almost like you're just starting to enjoy the game, waiting for more depth to come along in the stage you're in, and then it ends and you're on to the next stage. This will probably be corrected with an expansion pack.

There are some really cute things like being able to outfit your creatures in tribal gear, and the mating music in the stage after you just crawl onto land makes me giggle.

I'm also not seeing a ton of -challenge- happening. Yeah, I did die like eight times in the cell stage, and about four times in the creature stage... and then once in the tribal stage, but after that, it's pretty much cake, and you don't really lose anything when you die. It's just annoying, with no real consequences.

It's not often a game can make me crack up laughing. A chuckle, sure, but I have busted up cackling delightedly on at least three occasions - mostly at the cutscenes transitioning from one stage to another. The sense of humour is great. I won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't played yet (as they're probably kind of a one-laugh things as they're mostly surprisingly funny rather than just wickedly clever) but they are highly amusing.

The part names are great too. I'd noticed it in the creature creator but there's parts for everything - boats, planes, structures, etc., so there's a lot more to work with, and many of them are worth a giggle.

I guess I'm curious at how replayable it's going to be. I have a feeling most of it is going to be creating different things (creatures, structures, boats, etc.) that -really- don't have that much impact on the game. Yes, there's like a million different options and probably billions of ways to put them together, but then you get in game and it's a little speck and so easy you could have put it together backwards and it'd still be fine.

I did wake up with the urge to build an elvish society - elvish creatures as herbivores, peaceful and religious, with lovely delicate buildings and vehicles...

Ugh, must go play again...

Gee. I must be the only one who's playing the game they expected. I'm not disappointed in it at all, I've spent a lot of hours playing it and I'm only just up to the civ stage. The only issue I have is from playing C&C for all these years, I can't find a way to number a certain group for easy selection, in C&C ctrl+ whatever number would do that.

I never said I was dissappointed. I'm just saying there isn't much depth to it nor do I feel there is going to be much longevity. It is a good but not great game.

I always figured it would be a fluff game, like the first Sims, but then I'm easily amused and like pretty things so what can I do? Each to their own.

You know, the more I think about it the more I think that the Tribal phase is very shallow: All you do is gather food. Then occasionally go beat up some people.

What it needs is *other stuff* to do. Something like Ally with friendly villages to go and kill an Epic creature, or send your Chieftain on a solo quest to find a shrine that levels up his spells or gives him more hp or something. Or even, as HP thought, a fog of war.

It seems very shallow... it's supposed to an RTS but it's really not. Oh and I could never get the burning torches to actually do anything.

Also, it seems that your creature as it ends Creature Phase really doesn't have any bearing on how it plays in Tribal Phase. Some of the attacks carry over, but do they actually have an effect? I mean, I had a high combat score in Creature Mode. Lvl 3 Bite, lvl 5 other stuff... but in Tribal my Combat score is based on what I am *wearing*.

If I am a fearsome predator, surely I would be better in combat than a wussy passive herbivore?

I think I'll have to play through a few more times to see if there actually *is* a difference or if it's all just cancelled out when you end the stage.

There is a fog of war if you eliminate eyes on your creature. You get just a window of its surroundings and it's black and white, as well. I've been playing with a blind bug for most of the creature phase. It's a lot harder. I'm constantly being whacked and I can't find things to eat anymore.
I just don't like how, in order to advance, you really need to make sure your creature has feet, probably arms or another set of feet, can walk and run fast, can see, is decorated with things that will provide social interaction knowledge/ability, is decorated with better mouths than they started with, better, better, better, more advanced, etc.. I mean, I know it's about evolving, but I wish it was possible to live as a piddly little blind insect that shoots venom and has a terrible bite and not much wants to F with it because it's a lethal meanie. I am trying to build a species in this direction and keep getting killed by anything that spots me scurrying through the bushes.
Also, it's getting to be nearly impossible to ally myself with other creatures. Even when I repeat their interaction, the progress bar just depletes into nothing and the other creature gets all exasperated.
I've been killing these huge spider creatures by luring them to my nest, but for some reason once I hit the nest and all my other friends beat the crap out of the spiders, the game doesn't register it as a kill so it keeps saying in order to get a bonus I need to kill 5 spiders. -sigh-
I wish the "Spore" phase (is that what it's called?) lasted longer. I really enjoy that part.

coltraz - It's not just about repeating their interactions, but about having the right -level- of interaction. If a creature, say, dances at you... and you only have level 1 but they have level 5, it really won't do much at all and they'll shake their heads disappointedly. However, the opposite also works - if you have level 5 dance and they only have level 1 and they dance at you, they'll be extremely impressed and the meter will fill much faster, sometimes filling the whole thing with just one interaction. You can actually "cheat" a little bit - get a level 5 in something and if a creature does an interaction that you can't do, just do your level 5 one instead. It fills the meter slower than if you'd copied them, but they don't get disappointed. Also, try befriending babies. Babies are easier than adults which are easier than alphas. You get less evolution points for the individual friends, but it can help in making lots of allies.

Ahh! Great, thanks. I knew I had to have something messed up.