I think it's released in the US today Jackasses aren't releasing until Sunday (wtf?) in the US, but I know it has been out for at least a few days elsewhere...any HWA'ers playing?

It says on Ign it releases on September 7. I bet the stores have them but most if not all of them won't sell them until the 7th. IF I go to the mall later I think I might be able to buy it, I remember buying Quake 4 here 2 days before it arrived on the USA and Half Life episode 1 a couple of days before.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/907/907454p1.html

IGN gave it an 8.8 rating. I admit the review was not what I expected from Spore, I merely though it was an RTS game but it divides in 5 stages of evolution which seem to play as mini games and only 1 stage is a somewhat RTS. The review said it's too simplistic for RTS fans and very easy or limited in some stages. I'm definitely buying this, Crysis Warhead and maybe even the Witcher Enhanced Edition since it brings many goodies for $40.

I was thinking of trying to get someone to sell me a copy today too, but it requires online authentication - think the EA servers will let you authenticate a US copy before 9/7?

I preordered it earlier in the week. It won't arrive til Wednesday probably.

I think September 7 is a ship date but it's a Sunday so no orders will be shipped. It officially isn't available on shelves until September 8.


It has the same authentication system as Mass Effect.

Well, I bought Spore at the store on Tuesday.
My thoughts so far:
Great game....but....
Spore has 5 separate segments.
Cell, Creature, Tribe, Civilization, Space.
I've gotten through to Tribe so far, but the best part would have to be Creature so far.
I love the creature generation!
None of the segments have been groundbreaking, with the exception of the Creature Generation (WHICH IS AWESOME), but taken as a whole, I like this game.
I started playing around 9PM on Tuesday night, and had to stop 4AM Wednesday morning.

I just finished work, so am going back on the Spore Pipe now.

Gerritt

EA did say they don't expect to make money on Spore but they do on expansions. *hint* *hint*

I think EA rushed it just like every other game. All they did was lay the fundamentals down so they can get people interested and start the money flowing to please investors. Their view is that they can always make it better via extra sold content. I doubt Spore will be great until it has a plethora expansions, unfortunately.

But... what do I know, it won't arrive until later today (Thursday) and I won't get it installed until that evening. I'm just not expecting much at this point.

Side note: My buddies and I attempted to head to Wal-Mart at midnight on Sunday, September 7, to get copies. They said it wasn't in back, but he'd love to start selling it if it was. We weren't the only group there, either, there were about 2 or 3 other groups. He said they wouldn't get it till Tuesday.

I haven't bought it, though. College books cost money, so it's a good thing I didn't buy it on Sunday. Next month.

Gamestop listed the release date as September 7 and in the past, they said that the date they list is the date which orders can ship. I got an email on the 7th from them saying billing failed (some hiccup with the creditor apparently) so, obviously, they were attempting to box it then. I think what these dates basically mean is that you can put it on the shelves (when you are closed after hours) or stick it in boxes (ship the next day) to get it consumer ready but no consumer can actually touch it until the next date. That said, even if Wal-Mart had it in the back, they could legally sell it to you on the 7th but you can't have it until the 8th. Since this poses obvious problems with the consumers, they would rather not even deal with it until the 8th. That is my understanding.

It is for sale here in ireland no probs...dunno when it was released but I got just the creature creator pack to build little monsters for my little girl to get freaked at on my TFT I am not sure if you can then play online in a mini game etc...its not the game just a seperate creature build.

I must look into the game because it is getting alot of attention, but if its like the brain dead like the SIMS no chance of me getting it.

I picked up Spore on Monday, at Wal-mart. So far, I have mixed feelings about the game. The primordial soup stage is very cool, and visually stunning, but it's pretty short. The next three stages are (IMHO) basically dumbed down versions of better strategy and RTS-type games. The progression of your race is somewhat interesting, but my guess is I'll skip those sections in most games.

For some people, I'd imagine the fun of the game will lie mostly in the creature, vehicle, and building editors. These are indeed quite cool, and very deep, but for my tastes, this is just a sideline to the game itself.

The meat of the game is clearly the end stage - space. Despite plenty of other games in the same genre, Spore's take on space domination is different, entertaining, and very engaging. It's not all that complicated, and despite some annoying gameplay elements (HEY! omgwtfbbq please come help me NOOOOWWW!), I have really enjoyed the space stage.

Unfortunately, there are some definite negatives. The combat in the space stage is, in a word, totallyf**kingretarded. It's like Diablo style click-click-click, except it's in a 3D world, not a 2.5D "flat" surface. It's really easy to be out of range (vertically) without realizing it, and it's even easier to destroy your allies while trying in vain to click on the enemy ship. Even worse, you can also click to move, so if you miss your target (some of them move very quickly), you pretty much immediately move yourself out of combat range.

It seems possible to dominate through trade and diplomacy without having to do too much serious fighting, but it's annoying that the fighting mechanics are so crummy. It boggles the mind that they took an extra ~1.5 years to "make it fun" and left this abomination in.

There are other minor annoyances, like differences in controls between different stages - this is really stupid, IMHO. Why should holding right mouse button pan the camera in one stage, and move you in another? Spore also doesn't deal well with dual monitors in a couple of the stages. It's 2008 people, it's not that damn uncommon anymore, and dozens of games have successfully implemented the "move-mouse-to-screen-edge-to-scroll" model without barfing if another monitor is in use. Again, it's annoying that they spent extra time on the game and still left blatantly rough edges like this.

Overall (and I'm trying, hard, not to hold the years of hype against the game), I give Spore a 6/10. I'm sure I'll waste a lot of time playing, and I'm sure I'll enjoy much of it, but this game is far from a classic, and though revolutionary in many ways, this sometimes doesn't equate all that well to gameplay enjoyment.

I have Spore. I love it, my girlfriend loves it & my wee girl will love it when she comes
to mine at the weekend. It's something different, and i like it. I love the start when you start
off as a cell, and you have to eat your way through plants to grow, and evolve.
Having said that, I'm just at the stage of getting on land, cos i've not had much time to
play it this week.

Yay. And now my saved game is borked. Bad Spore, bad!

I'll give Spore and Mass Effect a whril this weekend. I've been anticipating it for quite a while now.

i liked it alot, im still in space age though, taking it slow and steadily trying to dominate everything.. About the controls... use WASD controls to move your ship while u try to shoot down the other peeps.. makes it a lot easier...
i really hated the strategy era before space, there was like 3 vehicles u could choose, sure it was fun in one way that u didnt have to choose from so many and worry about which strengths and weaknesses they had, but in the long run it got boring with using the same vehicles...
other than that, i loved the game

I've got Spore installed, haven't fired it up yet though. :-]

I'm kinda disappointed at how short the first four parts of the game are and how obscenely long the fifth is. I already encountered a bug too where the my creature wouldn't appear at all after upgrading. I had to upgrade again in order for it to reappear (loading an old save didn't change it). It also gave me a CRC error almost immediately after it started installing. It certainly has some bugs but it is still a great game.

Ford,
I agree that the Cell level could have been extended, and that it was way too quick.
Took like 30 minutes, and there was very little initiative to stay at that level once qualified for the Creature phase.
I love the Creature phase, just for the capability to do your own thing for a while. It seems that the Tribe and following phases take you out of the "exerimental" capabilities, and from then on, becomes just another RTS.
I'd have loved to have the evolutionary capabilities to stay part of the last 3 stages, but you're locked in at whatever you had at the end of the Creature phase.

I think the reason they did that is because, evolutionary wise, civilizations progress much faster in terms of tool use rather than evolutionary biology. If you watch the clock up in the corner, the first one is played in terms of billions of years, creature is in terms of millions of years, and so on. As far as game play goes, yeah, it's sad. What I really wish they did was make it so if you put weapon turrets on vehicles, for instance, they would actually function and not just go towards an attack value. I was hoping for more down the lines of the Earth 2150/2160 series rather than just looks. Ah well, can't have it all.