Spore complaints
2008-Sep-13, Saturday 07:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mellowtiggerThe new game Spore is such a mixed bag. I'll save the good things about it for a later post. My recommendation is to go ahead and try out the game (pirated version if necessary, pay for it if you feel compelled) just to see what all the fuss is about. But make it plain to EA that you're not going to pay for the later expansions unless they remove the DRM from these programs. I paid for my version. My mistake.
1) DRM causes game crashes
Digital rights management (DRM) is software that game producers add to otherwise functional code as a means of pretending that they discourage piracy. It has no effect on piracy, mind you. It does, however, break games. My Spore game crashes in the final stage of the game (space travel). I've seen lots of complaints, so it's happening to other people too. Buried in the crash log is a reference to a DLL that seems to be involved with their DRM.
Remove the DRM, and the game no longer crashes. Unfortunately, Spore servers recognize the alteration and then you can no longer exchange creature data with them. *SIGH* I was one of the people who voted at the Amazon.com to give it a review rating of only 1 star. I thought they told us months ago after the initial outcry that the DRM was going to be removed from the game?! Obviously, it's still there, and it's causing game crashes on my pc.
2) There is no step 2
Lots of people are talking about this video and how they really wish the game that was demonstrated in 2005 was the game shipped in 2008. It appears to me and a few other people that they essentially had the game completed in 2005 and then spent the next 3 years removing features from it. The current release moves directly from cell stage to land stage. There is no intermediate aquatic stage, so the "evolution" in game makes a huge counter-intuitive leap. Basically, your little one-cell organism suddenly sprouts legs and jumps onto land.
I'm guessing that they're using the Electronic Arts playbook and will be slowly releasing "expansions" that put all of this functionality back into the program. This game is a very good idea, and I understand that they might actually need more than $50/person to pay for development costs. I just wish they'd be up front about the idea instead of releasing this pared down program and calling it complete. Because it just isn't.
3) Mic*beep*ro-manag*beep*ement rules in *beep* the space st*beep*age
There's a whole lot of micro-management in the final stage of the game, which is bad enough in itself. You can't even pursue it, though, because of the constant alerts from disasters afflicting all of your other worlds. There's no way to adjust the alert level, and some of the alerts will cause you to lose worlds if you don't go attend to them. There's this beautiful world engine that shows off various species roaming a planet, but you can't spend time "enjoying the sunsets", as it were, because the game interjects to demand your attention elsewhere. Hugely annoying.
4) Not enough meta-management
I can't get my own creatures to show up in my own game-internal list of "My Creatures". *sigh* I'd like to add creatures that I find while roaming the web database into a "My Favorites" list to use in my game... but I can't do that. Or, if there's a way then I haven't found it yet. I'd also like a default template for use in-game when creating new cities on planets. I don't want to have to repeat (for the umpteenth time) selecting the same house images for my structures and placing them in exactly the same order on every planet.
5) Nothing matters.
All the work that you put into modifying looks and abilities of your creature in earlier stages... none of it matters in space stage. You don't see your creature (you just see the spaceship), and it has no "stats". Everybody starts out with the same ability in every game upon reaching the final space stage. *SIGH*
There's plenty to DISlike about Spore. I'll write about the good things later. Time to go play some more Spore. :D
1) DRM causes game crashes
Digital rights management (DRM) is software that game producers add to otherwise functional code as a means of pretending that they discourage piracy. It has no effect on piracy, mind you. It does, however, break games. My Spore game crashes in the final stage of the game (space travel). I've seen lots of complaints, so it's happening to other people too. Buried in the crash log is a reference to a DLL that seems to be involved with their DRM.
Remove the DRM, and the game no longer crashes. Unfortunately, Spore servers recognize the alteration and then you can no longer exchange creature data with them. *SIGH* I was one of the people who voted at the Amazon.com to give it a review rating of only 1 star. I thought they told us months ago after the initial outcry that the DRM was going to be removed from the game?! Obviously, it's still there, and it's causing game crashes on my pc.
2) There is no step 2
Lots of people are talking about this video and how they really wish the game that was demonstrated in 2005 was the game shipped in 2008. It appears to me and a few other people that they essentially had the game completed in 2005 and then spent the next 3 years removing features from it. The current release moves directly from cell stage to land stage. There is no intermediate aquatic stage, so the "evolution" in game makes a huge counter-intuitive leap. Basically, your little one-cell organism suddenly sprouts legs and jumps onto land.
I'm guessing that they're using the Electronic Arts playbook and will be slowly releasing "expansions" that put all of this functionality back into the program. This game is a very good idea, and I understand that they might actually need more than $50/person to pay for development costs. I just wish they'd be up front about the idea instead of releasing this pared down program and calling it complete. Because it just isn't.
3) Mic*beep*ro-manag*beep*ement rules in *beep* the space st*beep*age
There's a whole lot of micro-management in the final stage of the game, which is bad enough in itself. You can't even pursue it, though, because of the constant alerts from disasters afflicting all of your other worlds. There's no way to adjust the alert level, and some of the alerts will cause you to lose worlds if you don't go attend to them. There's this beautiful world engine that shows off various species roaming a planet, but you can't spend time "enjoying the sunsets", as it were, because the game interjects to demand your attention elsewhere. Hugely annoying.
4) Not enough meta-management
I can't get my own creatures to show up in my own game-internal list of "My Creatures". *sigh* I'd like to add creatures that I find while roaming the web database into a "My Favorites" list to use in my game... but I can't do that. Or, if there's a way then I haven't found it yet. I'd also like a default template for use in-game when creating new cities on planets. I don't want to have to repeat (for the umpteenth time) selecting the same house images for my structures and placing them in exactly the same order on every planet.
5) Nothing matters.
All the work that you put into modifying looks and abilities of your creature in earlier stages... none of it matters in space stage. You don't see your creature (you just see the spaceship), and it has no "stats". Everybody starts out with the same ability in every game upon reaching the final space stage. *SIGH*
There's plenty to DISlike about Spore. I'll write about the good things later. Time to go play some more Spore. :D
hopefully it will improve?
Date: 2008-Sep-15, Monday 08:58 pm (UTC)My partner and I were eagerly awaiting SPORE. We heard a lot of reports similar to yours so now, we'll wait.