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ScifiterX wrote:

Oh, before my Mini I did have a gaming PC besides my iMac. I hated the thing & the frustration related to using it and rarely used it due to that fact. The pleasure from the gaming just wasn't worth the frustration for me.

I think any particulars you'd care to share would be both interesting and informative.

It's a shame you can't visit. Dropping in on any number of us might be similarly interesting/informative for you, as apparently we haven't had many such contretemps.

Trying to do things in a Mac manner on Windows has bitten many. Most can learn, tho.

I combined learning 3D gaming with learning Winders, plumbing the depths of both. Worked out pretty well.

Spore is excellent, btw.

Needs a bit of work - towards the end of my Tribal phase, my people forgot how to drop food off and forgot how to eat, so they sat there with trays of food, waiting in line and starving to death.

In the galactic phase, mission objectives need to be better annotated. Spending 6:30 of a 7:00 mission trying to figure out that you're looking for a small green cloud following five "infected" villagers out of a few hundred, and that the green cloud is obscured by other villagers? Frustrating, especially since my spaceship supposedly has bio-scanners.

I am pleased to report that the geometric bits are there to make a reasonable facsimile of the original Starship Enterprise.

Also, there seems to be a bias towards using a users own creations as random elements in the game. The second species I encountered in creature mode was one I had made. By the time I scouted my second star system, pretty much every creature I made fiddling around with the Creature Creator had shown up somewhere. Sheer odds are not in favor of this.

It's also worth noting that the "buddy list content only" feature is very much worth it. I didn't turn it on, so the third creature I encountered in creature mode was named "smurf" and I'm currently in trade negotiations with the "Mr. Stabbity" empire.

I haven't seen any penis monsters yet.

I had to go abduct a creature called "dev" off some planet. And in the creature phase I was almost killed by an epic version of a weird croc thing I made in the creature creator way back (go go stealth).

I wouldn't be so forceful with the buy it thing there.

This is another game in the wave of hybrid games. It takes bits and pieces of a lot of different game types and then mashes it together. This kind of annoys some people for some reason (take the ArsTechnica review, for instance). The first phase of the game is basically pac man, not much you can do there. The second is either third person shooting or third person dancing. The third is the same as the second but you have to mind resources and stuff. The fourth is basically Civilization Light. And the fifth is the space exploration game.

Okay, so what. Lets take the ArsTechnica review on the civ phase. He apparently went the military route and didn't die during his conquest of the planet. He then leaps to the assumption that the gameplay here is waiting for expansion packs to make the game more like Civilization. There is your bias. He bought this game expecting a Civ clone.

Another example of him missing the point is when he tried to go the terraforming route in space mode. He failed abysmally at this. After that he went and conquered the universe with military might. There is a pattern here. He started out with a carnivore microorganism and from what I gathered he stayed that route all the way until the space phase. It is little wonder that he had such a difficult time suddenly turning away from his species' war like past. No, I'm not saying this was a lack of skill playing the game but the game actually takes your prior play style into account in later stages. It isn't that big from microorganism to creature phase but the longer you stay on a path the more amplified it gets.

Take my play through so far. I started herbivore and only killed in the microorganism stage when something tried to eat me (I had spines on my rear). In creature phase I made friends with all the little animals everywhere. In tribe phase I only destroyed one village because they attacked my party that was giving them an offering of friendship. One tribe that routinely stole food from me I eventually did make friends with and dominated since they didn't make the bad decision of attacking me. This path was made easy by things like fireworks and rain dances that I earned from my actions in the previous phases. In the civ phase I didn't destroy any cities, I instead converted 6 cities and then used my special brainwash ability that converted the final 2. I also had more casualties in this phase than any other so far.

So what does this tell you? That this game is what it is. If you don't like it, oh well. I'm not a fan of Civilization. But it would be nice if people would stop making weird comparisons. Just because a game has some elements of another game doesn't mean it will play exactly alike. It really felt like he was reviewing it like it was a Civ spinoff and understandably finding it came up short (because it does suck as a civ clone if that is what you're looking for).

So if you're into something that is more nuanced on a generational time scale (hey, just like evolution...go figure) this game should be fun for you. If you're looking for a game of pac man, TPS, or civ clone then it might not be the game for you (well the pac man part is kind of fun stand alone).

Addendum: Should probably put something in about my bias. I'm a biologist.

First reaction was that it's not my type of game (it reminds me of those little Japanese keychain pets that people used to have, back in the day).  But after reading some reviews (MacLife, included), I've come understand that it isn't really any "type" of game, which I suppose is true of all Maxis games.  I'm thinking about getting it.

ScifiterX wrote:

You are missing a concept though, Bat. I was trying to do thing Mac style on the PC before I even really ever used a Mac.

I didn't miss anything. You missed the implied point that you gravitate to doing things Mac-style.

Because of this, I know how to do things on a PC

Umm...

..but it's a chore and a frustration because I can't help but think, now more then but even back then, why is every thing so bass-ackwards to me.

Some people are right-handed, some are lefties. We know the brain is not symmetrical in terms of function, left/right... there are also mixed-dominance types like myself. I'm right-handed, but come out mixed (left) on the simple thumb test. I don't think it's quite so simple overall, but a study on those lines would be fascinating.

I take fairly easily to multiple ways of doing things. That might have something to do with my cross-platformedness.

NAG wrote:

those stupid keychain pets

Tamagotchis.

Yes yes, I knew the name (sadly). I was just using the same terminology for consistencies' sake.

Top 5 Famous Sci-Fi Aliens You Can Play in Spore's Virtual World
As the best video game in 4.5 billion years finally launches this weekend, PM's resident geek crawls the best of Spore Creature Creator for the handful of otherworldly invaders, from Predator to the bloodsuckers of H.G. Wells, that will bring the customized gameplay back into this world.
...

Some of the invading villains on the Sporepedia work better than others—the lizard-men from V, for example, are nothing without their human disguises and giant 80's hairdos. We've ranked the five conquering Spore species that should be devastating whole galaxies from day one.

[imgs]
5. Martians (from War of the Worlds)
4. Xenomorphs (from the Alien Quadrilogy)
3. Arachnids (from Starship Troopers)
2. Predators from Predator
1. Cthulhu Mythos (from the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft)

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technol … 81178.html

For software that appeals to a wide audience like EA's latest sim game Spore, it's sometimes the first time the average person gets a good taste of how digital rights management (DRM) puts the screw on legitimate users.

Spore's DRM limits customers to only three activations after the game is installed. That number isn't restored even if the game is uninstalled. Three is what you get unless you call up Electronic Arts customer support and give them your sob story.

While the restriction may not seem terrible at first blush — consider wanting to install the game at a later date. Consider a computer malfunction that forces the user to wipe their box clean. Consider making room on a hard-drive. There's plenty of legitimate reasons why a paying customer may need (or simply choose to) install the game multiple times as time goes by.
...

Shenanigans from a flash internet mob? Maybe. But the score is a result of 1,662 one-star ratings out of a total of 1,797.

Most of the reviews wax dramatic, such as reviewers claiming the DRM is a "travesty" that ruined the game entirely, or labeling it a "virus."

The legitimacy and appropriateness of the volume of outrage on Amazon may be debatable, but its clearly not good news for EA's PR department. EA has recently been attempting to change its image in the gaming community from a project-killing developer sweatshop to something more positive — but this happening to what it surely expected to be a video game blockbuster is doing it no favors.

Perhaps it's the kick to the pants EA needs to rethink its DRM policy before it demands stool samples at every load screen. ®

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/10 … on_effect/

IT SEEMS MORE THAN one unhappy gamer has joined the rebel alliance against EA’s Spore, and voiced their opinion on Amazon’s customer review section of the game’s page.

The main reason behind this demonstration is the install limit that EA has set in place, limiting consumers to just three installs. If you install/uninstall games frequently, have a laptop or simply own more than one computer to game on, you can imagine you’ll be dialing up EA to ask them to reset the install counter, despite the fact you paid top dollar for the game.

Spore is guaranteed to be on its way to becoming a hit, whether you like it or not, but things are going into overdrive. As of the writing of this article, almost 2000 malcontents have demonstrated their complete insatisfaction with the SecuROM infected game on Amazon.com by scoring the game with a prominent “1-star” rating.

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/ … ds-rootkit

Last edited by Bat (2008-09-11 3:20 am)

And yet, go on Amazon and look at PC games and 2 out of 10 of the top ten games  is... SPORE (regular and GE). In fact 6 are EA titles (including Spore). Take that hippies!

...and with Transgaming having brought SecuRom to Cider, this is likely the OSX user's first taste of that. It's not just for Winders/Boot Camp anymore.