Tendo City

http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/02/1...surprises/

You know, I've never really cared about this game... preview's worth reading, though.

So Spore is similar to black & white?

Well that goes against what they had said earlier, about each "level" of gameplay having the depth of a related game (Sim City, Civilization, Sim Earth). It'll be annoying if it's just about content making. Sure that's fun, but I had been hoping for full fledged games at each "level".

I worry that they did this because they got in over their head when they described the sheer number of features and were forced to scale things back just to get things done by deadline.

Well, Spore has always been more or less the ultimate sandbox experience and this latest article doesn't really go against that.

It'd be nice to have essentialy three or four different games spliced together with Maxis magic, but something like that would take way longer than they could possibly spend making it.

As long as each segment has enough content to keep me busy for a few hours or so on each playthrough, I'm not going to complain.

That's not what I'm saying it's going against. It's going against the part where they said each part would be as involved as Civilization or Sim Earth, based on the stage. Also, an automated planet maker? I'd rather do that part myself.

I'm still interested, just not as interested as I was before.

Quote:Also, an automated planet maker?I'd rather do that part myself.

I'm pretty sure that they said from the start that other planets are populated based on other player's designs.

Quote:It's going against the part where they said each part would be as involved as Civilization or Sim Earth, based on the stage.

I don't think they ever said that each section of Spore was going to be as deep and content-rich as each of those games, just that those games and such were their inspiration for each part.

Quote:I worry that they did this because they got in over their head when they described the sheer number of features and were forced to scale things back just to get things done by deadline.

That is, as I think ASM said, "Molyneux-itis"?

It does sound like that is exactly what happened. The 'cell' stage is supposed to take 15 minutes? The game is heavily balanced towards character design? But what about the actual gameplay?

I'm not sure what I was expecting because as I said I've never looked really closely into what Spore actually is, besides 'huge life sim game', but if it really is just about creature design... well, that's too bad. That certainly doesn't sound much like what I remember, whatever it was I remember. :D

I mean... shouldn't it be like some kind of broader, yet more approachable, SimEarth game or something?

It makes sense that they're taking it this way -- Maxis has, after all, reached its greatest success with The Sims, a very mass-market oriented game almost entirely about content creation -- but still... SimCity and SimCity 2000 were their best games. Those were about building, and creating... but also about being very solid, very well developed games. But they gradually lost that, SimCity 4 perhaps aside... I was hoping Spore might be Maxis getting back on track, but it seems not, sadly.

You see that's the thing. When I heard that Sim City Societies was scaling things back, my main thought was "eh, I'm more interested in Spore anyway".

It's not like making a bunch of custom content isn't fun in it's own right, but that's not the game I wanted to play. I wanted what they originally said they were going for, which was an incredibly in-depth simulation game.

I suppose I should have been curious from the start. I mean the only videos of gameplay they ever really showed were related to the custom content, not how the simulation stages operated.

Given that almost every developer who ever developed for the PC seems to have decided for good that the complex PC game is dead, it's not surprising at all, sadly. :(

What ever happened to making a game that was easy to learn, but had huge depth under the surface, like the early SimCity games? This could still have that, but it sure isn't sounding like it. Custom content on its own isn't a game... custom content is something to add something to the game that already exists outside of it. They've got things backwards.

I still am interested, but it all hinges on "how simple is simple". It can still be fun to a certain extent but if the "City" era consists of "make the "funnest" building you can and the town will basically take care of itself" (basically, Sim City Societies), then I'm not sure I'll be all that interested. I like the idea of having a huge "sandbox", sure, but here's a fact check. I personally find actual sand boxes boring. I was always a lot more interested in those giant "moon gym" domes made of bars, or those really really tall swings. If this game is a lot closer to "actual sand box" in that I can make a creature look like whatever I want, and tell it to move left or right, but beyond that there's nothing much to actually do with it, then I'm not so sure I actually want the game any more.

I loved Legos. They were my favorite toys for years.

But I didn't just love building sets and then watching them sit there or taking them apart and building something different over and over, I loved playing with them. Having pretend battles between my Medieval armies. Having adventures in the town. Etc. Both parts were necessary for it to be great... but without the ability to play with it, the building would have been pointless. I'd rank the playing above the building, as fun as the building was.

Quote:But I didn't just love building sets and then watching them sit there or taking them apart and building something different over and over, I loved playing with them. Having pretend battles between my Medieval armies. Having adventures in the town. Etc.

Spore doesn't allow you to do both?

We'll see if it does or not. That's the whole point... that they seem to be scaling back the "game" content in favor of more focus on content creation. But the game isn't out yet, so we'll see.

They specifically said that their original plans were for their to only be real "missions" in the space mode, but expanded that to include EVERY mode.

I think they're pushing the content creation part because they are releasing that before the actual game. From what I've read of Spore (not as much as I'd like) the content creation could be a game in itself, but is just one part of the larger game.

I am glad that they added more missions.

I'm still worried that they scaled back the depth of what you could do in a town. Let me put it this way. If they wanted to make a simpler mode of play for a lot of it, they could always have a "simple play" mode, where the game more or less manages the micro stuff on it's own.

There is always room for expansion. Civilization IV, for example, has progressively added depth to the main game (not just units) with it's expansions.