Spore...
Okay, so I, like so many others, bought and have played Spore...it's just too bad the game is pretty crappy.
The first part (the Cell) of the game is over simple, and could probably have gone on for a few more levels.
The Second part is, imo, the best part of the game, but it really shows part of the flaws with it. First of all, whatever you ate in the cell phase determines what you can and cannot use for a mouth; carnivores, omnivores, and herbivores all have 16 or so mouths, but you can't, for example, make a carnivore with an omnivore's mouth. Secondly, you have to go out and hunt for the different parts, which you gain ether by finding them in glowing piles of bones, or by killing/impressing other species's alphas.
But here lays the flaw; first of all, a good number of 'parts in the bones' almost always exist by the ultra aggressive species or single 'epic' creatures. Aggressive species can't be 'impressed' so you have to fight and kill them, which is a problem if your creature is not built to fight. Epic creatures are another problem all together; for some ungodly reason, Will Wright felt the need to include 'supersized' versions of various creature creations, which aren't killible, and generally run around and lay the smack down on your sorry ass.
Now, the problem is, you can't really get all the parts in the creature phase, without building a creature that isn't what you want for your end result; the only way to impress or kill the higher level creatures is to create a creature with max stats in the chosen area, which takes a lot of fun out of this stages; another problem is that these 'piles of bones' aren't marked on your map, and nether is your death; if and when you die, it's unlikely you'll ever figure out how to get back to your point-of-death and complete whatever you where doing (such as harvesting bone piles).
In any case, you eventually advance to the Tribal stage.
The Tribal stage is terrible, there isn't any really point or interest in it. The only 'designing' you do with with the tribal outfits, which are A)extremely limited in number of opinions, and B) really stupid looking.
At some point, you end up at the Civilization phase. This part is nearly as bad; you get to design a Town hall, a house, a factory, a entertainment building, as well as a land vehicle, a boat, and an aeroplane. First of all, at this point, depending on whether you were warlike, friendly, or balanced in tribal, determines your starting types of vehicles; War, Religion, or Economic. War units get guns, Religion gets noise makers, and Economy get 'bling for their thing'. I don't really want to go into detail, but more or less, it's really boring.
Finally we come to the Space Age.
This age is...interesting; the game in general seems to go from Pacman to RPG to RTS to RTS back to RPG in the space age; the basic idea is that you zip around talking to aliens and generally sandboxing.
Sandboxing is a LIE. First of all, the only way to get access to most of the tools, like the monolith, is to fly around placing colonies, harvesting a planet's spice, flying to another planet and trying to get the best deal for it. Using this money, you then spend it on tools like an upgraded laser, and better interstellar engines.
But here's the problems; first of all, the only way to get money is through colonies mining spice, but the best spice, the stuff with real value, such as blue/purple/green/pink, are not only RARE, but when you do find them, there is always an idiot or two siting on top of these resources. You can try and buy the star system from them, but that costs money you don't have, you can try to blow them up, but this puts you at war with the opposing empire.
Now, there are several events that can occur; first, your colonize can fact econological disaster, which requires you go and fix the environment, within a short time limit, or else. Your colonizes may also be targeted by pirates for plundering, requiring you to go pop them. If you happen to be at WAR, your colonizes maybe targeted and require defending. Further more, anyone you're in an alliance with will also request you save their asses from all this, and more.
Because, appearently, YOU, and only you, are the only person with a spaceship in the whole galaxy.
Whats worst is that this all happens at once; you'll get like 5 different 'events' happening all at the same time, then fly around for 20 minutes with nothing to do.
Anyways, eventually, you earn enough badges that you can unlock the various tools you can spend your money on, and then you can...Do something I guess.
The problem with the space age is that it's not a real sandbox in the sense that you have earn all the tools you'd want to use, and some tools require ammo, like the monolith, and all the monolith does is turn a planet of idiots into a planet of idiot sentient in the civilization phase. The way I see it is this; ether focus on an RPG sandbox, or an exploration sandbox, don't dangle them both, then give me nether.
And the problem is, and this really pisses me off, is that I know Will Wright is GOING to address a good number of these problems, but only in expansions. In fact, I suspect Will Wright builds the whole game first, then selectively removes sections of it, raps them in a new package, and makes you pay for them.
Don't believe me? Look at the Sims and Sims 2. If you look closely, they have almost the same expansion feature releasement; one perfect example is that in the last expansions of both Sims and Sims 2, 'magic' is added...
I don't mind expansions, but I expect them to ADD to the game constructively, not to just be parts of the game that where removed so I'd have to pay several hundred dollars completing the game through expansions.
The first part (the Cell) of the game is over simple, and could probably have gone on for a few more levels.
The Second part is, imo, the best part of the game, but it really shows part of the flaws with it. First of all, whatever you ate in the cell phase determines what you can and cannot use for a mouth; carnivores, omnivores, and herbivores all have 16 or so mouths, but you can't, for example, make a carnivore with an omnivore's mouth. Secondly, you have to go out and hunt for the different parts, which you gain ether by finding them in glowing piles of bones, or by killing/impressing other species's alphas.
But here lays the flaw; first of all, a good number of 'parts in the bones' almost always exist by the ultra aggressive species or single 'epic' creatures. Aggressive species can't be 'impressed' so you have to fight and kill them, which is a problem if your creature is not built to fight. Epic creatures are another problem all together; for some ungodly reason, Will Wright felt the need to include 'supersized' versions of various creature creations, which aren't killible, and generally run around and lay the smack down on your sorry ass.
Now, the problem is, you can't really get all the parts in the creature phase, without building a creature that isn't what you want for your end result; the only way to impress or kill the higher level creatures is to create a creature with max stats in the chosen area, which takes a lot of fun out of this stages; another problem is that these 'piles of bones' aren't marked on your map, and nether is your death; if and when you die, it's unlikely you'll ever figure out how to get back to your point-of-death and complete whatever you where doing (such as harvesting bone piles).
In any case, you eventually advance to the Tribal stage.
The Tribal stage is terrible, there isn't any really point or interest in it. The only 'designing' you do with with the tribal outfits, which are A)extremely limited in number of opinions, and B) really stupid looking.
At some point, you end up at the Civilization phase. This part is nearly as bad; you get to design a Town hall, a house, a factory, a entertainment building, as well as a land vehicle, a boat, and an aeroplane. First of all, at this point, depending on whether you were warlike, friendly, or balanced in tribal, determines your starting types of vehicles; War, Religion, or Economic. War units get guns, Religion gets noise makers, and Economy get 'bling for their thing'. I don't really want to go into detail, but more or less, it's really boring.
Finally we come to the Space Age.
This age is...interesting; the game in general seems to go from Pacman to RPG to RTS to RTS back to RPG in the space age; the basic idea is that you zip around talking to aliens and generally sandboxing.
Sandboxing is a LIE. First of all, the only way to get access to most of the tools, like the monolith, is to fly around placing colonies, harvesting a planet's spice, flying to another planet and trying to get the best deal for it. Using this money, you then spend it on tools like an upgraded laser, and better interstellar engines.
But here's the problems; first of all, the only way to get money is through colonies mining spice, but the best spice, the stuff with real value, such as blue/purple/green/pink, are not only RARE, but when you do find them, there is always an idiot or two siting on top of these resources. You can try and buy the star system from them, but that costs money you don't have, you can try to blow them up, but this puts you at war with the opposing empire.
Now, there are several events that can occur; first, your colonize can fact econological disaster, which requires you go and fix the environment, within a short time limit, or else. Your colonizes may also be targeted by pirates for plundering, requiring you to go pop them. If you happen to be at WAR, your colonizes maybe targeted and require defending. Further more, anyone you're in an alliance with will also request you save their asses from all this, and more.
Because, appearently, YOU, and only you, are the only person with a spaceship in the whole galaxy.
Whats worst is that this all happens at once; you'll get like 5 different 'events' happening all at the same time, then fly around for 20 minutes with nothing to do.
Anyways, eventually, you earn enough badges that you can unlock the various tools you can spend your money on, and then you can...Do something I guess.
The problem with the space age is that it's not a real sandbox in the sense that you have earn all the tools you'd want to use, and some tools require ammo, like the monolith, and all the monolith does is turn a planet of idiots into a planet of idiot sentient in the civilization phase. The way I see it is this; ether focus on an RPG sandbox, or an exploration sandbox, don't dangle them both, then give me nether.
And the problem is, and this really pisses me off, is that I know Will Wright is GOING to address a good number of these problems, but only in expansions. In fact, I suspect Will Wright builds the whole game first, then selectively removes sections of it, raps them in a new package, and makes you pay for them.
Don't believe me? Look at the Sims and Sims 2. If you look closely, they have almost the same expansion feature releasement; one perfect example is that in the last expansions of both Sims and Sims 2, 'magic' is added...
I don't mind expansions, but I expect them to ADD to the game constructively, not to just be parts of the game that where removed so I'd have to pay several hundred dollars completing the game through expansions.