The end of the world is coming

OK, it's not Duke Nukem Forever, but it was getting there...


http://www.news.com/8301-13772_3-9870315-52.html?tag=nefd.only

Finally, a game for my Mac! That is, if it's actually a proper port unlike EA's other crap PC->Mac attempts.

I'm hoping EA will eventually get the ports down to the point where just the one game itself is compatible for both PC/Mac installations on the same disc, such as Blizzard has been doing for years now.

Anyways, going to be looking forward to previews of the title. The damn thing has been in the making of a while, and considering how grandeur the game strives to be, I hope there's a crapload of polish on it in terms of bug-squashing territory.

Sweet... another yay from a mac owner...

Pfft!

Morons announced that game god knows how long ago, and I was initially excited at the possibilities it presented for gameplay, but after months of reading previews and seeing screenshots, I feel like I've already played the game and know exactly what its potential is, and I now have next to no interest in playing it.

I read that the game would automatically grab worlds other people had created so you could explore and conquer them, but if I can't specifically choose to visit worlds that friends have created, then they might as well have just left everything to be randomly generated.

Yet. I'll believe it when I see it.

Actually, you can subscribe to other players' (friends') content, making it occur more frequently in your local game. I would not be surprised if the same was the case with other planets in the universe.

The online aspect is really cool. I rather dislike how people use the web for everything, so I consider Spore's system very exciting. They have what is normally handled by an ugly web site community / forum system all wrapped neatly within the game's own interface, which should make it very streamlined, integrated, quick and easy. Essentially, they have realized that part of the experience in a game like Spore is the big player community. That experience should be made easier and more direct, and be accepted as a core piece of the game rather than some ugly series of web pages tucked away in a corner somewhere, discovered only by a tiny fraction of the player base.

As for it being announced "a long time ago", I seem to be in a minority here that sees the three years since 2005 as a rather small number. Yes, they were open about the project, but that's because it is a really great one! There are a ton of games with development times going into four years. Besides that, really good ones are very often announced well before their release. ...Half-Life 2, as a quick example.

As for them ruining the surprise of something new, I almost thought that, too, and am definitely hoping that they are cleverly hiding the coolest details. (The tiny details are definitely going to be where Spore either wins or loses).
...But then again, Wright's philosophy with this one is not really about surprising people with the game, but having the game surprise people with themselves. Besides, I trust Maxis to push out a really, really good product. We saw a lot of The Sims, but that didn't stop it from being pretty neat. People knew what SimCity 4 was immediately upon hearing the title, but it was an interesting game, too.

I don't remember hearing about Half Life 2 three years before its release. Or Team Fortress 2 for that matter. I think those were announced when there was only a year to go.

The movie industry seems to get this and I can't recall them ever releasing a trailer for a movie more than a year in advance of the film's release.

Though I still think that's too long a period of time to be teasing people, because there are still a lot of movies which I'd have gone to see if they were only three months from release, but which I've lost all interest in by the time they come out.

Of course those are mostly stupid cheap little comedy movies like Dodgeball, or Balls of Fury. A movie like Spiderman, or Batman, or Lord of the Rings will maintain my intertest. It really comes down to how good a movie it is and how badly I want to see it.

That is why advertising Half Life 2 a year in advance of its release is okay, but advertising a casual game like Spore three years in advance is a dumb move.

And avertising a shareware game in advance at all would just be stupid, unless it's the next Doom. :-)

except the end of the world actually will come december 22, 2012, one month after Hillary Clinton is elected president

Actually Team Fortress 2 WAS announced like 7 or 8 years or so ago, it was announced over a year year after Team Fortress Classic was released. Then it was put on hold for a long time....



Fanboy was like this. It's still not out yet and I saw the trailer when I was watching Matrix Revolutions in the theatres...

Although I do agree with you sswift, I really have no interest in spore anymore... It was just too long