Bit-tech writes:
"Let's be honest right from the start and outright say that, as far as the long-term appeal of Spore goes, the game was a disappointment for most hardcore gamers.
It sold well, it scored well in our Spore review and it was an undeniably important game, with staggering significance for the future of player-driven content...but it was also a bit of a letdown.
Years of hype and expectation were slammed down into the primordial ooze the moment you realised exactly how easy and samey the game was. We actually feel bad for saying that sincethe folks at EA Maxis are really nice people, but it's true.
Luckily though, we don't need to be all sad-faced and depressing for very long, because the peeps at EA Maxis aren't just friendly and chatty, but also clever and good at listening to their online community. As the studio's success with The Sims franchise has shown, they're also pretty good at turning content around quickly when needed, too."
The 2009 GameStooge Awards continue with the fourth part of the Awards – the Technical category that covers expansions, digital games, and the surprise games of 2009.
Winners:
Best Expansion: Fallout 3: Broken Steel
Best Digital Game (Original): Plants Vs. Zombies
Best Digital Game (Adaptation): Trials HD
Best Multiplayer: Halo 3: ODST
Best Game You Didn't Play: Dead Space Extraction
Best Surprise: Batman: Arkham Asylum
Stardock has released Impulse's Top 10 Sellers list for the week ending on January 9.
GP writes: "The sheer scale of Will Wright's vision for Spore was praiseworthy, even if the final product occasionally felt pinched and clipped.
In brief, Spore zoomed out from the microscopic to the telescopic in five phases as players evolved and nurtured a single celled organism representing a species into a space captain representing a galactic empire. Unfortunately, the first four phases played like a rambling prologue to the final galactic phase. But what it lacked in aspects of game-play it made up for in charm and creativity."
