Voting for the US election commences sometime tomorow and to celebrate the Spore team have created all the Presidential and vice-Presidential candidates for you to download and play with. Simply head over here to get them.
I haven’t been keeping track of Dead Space really, but I read Jim’s review of the game in the next issue of PC Gamer and, I must say I was intrigued. I thought it would be worthwhile seeing how much it was on various websites. My first port of call was amazon.co.uk and I was shocked to see a rating of only 1 1/2 stars. I was obviously puzzled as this is meant to be a pretty good game.
Some investigation revealed that there were ten reviews giving the game one star and they all put forward the same complaints that I have numerous times.
EA caused an outrage amongst many with some dubious decisions regarding the DRM that came with Spore. It seems that they are starting to realise the damage they have done to the game with the DRM and are back tracking rapidly in order to appease fans of the game. It emerged a week or so ago that the install limit had been bumped up to 5, now EA are taking things a step further and changing the account system.
The long and short of it is this, you can now have five screen names for one account. You will have to go to the Spore website and set up the screen names there, from then on you will be able to log in to any of the screen names when you log into your account. Creatures will appear in the Sporepedia under the name of the screen name which created them. There is no current timeline for when this will go live, just a matter of waiting I guess. It obviously isn’t an ideal improvement, but it is a small improvement. More details can be found here.
DRM and the Piracy issue in general has been causing a hell of a load of debate, anger and frustration for many people over recent months. The issue has become increasingly pressing since the release of Spore and the announcement of DRM for Red Alert 3. I have seen threads popping up in forums all over the place discussing DRM and piracy within and seperate from the context of Spore.
The first thread, and I the biggest that I am aware of so far is this one from the PC Gamer forums. This thread has spiralled around for over a month now and has featured many arguments on the role of DRM in pushing people into piracy.
Secondly we have this slightly less extensive thread from halflife2.net where many people again deride DRM and the measures implemented in Spore. This has seen a craze of DRM related threads including this one revealing Crysis Warhead will be requiring online activation.
Finally we can see that the madness has even spread to the Football Manager forums with this thread discussing people’s fears that Football Manager 2009 will include some draconian DRM measures.
After yesterday’s report about the Spore Creature Creator being leaked early it is now available properly right here.
The full version of the Creature Creator (which Buttonbasher have had an in-depth look at) is being released at various times depending on who you purchase it from. It is thus best to check on availability before purchase.
For now those of you who downloaded the leaked Trial version, or have just downloaded the Trial version, well you will be pleased to know that the online sharing parts are slowly coming online which is really great news.
More information here.
That little dude is called Evo-Saur and he is my first creation in the recently leaked Spore Creature Creator. The Creature Creator reportedly was made available by EA but was quickly taken down. The files are currently floating about many torrent sites such as this one.
Note that currently it is only the free trial version of the Creature Creator that is out there. The trial version and the full version should be released on Wednesday (a delay of one day) according to this EA page.
I am currently having great fun tweaking around with my creatures such as my Crocasaur which is above. Even with the limited number of options available with this leaked trial version it is clear that people will have a great time playing about with it.
I think EA are making the right choice with releasing the Creature Creator early, it is going to allow people to explore and make crazy creatures before the full game comes out so that when people can get down to playing they know what to do and make creatures to actually play with, rather than jokes.
I’ll be honest, I have been a bit lazy with my Spore news recently, I think that I have to make amends for that and I will start to do so now.
The first piece of news comes way of Shacknews which has revealed the minimum and recommended specs for Spore on the PC. They are really quite reasonable.
FOR WINDOWS XP
o 2.0 GHz P4 processor or equivalent
o 512 MB RAM
o A 128 MB Video Card, with support for Pixel Shader 2.0
o At least 6 GB of hard drive spaceFOR WINDOWS VISTA
o 2.0 GHz P4 processor or equivalent
o 768 MB RAM
o A 128 MB Video Card, with support for Pixel Shader 2.0
o At least 6 GB of hard drive space
Spore’s Gameplay Producer Matt Powers (awesome name!) talks us through the Cell Phase of Spore.
Spore lands September 7th so keep your eyes out for even more news over the coming months!
Some might say I was calling for blood when I talked about the anti-piracy measures being implemented with Mass Effect and Spore, well now I can take back my outrage and let you all know about some good news.
EA have changed tact and the anti-piracy measures announced the other day are not going to be part of Spore and Mass Effect when they come out later this year. While both will still be using SecuROM and require an initial online activation the 10-day re-activation has been done away with.
Great news (with more infomation following) as it shows that EA have listened to the many complaints that were raised following the initial announcement and have changed tact to better cater to many users. Also this stops us feeling like we are being punished for legally buying games!
Spore, Mass Effect, I am sorry, but you have just been struck of my buying list if this Shacknews report is true. The Shacknews report links to this thread on the BioWare forums where BioWare technical producer Derek French reveals some very interesting, but worrying information regarding copy-protection measures for the PC versions of Mass Effect and Spore.
While his full post follows after the jump I will give the lowdown on what he says.
- You can install Mass Effect as normal – internet activation required
- From this point on you don’t need the Mass Effect PC DVD in the PC to play
- SecuROM will check the validity of the CD Key after 5 days of Mass Effect being installed
- After this check you have 10 days of playing guaranteed.
- Upon starting Mass Effect SecuROM will attemp to check the CD Key
- If SecuROM isn’t able to check within these 10 days then the CD Key will have to be re-checked before playing again
- If the CD Check is bad then the game will be locked until you get in touch with EA Tech Support
- This system is being used on Spore as well