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[IMG News]

Inside Mac Games has posted a review of the eagerly awaited life simulation game, Spore from Electronic Arts and Transgaming Technologies. In the game, you control the evolution of a life form from single-cell beginnings all the way to its eventual evolution as a space-faring race. Here's an excerpt from the review:

The graphics of Spore are breathtaking. The trees are beautiful, the creatures are mostly well animated, every action has a corresponding effect, and no effect has been left out. The majority of the graphics are found in the space stage, but that makes sense when you consider the fact that it's easily fifty times as long as any of the other stages.

The main area of Spore's graphics, however, is the portion of Spore that no one can deny is absolutely excellent, the editors. The procedural generation of creature animations, vehicle movement, and spaceship effects are amazing. When you create a creature with no legs at all, it slithers along the ground. When you create a car with a jet attached and four wheels, it leaves a vapor trail and rolls along the ground. When you create a creature with a single leg, it hops along as you'd expect. The editors are an incredible technological marvel, and well worth the price of the game by themselves.

Follow the link below to read the full review of Spore.

Return to Full Article - InsideMacGames News

[clocknova]

Wow.  The last paragraph is practically an endorsement of software piracy, albeit only for those who have legally purchased the game.  The author better be careful, he might get banned!  

[calroth]

From article:

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This might not seem like that big a deal, but you can easily use all your installations on a single computer just by switching between having your mouse, speakers, or headphones plugged in. This is a completely broken system and very frustrating.

Got evidence of this? The guys at Ars Technica tested it, and found that re-installs on the same system didn't use an activation.

Also, can someone say what gets installed by SecuROM on a Mac? Any background services, etc.? I'd like to know what to look out for.

[gbafan]

calroth, on September 28th 2008, 04:22 PM, said:

Also, can someone say what gets installed by SecuROM on a Mac? Any background services, etc.? I'd like to know what to look out for.

Nothing gets installed SecuROM wise when running the Mac version.   SecuROM is bundled into the Cider port and will launch when you click the Spore icon.  It's completely self contained within the Spore package and does not infect a Mac as it does on Windows.  I guess that's the only real bonus for running Spore on a Mac, otherwise it's just a DRM nightmare.

Quote

Not only do you have to install SecuRom, which has serious bugs to work out, but you are also only allowed a limited number of installations. This might not seem like that big a deal, but you can easily use all your installations on a single computer just by switching between having your mouse, speakers, or headphones plugged in. This is a completely broken system and very frustrating.

Seriously, this whole statement is false.  How about game reviewers review the game instead of the DRM... in this case the reviewer doesn't know much about Spore DRM.  I'm not defending the horrid DRM in Spore but if you're going to bad mouth it at least do so with solid facts first.

[bobbob]

calroth, on September 28th 2008, 04:22 PM, said:

Got evidence of this? The guys at Ars Technica tested it, and found that re-installs on the same system didn't use an activation

They certainly use some kind of hardware identification, so if you change anything from RAM to graphics cards it's liable to use up another activation. Probably user account IDs, OS installation IDs, partition IDs, etc. get mixed in, too. The Mac version emulates some of that, so it might not be as picky. EA themselves probably have no clue how it works, either. Certainly 2k don't.