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Should I play Spore on Mac or PC?

M

mariotheotaku

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 16, 2008
155
0
I have a MBP with Windows Vista installed via boot camp and I wanted to know if the keyboard layout of the Mac would make a real difference if I play on the Vista side since it does on some of my games I have on Vista.

thank you
 
It will play exactly the same. Same keyboard, same key settings, same everything but OS.
 
i've been playing it on my baseline mbp and it's been great. no lag, no problems. i would say just stick with the os x but perhaps its more of a personal preference. in my opinion, the more i can keep/do on my mac rather than windows, the better :D
 
I'd say neither. ~2,000 1 star reviews on Amazon can't be wrong...

Anyway, DRM politics issues aside, I'd recommend running it on the Mac side if you can. There's no registry there, so you can backup and delete the game when you want the disk space back. You can restore it later without using an install up. (Okay, that's still about DRM, but this time the technical side of it.)
 
Agree with above. It seems that the securom might be a bit more limiting on Windows. I'll be installing it on my OS X side when I pick it up in a few hours.
 
I'm running it on my 2.4 24" iMac. runs perfectly. Great graphics. No stutters. Smooth as silk.
 
Now that I have the full game....

I play Spore in 1920x1200 with all graphics set to medium. This was mostly the default (except res). So I bumped some stuff to high, just haven't re-launched yet. But on medium the only lag I had was the EA logo :p. Everything else ran very smooth.
 
Mackilroy said:
I've heard the vast majority of those are for the DRM, not the actual game. So yes, they can be wrong.
Click to expand...

If the DRM makes the game not worth playing, then they're not wrong.

Though given the reviews I've read about the game, it doesn't sound much worth playing in spite of the DRM. Best description I've seen is a 5 mile wide 2' deep kiddie pool. There's just not that much to the game once you play it for a couple of hours. Of course, if that is exactly what you want out of a game, then have fun with it!
 
It's a very shallow game; everything is simplistic and fairly easy to do. It's linear and basically you spend time acquiring "XP" and "equipment" as a RPG. What'd you expect from Maxis though?

Although I must say, it's even more dumbed down than the Sims. Great concept but mediocre execution; things are just too...easy and repetitive.
 
Keleko said:
If the DRM makes the game not worth playing, then they're not wrong.
Click to expand...
Yes, they are, because that's like judging a book by its cover. So yes, they are wrong. The DRM is not the game.

Keleko said:
Though given the reviews I've read about the game, it doesn't sound much worth playing in spite of the DRM. Best description I've seen is a 5 mile wide 2' deep kiddie pool. There's just not that much to the game once you play it for a couple of hours. Of course, if that is exactly what you want out of a game, then have fun with it!
Click to expand...
The initial stages are not very complicated, but once you get to Space, all that changes considerably.
 
Mackilroy said:
Yes, they are, because that's like judging a book by its cover. So yes, they are wrong. The DRM is not the game.
Click to expand...
It isn't quite judging a book by it's cover. It's rejecting the publisher's fine print you must agree to before you can read the book. Would you want to buy a book you can only pull off the shelf 3 times and then beg the publisher to let you do any more after that? That's the closest equivalent to a book I can think of. Wouldn't that make you upset no matter what the book is about? (Hmm... maybe a slightly closer equivalent is only put the book on 3 different shelves, and after that, you can't read it again until you beg the publisher. If you replace your "shelves" every year or so, like computers usually are - especially PCs, or even just a crashed drive replacement - then I can see complaining no matter what the content of the product is.)

The initial stages are not very complicated, but once you get to Space, all that changes considerably.
Click to expand...
From the reviews I've read, the space part gets pretty tedious and doesn't sound very fun long term. Getting back to that stage with a different creature sounds even more tedious. There are better, deeper, space strategy games than Spore without DRM (Galactic Civilizations 2, for example).

As I said, though, if you find the space part of the game the most fun, then by all means keep playing. For me it doesn't sound like fun, so I won't be playing. The DRM involved doesn't help matters, either. For many people it completely turned them away from the game, even if the game itself sounded like fun. I have 2 close friends that decided not to get the game solely because they found the DRM offensive. Just like any other software has a shrinkwrap agreement, they decided to choose "disagree" to the agreement and not make a purchase. It appears they are far from alone in that choice.
 
Keleko said:
It isn't quite judging a book by it's cover. It's rejecting the publisher's fine print you must agree to before you can read the book. Would you want to buy a book you can only pull off the shelf 3 times and then beg the publisher to let you do any more after that? That's the closest equivalent to a book I can think of. Wouldn't that make you upset no matter what the book is about? (Hmm... maybe a slightly closer equivalent is only put the book on 3 different shelves, and after that, you can't read it again until you beg the publisher. If you replace your "shelves" every year or so, like computers usually are - especially PCs, or even just a crashed drive replacement - then I can see complaining no matter what the content of the product is.)
Click to expand...
I'm no defender of EA, and there are other routes to getting more installs (cracking it, though that's not exactly legal, now is it?) but they did say they'd 'refund' installs if necessary. While I agree that that is stupid, for me personally it's not enough to not buy the game, as I can easily get around that if I need to.


Keleko said:
From the reviews I've read, the space part gets pretty tedious and doesn't sound very fun long term. Getting back to that stage with a different creature sounds even more tedious. There are better, deeper, space strategy games than Spore without DRM (Galactic Civilizations 2, for example).
Click to expand...
No more tedious than any other space strategy game I've played (MOO, Star Control, Sins of a Solar Empire, and so on) but perhaps that's just me.

Keleko said:
As I said, though, if you find the space part of the game the most fun, then by all means keep playing. For me it doesn't sound like fun, so I won't be playing. The DRM involved doesn't help matters, either. For many people it completely turned them away from the game, even if the game itself sounded like fun. I have 2 close friends that decided not to get the game solely because they found the DRM offensive. Just like any other software has a shrinkwrap agreement, they decided to choose "disagree" to the agreement and not make a purchase. It appears they are far from alone in that choice.
Click to expand...
I think we'll just agree to disagree on this point. :) If you don't find the game fun, that doesn't bother me. I do, and I bought my copy for me, so it's all good. I really don't care if people don't like the game, I'm simply a stickler for the proprieties in this case.
 
Mine seems to skip somewhat in the intro movie, and in the space stage on trading routes, etc...

its playable, but doesnt look as good as windows.
 
Mine was slow as hell until I monkeyed with the settings... I don't remember what settings I played with. Now its smooth as butter and looks decent enough for my tastes.

I don't get what all the outcry is, its not like we didn't know what the game was going to be like... there was enough videos on the internet showing it. That said, its a game that tries to incorporate 5 games into one and its $50. Its not going to be everything for everyone. I think its charming and fun.

Of course, the end-result will cost over $200 because the money is in the unreleased expansion packs that DOES make it everything for everyone....
 
Mackilroy said:
I'm no defender of EA, and there are other routes to getting more installs (cracking it, though that's not exactly legal, now is it?) but they did say they'd 'refund' installs if necessary. While I agree that that is stupid, for me personally it's not enough to not buy the game, as I can easily get around that if I need to.
Click to expand...

By way of a non-free phone number.

Mackilroy said:
Yes, they are, because that's like judging a book by its cover. So yes, they are wrong. The DRM is not the game.
Click to expand...

It isn't, but it severely limits the enjoyment for a game when I think that in 6 months time I'll have to phone up EA to allow more installs, or jump through hoops and lose the online part if I get a crack for my perfectly legal game. Just having to reboot to play a game in Windows is a major pain and takes away from the game experience to a lot of people on this forum.

Anyways I've played a bit of this game and going off friends who've played to the space stage - apparently it's just a compilation of 5 minigames and (yet another) game to be massively hyped and also utter rubbish. Even if the Amazon rating wasn't dogged by the DRM people I'd still agree with the overall score.
 
First of all you should not pay for spore.
Supporting that kind of DRM is just a way to say you accept being treated like a pirate, even tho you pay for the game.
And yes DRM is the game as it is the you can experience your game. The fact that the install times cannot be altered digitally (like in iTunes for example) just show how pathetic this is.
The game came out as a pirated version even before the game was released and if someone want the game pirated they don't go to their friends house and loan the CD + CDkey to play. They download it from the torrent sites and use a universal CDkey. So all the DRM restrictions is ONLY there to annoy the user who actually pay for the game.
Meanwhile EA don't understand the big fuzz about the DRM complaints. And so the Pirating continues.

In the regard of spore on Windows or OSX.
Now i have a Mac Pro and i have huge problems on the mac side.
If i have the "Light effects" set to anything but low the game runs at 2 fps.
When i have it on low and run highest res and all else on high it runs at 50fps. Guess its a bug in the software but from that perspective i play it on Windows.

Another thing worth noticing is that the game is infact running emulated on Mac and is not a native app (aka transgaming), the .app file even contain the PC .exe file which is the file being emulated. So you should see a remarkable preformence boost by running it in windows.
 
Keleko said:
It isn't quite judging a book by it's cover. It's rejecting the publisher's fine print you must agree to before you can read the book. Would you want to buy a book you can only pull off the shelf 3 times and then beg the publisher to let you do any more after that? That's the closest equivalent to a book I can think of. Wouldn't that make you upset no matter what the book is about? (Hmm... maybe a slightly closer equivalent is only put the book on 3 different shelves, and after that, you can't read it again until you beg the publisher. If you replace your "shelves" every year or so, like computers usually are - especially PCs, or even just a crashed drive replacement - then I can see complaining no matter what the content of the product is.)
Click to expand...

I'm not a fan of DRM by any means but that is a very stupid and insubstantial analogy.

A better analogy would be not being able to read the book in more than 3 different places and you needing to "reactivate" your book every time you changed your furniture. Even then the analogy sounds worse than it is because books are portable.

DRM sucks big time but I don't think it's bad enough to miss out on a game, however, I don't think Spore is that great a game, I got up to the Civilization stage and I'm not impressed thus far, it's kind of fun taken in casually and light-hearted, the problem with that is, the charm doesn't last long, I did enjoy myself QUITE a lot when I encountered my own creatures, maybe there should be a filter to ban all Maxis and outside content and only let you use your own and your friends' content, maybe there is but Maxis' content was boring.

Well, Spore is just ok, Mercenaries 2 bombed though Crysis Warhead looks very impressive, let's just hope the rest of titles this year don't suck.
 
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