brianjacobsendotnet

We will be walking with our dog at See Spot Walk this year and would love your pledge. Follow the link below the video to help Ember Help IHS. Thanks

http://firstgiving.com/emberdog

Like a lot of people I was reading and waiting for spore for some time. The concept sounded awesome. If someone asked me what the game was the short answer is The Sims for Monsters. You start out as a small single cell type creature in the water and from there you have to collect parts to begin your evolution in to a land creature. Once you hit land you start becoming civilized and work towards the end goal of reaching space so you can explore other planets.

*note - I am playing this on the Mac, I don’t know how different if it all it is on the pc.

The graphics are good. I am only on the second level but like what I have seen so far. The first cell stage is beautiful. Parts of it remind me of Yoshi’s Island. You will start seeing bigger creatures underneath yours and they have this really cool hand drawn look to them. I think they look that way because they are in the water and have that water motion over them.

The gameplay is a lot of fun. Especially when you get on land. If you like simulation games you will enjoy the gameplay. Its simple to figure out and you can pick up and play for 5 mins or a few hours.

The DRM - To me this is a non issue. Apparently you only have three installs of the game before you have to call EA and get your key code reset so you can install it again. I don’t ever see this being an issue for me ever. You also have to activate the product over the internet immediately in order to play. Again a non issue for me. It took all of 10 seconds to do that and in this day and age its nothing really. You can choose to connect to the internet while you play and get new creatures from other players randomly or never connect to the internet. The only time you must connect is to register the game initially. Whats great about that is you dont have to keep the dvd in your machine to play. The internet registration allows that.

The only reason I bring up the DRM issue is because geeks everywhere have their panties in a twist because of this. Just search spore reviews on google or better yet go to amazon and watch the drama unfold there. You will see 1000’s of 1 star reviews from people who havent play the game. The are only there bitching about the DRM. I am sure most of them downloaded the hacked version that was out days before the official version. (I bought mine and I bought the creature creator.)

I rated the game a 4 of 5 at amazon. Its a great game that has a lot of new innovative features to it. Knowing how The Sims has a million expansion packs for it I am sure there will be spore expansions right around the corner. My only issue with the game is that because its supposed to be an evolution type game I think that if you add 6 legs to your character something should improve (faster, stronger) but that isnt the case. Adding an extra set of legs to your creature changes nothing. Its just for looks.

Speaking of evolution, I cant wait for the conservatives to get upset about it and not let their kids play because of what the game might be teaching.

This summer is dawned on me that I really needed a new computer. My pc was over 8 years old and my iBook was 7 years old. I was out of HD space on the pc and it was just getting really laggy. I take very good care of my computers. I keep them “clean” constantly. It was a fact that if I was getting a new PC i would have to get Vista. I was not happy with my previous encounter with Vista and still hadnt heard anything good about it. I started looking at the new iMacs and compared them price wise with a pc. They were nearly the same price for similar systems. I decided I was going to “make the switch” (again) to a mac and just scrap the pc.

While browsing the apple website I came across the refurb section. There were unbelievable deals on refurbed iMacs. I could get a refurbed system with better specs cheaper than a new mac with lower specs using my college discount. How good could it be though? I searched everywhere on the internet to get reviews. I found some video reviews on youtube and general message board and blog reviews elsewhere. All of them said the same thing - go refurb, you wont regret it.

So i ordered a 2.4 ghz 20″ imac w/1 gig of ram including an upgraded video card and 320gb hd shipped for 1049.00. Original price was 1499.00. I also ordered applecare w/my student discount for 119.00 and received a free canon pixma all in 1 printer. The printer was free after rebate and I received my rebate check within 6 days.

The iMac arrived 2 days later (free shipping) I opened it immediately and inspected everything. Not a scratch on it. Plugged it in turned it on and it ran like a champ. Went through all the normal setup stuff like it had never seen daylight. The only difference was it didnt come in the white retail box. It came in a plain brown box. Whatever - I dont need a white retail box.

Would I recommend it or do it again? Hell yes! I saved a lot of money and got an awesome machine.

I am going to try and restart this again and see what happens. It’s been a very long time since I have even logged in. Soooo here goes