Product Reviews

Overall rating

3 / 5

Gameplay

2 / 5

Graphics

4 / 5

Sound

5 / 5

snolan83

Decent, Released too early

PostedSeptember 22, 2008

I will break this down into parts and than summarize/counter-point most of the common complaints. Cell stage: Great fun, doesn't last long but it's fun tricking out the cell and playing pac-man where you can be eaten. Very simple but a pure joy. Creature Stage: This is also great. It's sort of simplistic (ie run to camp, kill all the other creatures there or befriend them, sort of repetitive) but you evolve quickly and have a ton of fun creating your creature. Good times. Tribe Stage: This shouldn't be in there. People compare it to a RTS but it's honestly worthless. Resources are far to simple to get and you than create basically 1 of the units (war or befriend), pump out max population and go stomp the other camp with little- no resistance. It takes about 10 minutes and the "dress" customization is ridiculous. Nothing really fits well and is a novelty at best. It's things like this they should have left out and worked more on other stages. Civilization Stage: This is a low brow RTS. It is decently fun as you get to create your structures and vehicles. The controls are frustrating as you can't group units or tell them were to go easily on the mini-map. It is not very refined but decent fun. A little more time on this and it would have been great but as-is it's one of the stages I just like to hurry through. For instance, you can make alliances, than when it comes down to you and one other race it forces you out of it. It's so simple basically you can be a war race - build up money sit there, defend, than use bombs that wipe out/take over cities in one go. That is just mentioned to illustrate how it is very unbalanced and very inflexible. You go one of two routes, make your cities (which I'm not sure about but I think it changes them all when you hit the space stage)... so I guess the best way to put it is unrefined. Not so fun, but not 100% painful but poor controls. Space Stage: This is large. First off the controls of the ship are horrid. Scrolling out of the planets/systems is a novel idea but it happens so much it becomes a task. The galaxy is huge which is awesome but again the camera is weird and I find myself getting lost. You can put on direction maps but it still gets confusing. This is definitely the bread and butter though. Think sims for planets. You can put your own trees/creatures as you chose on the planet. Change how it looks, change everything and you spend the money you earn to develop the planet. You can do it with many different planets and it seems like a lot of fun. You fly around go "damn that looks cool" pick it up, and take it to your planet and build theme planets. A lot of the people who don't like this stage are expecting it to be something it's not. It's not meant to be a take over the universe style stage but time to enjoy yourself get the tools you want and build what you want. It's fun.... EXCEPT the pirates. They will have to patch this. The pirates and other races are so unrealistic. They attack SO constantly. They amass a ton of ships and there is nothing you can do because the combat is so poor! You either roll them all, or get blown up (as someone mentioned the "equipment" doesn't scale so it is impossible for awhile than too easy) Basically, if this stage did what I think they wanted to do - made it a fun time to go around,explore build planets, find artifacts, trade ect ect it would be a lot more enjoyable. As it is right now it' s like a very unbalanced fighting game. If they patch they can make spore a great fun, Sims in space (instead of building a house you build a planet) which I was really hoping for. The Good: -Customization you can do whatever you dream. The downloads are immense you will not see things over and over -Early Stages (creature/cell). Great simple fun - Possibilities of Space Age. There is so much there you can have unlimited fun in reality if they work out the kinks. You truly will have un-real replay value if they patch space to make i

Overall rating

5 / 5

Gameplay

5 / 5

Graphics

5 / 5

Sound

5 / 5

Druidblue

Best. Game. Ever.

PostedSeptember 20, 2008

I'm a 37 year old former virtual reality developer, and can say without batting an eyelash that out of the thousands of games I've played over the years, this is the best. Is it the most complex? No. The most challenging? No. The most story driven? No. Does any of that matter? No. It really comes down to a simple idea-if you like your games to be infinitely random, and infinitely new, then Spore is your ideal game... you'll never see the same thing twice, because the possible number of creature, building, and vehicle creations is so large you literally can't see them all. If you're highly creative, you'll spend hours upon hours in the editors making new things to share with others, and the fluid online system works easily and beautifully. Once you get through the (hidden) tutorials of the first four stages of the game, and enter the Space stage, where the game truly starts, one thing will happen for positive to you: You'll rotate the galaxy map and notice the thousands of stars, and then it'll sink in that you can go to every. Single. One. And at that point, your jaw WILL hit the floor. Complaints of the DRM are unjustified-it's already been modified so you can get back one of your "installs" before modifying your system. Therefore as with any product, you have unlimited installs. Complaints of gameplay being too easy or Space being too hard have been addressed in the first patch (within one week of release). Challenge is now upped in the earlier modes and reduced in certain ways in the beginning of the Space stage. The ultimate situation is this: After years on the computer, what games do you STILL play? For me, it's Diablo 2 and Civilization IV, because they are random in scope and always "new" to play. Spore outdoes both of those classics, therefore sealing its spot as the ultimate classic of all time. In my opinion, it's the best game ever made.

Overall rating

4 / 5

Gameplay

4 / 5

Graphics

4 / 5

Sound

5 / 5

Agent Lemon

Good not great

PostedSeptember 19, 2008

There's a strong case to be made that Maxis excels at making software toys rather than games. And there's a not so insignificant difference there, because a toy is something that you tinker with, whereas a game is something with a narrative, goals, or a way to win. That may be why Maxis titles have so much appeal. SimCity lets you indulge your inner mayor. Meanwhile, The Sims is the ultimate virtual dollhouse, letting you create your dream house and, by extension, your dream family. But now we come to Spore, the most ambitious Maxis product to date, and one that's as much as a game as it is a toy. Sure, you can tinker with Spore, but there's also a game here, one that involves the long struggle of life as it evolves and advances from a tiny cellular organism to intergalactic space travel. In fact, Spore is essentially five distinct games woven together. And here, Maxis demonstrates a weakness, as a number of these games come off as lightweight or limited. However, Spore is a prime example of something that is much more than the sum of its many parts. In conclusion, I'd recommend it.

Overall rating

5 / 5

Gameplay

5 / 5

Graphics

5 / 5

Sound

5 / 5

KIRBY MAN

The Best Game in the UNIVERSE!!!

PostedSeptember 18, 2008

This is the best game of the year! The only reason people say it sucks is because they play it 5 hours straight! if you play sparingly like an hour one day an hour another then it's fun! I love the cell part because you just swim around and eat and the creature part is really fun when i was going to the tribe phase i thought it was going to be boring but it was really fun! I really recommend this game; it rocks! I just love the fact that you create everything. It has a good story line too! It's really great. If you're looking for a game that will last you a long time, this is the game to get! The civilization stage is fun too because you create buildings and vehicles! The last stage, the space stage, is really fun too because you can make your own planets and ships. It's just a great game! GET IT NOW!

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