Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #632 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Electronic Arts
• Released on: 2008-09-05
• Rating: To Be Announced
• Platforms: Windows XP, Windows Vista

Amazon.co.uk Preview
From the creator of The Sims comes the most ambitious video game ever made: here you don’t just control a single family or city but control an entire species from a single cell organism to a galactic conqueror. As impossibly complex as that might sound, the most impressive thing about Spore is just how accessible and fun it all is. The game is split into six evolutionary phases, starting with almost action-style gameplay at the microscopic level. From there you move to the creature phase on dry land, before going on to the tribal phase and the beginnings of society and technology. From there it’s onto the city phase, which plays a bit like SimCity, and from there to the Civilisation phase which plays something like, you guessed it, Civilization. The final phase takes part in outer space where by hook or by crock your species must reign triumphant.

Each phase has its own editing tools associated with it for things like vehicles and buildings. By far the most fun though is the creature tool, which allows you to create your own fully animated lifeform from scratch using a huge range of limbs, facial features and colourings. What’s also interesting is that the other planets in the galaxy aren’t all pre-populated by the game. Instead, by connecting online you can upload your races, and download those from other people, to fill the galaxy with civilizations from other players around the world. Any one of the six phases would normally be enough for any one game on its own, but this looks like it’s going to turn out to be the world’s first everything simulator.
HARRISON DENT

Manufacturer's Description
The next evolution in gaming is upon us. From the mind of Will Wright, the creator of The Sims, comes SPORE, an epic journey that takes you from the origin and evolution of life through the development of civilization and technology and eventually all the way into the deepest reaches of outer space.

Begin your odyssey at the dawn of life as a simple microbe just trying to survive, then use the fun, intuitive Editors to evolve the creature from its microscopic origins into an intelligent, tool-using race. Guide your species as it builds (and the player designs) villages, buildings, cities, and vehicles. Along the way to becoming a global civilization you can choose whether to hunt or forage, attack or trade, be nice or play rough!

All the action takes place in a huge, lush world populated with creatures evolved by other players and shared over SPORE's central servers. When it's ready, your one-time pond scum launches into space in its UFO on a grand voyage of discovery, planet forming, or destruct-ion! As you explore and play in this limitless universe of unique worlds, your personal Sporepedia tracks all the creatures you've met and places you've visited.

Customer Reviews

DRM is worse than you think.
If you buy spore you'll probably be tempted to take it back to the shop after a couple of hours play. I know it can be tempting to see what its like, so find a friend who has it and try it out. Whatever you do, don't spend your money.

First, the DRM aspect:

If you're thinking: "Why is everyone annoyed at the DRM thing? I only install games once or twice anyway."
That is exactly what EA want you to think.
The install limit is not just deducted everytime you reinstall the game, there are many other factors such as windows or hardware updates which will result in your limit reducing. Say you or a parent upgrades your PC or reset windows, you will be losing install numbers without even noticing. If the game is having problems and you need to reinstall, EA says that's your fault, and it will cost you. If you install the game on your laptop and PC, that will cost you too.

"So what's the problem, if I reach my limit I'll just phone up EA?"
Heh, the last word is definately the one to emphasize. Many have already reported having to wait days to get more points on their limit, some are simply denied. You will need to take time (and money, yes you pay for the call per minute) out of your day to beg EA to let you continue playing YOUR game. You will need to apologize to EA for installing YOUR game that YOU paid for with YOUR money too many times. Exceeding the installation limit is seen as an error on your part and EA arn't pleased they're having to waste their time fixing your game so you can play more. Thus, they charge you whilst you call.
That call centre won't be around forever, in a few years time you won't own the game, you'll just have a useless CD and case, you're effectively renting the game for full price.

If you don't protest, this will become the industry standard.
It doesn't matter what you're thinking at this stage.
You CANNOT let EA get away with this.



For those of you interested in the actual game:

I guarantee, this part was written with all DRM thoughts out of my head.

Without a doubt some of the worst gameplay ever.

Imagine with this concept how amazing a game like this could be, then scrap it and replace it with some mini and incredably limited design program which lets you attach horns to your creature, the result will be similar to Spore. In other words, the game is a prime example of something that "lowers the bar".

The idea of being able to evolve your own creature is incredably tempting and Spore had the potential to be a ground breaking innovative game. The problem? It's unbelievably basic and oh so simple you'll feel a desperate urge to do something more productive with your time. Unfortunately in this case, despite the gameplay being incredably basic it's also very tedious and you'll be doing the same thing over and over again.
That's the first real problem with the game, a 6 year old wouldn't struggle. The other problem is the stages.

The creator of the Maxis games responded to critical reviews with: "I've all kinds of people say they hate different stages, there's no consistant critisism."
Yes it's true, some stages are far better than others, but it's the staging of the game that ruins it, I'm amazed the developers didn't realise this. The game would've been far better if it had run consistantly (i.e. you build a city on your planet, then have all that city and the ability to operate it whilst you're exploring space) but sadly this is not the case. There are 5 stages, whenever one starts, only your creature data is passed over (which isn't much, just the visual appearance really) and nothing else. Once you've finished the stage, there is very little point continuing as you will have maxed out most things. The huge flaw is due to the fact the game is simply split into these 5 stages, thus effectively making 5 "mini games", not one of these games is worth the money you're paying for the game, and so it's never actually all that fun.

The first "Water" stage is one of the best, which is incredably worrying since it's a very simple 2D minigame of a fish swimming around collecting food and DNA points. This is the one point in the game where the evolution idea actually works, its well implemented (adding spikes to the right parts makes a difference), and it's actually fun. It lasts about 15 minutes and you'll soon be excited about developing your creature further.

That all changes with the second "Creature" stage, your creature has evolved legs and can now walk on land. The planet looks incredably dull and you won't be looking at anything whilst moving around as there's nothing to grasp your eye. Your objectives for this stage are to kill or make friends with other species, and change your appearance and skills. Once again, it's incredably basic and any form of combat involves constantly clicking a button or two. If you've ever played an MMORPG, it is very much like an offline version. That's right, the tasks are all "Kill X amount of Y, go back, do it again". The result is something dull, tedious, effortless, pointless and it's at this point where you'll be planning your journey back to the video game store. Infact I still find it incredably they've taken one of the major flaws with MMOs (grinding) and topped it off by putting it in an offline game...

The next "Tribe" stage is the icing on the cake. Your creature is now fully developped and you can't change it's appearance or features anymore, that part of the game is completely over and it never was put to much use anyway. The whole concept of Spore is over in a couple of hours, of which included about 15 minutes of fun. The stage itself is practically laughable, you'll be fighting other tribes in one of the worst attempts at an RTS (real-time-strategy) of all time. You'll be doing very little and end up leaving your computer on, hoping that it eventually completes to the next stage itself. Here I have to mention something about the advertising and hype of the game, here is a quote from the game author on this stage:
"A lot of people don't realize that there are actually some simple strategies for gathering food in Tribe. You can steal it from other tribes. You can domesticate wild animals and they'll come live with you. You don't have to hunt other creatures; you can domesticate them. If you manage to domesticate a really strong creature and he's sitting in your pen behind your hut, he'll actually help defend your tribe as well."

Sounds interesting huh, all those possibilities... Well guess what. All those activities are done with more or less 1 or 2 clicks of the mouse in Spore, and they are down-right pointless. This is the problem. There is no real multi-tasking involved and very little to actually do. You're always following a strict path which is very dull and tedious, if you take alternate routes, they are pointless and not worth taking. This is what annoys me, the way the game is talked about and hyped by the developers and some reviewers which could only have been bribed or played the first stage only. The game is actually incredably cheap and takes huge amounts of short cuts in order to give the player something to do.

The gameplay in areas is just absolutely awful, it's as if it wasn't planned at all. It's not entertaining to just sit there clicking the same two buttons for 2 hours.
I won't go into the last 2 stages, but I will admit that they are slightly better. There is more effort put into them and they do at least have a reasonable amount of gameplay. However, this is instantly countered by the fact you may aswell go buy another game similar to the genre of that stage and it will be a great deal better. The game does not flow very well between phases, and thus the programming behind Spore is reasonably basic with no clever outcomes.

Infact, the game really shouldn't have taken long to make at all. Most likely so much time was made on each and every stage, it stopped the game from really excelling anywhere. The game does a good job at making the creatures "cute", but that won't blind many people of how empty it actually is.

This review is long I'm aware, but I'm really hoping I got the point across. Do not buy this game, if you are tempted to try it then find alternative methods such as playing with a friend.

Spore is a massive dissapointment and is quite frankly, a pathetic attempt at what could've easily been a ground breaking game, had they put in the effort and planning.

Very mixed bag. Could have been so much more.
This is a fun game but imo it just does not have any long term appeal.

There is just not enough depth to any of the stages to give much replay value.

The first two stages (cell and animal) and short and fun with an arcadey style of play but I probably wouldn't play through either of them more than 2 or 3 times.
The next two (tribal and civilisation) are both too short and too easy, even on hard difficulty. There is also zero strategy involved, it's just a case of build as many units as you can and attack/convert your neighbour, repeat this for the next tribes/city and just keep going. I've only played through them once but am not looking forward to returning to them.
Finally, the space phase. This is the only stage that has any hint of depth at all and there is certainly a fair bit more to do than the other stages. In the end though, it just felt empty, there is little/zero sense of achievement because you're basically omnipotent. Exploring is fun at first but rapidly becomes monotonous.

Now, a lot of people are probably thinking I've missed the point of the game. Perhaps I have, all I know is that although I had fun playing some parts of it, there was nothing like the level of depth I expect from my games. I was hoping for a populous style tribal phase, a Civ IV style civilisation phase and a master of orion 2 style space phase. What I got were tribal and civ phases watered down to the point that they were no fun or challenge at all and a space phase that is just... dull.


Added to this we have the DRM issue. This is a real pain for me. I bought one copy for me and my wife to play but I then find that although I can install it on her PC, I can't register an account for her because the serial code is already locked to my email address... So, she can use my account right? Not exactly.. I won't go into any more detail there but suffice it to say, I was not expecting to have to mess around for several hours just to get the damn thing to run on our own home machines! On top of that, it's used up another activation, I'm not sure if I've got one or none left now. I expect I'll never find out because I'm unlikley to play it again but that's hardly the point, I've paid my money, I have the disc, I should be able to install and play it whenever I want.

Conclusion:

From a programmer's point of view, Spore is undoubtedly a marvel. The technologies that make the whole thing hang together are astonishing. However, from a gammer's point of view, I DON'T CARE! All I want is a game that's going to keep me entertained and sadly, despite all it's promise, that's not Spore.

As for the DRM thing, I'll be VERY carefull to find out more about the protection on games I buy in future. (particularly EA ones) If they have anything like this then I won't bother because frankly, it's not worth the hassle.

Too short and easy with crippling DRM
Firstly the DRM, it's SO very restrictive. You have 3 activations and 3 activations only with this product. All must be done over the internet and when you are done with those 3 and want another you must call EA and ask them for a new one with proof of purchase and explaining why you have run out of your 3.

Now, the game itself.
Don't get me wrong, it can be fun. However, if you were looking forward to the long fun game that the trailers and hype have promised then please, take your money elsewhere, or wait until the game is in the bargin bin a few months down the road. I am by no means a hardcore gamer, far from it, but I had gotten to the UFO level in my first day of playing on the normal (not easy) level (that's 4/5 [80%] of the game).

Wait 6 months and pick it up as a budget title.