Spore

Let's get it out the way, my score:

10/10

Why? Because despite the flaws I am about to spew, this game does everything it said it would.
My main problem with this game is that it's not complex, but we were never promised that. In fact, this game has been crippled under the huge pressure of a huge fanbase... With so many fansites and people discussing the mechanics, we started filling in the gaps where we considered missing gameplay elements.
It's not what we thought it would be, because those parts of the game never actually existed.

There is not much point going through the phases really, it's quite simple:

The Cell Phase lives up to it's promises.

The Creature Phase is startling when you begin it, but slowly becomes a disappointment as you realize it's not living up to your expectations.

The Tribal Phase is more proof that it does what they said it would, but nothing more.
You fight or ally... And that's it. You expect more diversity in comparison to the other phases, but you realize it's just another Point and Click with little variation.

The Civilization Phase is remarkably simple... With only three units, Ground, Water and Air. The Ground units all do the same thing, with minor visual differences.
The same mostly applies with the Water and Air.

Military Civilizations can attack using all their units.
Economic can "Buy" other cities.
And Religious can Convert enemy cites.

Which means, once again it's just a Point and Click until the other dots go away.

And finally, with your bar lowered a large margin, you reach the Space Phase... Obviously the greatest Phase of them all? Well, in some senses it is. The developers clearly put a lot of effort into this final phase (Probably not paying enough attention to the rest), it feels much more complex in comparison.
The amount of things you are able to do actually surpass the three limit that the rest of the game seemed to be securing.

But sadly, this Phase becomes the most annoying of them all...
Every 5 minutes (If in a war or not) you will be attacked... Your heavily defended cities apparently can't defend themselves against enemy ships unless your tiny little Spaceship is there to feebly help fend off an entire fleet.

The Space Phase is the only one where the tutorials assume you already have prior knowledge. They give you a tiny mission tutorial, but usually leave out huge chucks of information.

But here is the thing:

This is what we were told the game would be like... And I don't know about you, but I just crossed my fingers and hoped there would be more to it.

And another thing, with a Fanbase as HUGE as Spores, we can expect Mods to crop up in weeks... And I wouldn't be surprised if EA released some heavy patches, and even some Expansions.

My next step is to join the Modding community, to make this game everything it should be.


This is a Simple God-Game called Spore, and nothing more.

PS. While you scream at my complaints, I'm going to play some more Spore.

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HAHA so did you like it or not?

(you're entitled to your opinion)

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**it's magic**

According to XFire I have been playing for 31 hours.
I LOVE IT!

Room for improvement, but it would be criminal to call it a bad game.

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wish i could enjoy the game like you guys seem to....i just cant get into it

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<---- Gif Sum Love

Nice review, everyone who made good reviews actually get the point of the game. Think of how hard it must have been to script! I mean, pretty much everything is flawless, and you can create anything! Can you do that in any other game, I think not.

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Bunny pancake cake rubarb bard useless cheese divide by zero panda purple smileyface entropy europe pangapus doctor lazor nine thousand obscure lamp spore lichen lay investiture mercantilism fued reality misspell mouse telegram prunecat typo lead verb joker candy matrix cheese jump kansas pointless kilory helpimtrapped school random words 42 mican finch cake lie uv gamma light thermal microwave color font odd even arm september pencil longer toto heracy last word

Full Avatar-Thanks ParoM

err, please tell me you didn't just say "everyone who didn't think this game was the second coming is wrong"...please...

I just cannot see the fun ending for me.....I spent 3-4 hours in creature just having a blast exploring......I don't know what's wrong with you guys....WoW isnt any better than Creature stage in spore! And hell, tribals pretty cool.....havn't to civ yet, but I am already blown away by its epicness...I love this game fully.

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http://bajooma.myminicity.com/ -Click pweese
I has spore emails
The dragons are SO CLOSE!!! BRING THEM LIFFEEEEEEEE pls
you can click here: http://dragcave.net/user/spider22 to see all eggs (i think it counts as a click but i dunno)

Spore is definitely best described as a cult classic IMO.

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You all know what a cheap bastard I am

I don't understand. Are you giving the actual game a 10/10 or the idea of the game a 10/10? How could you give something a 10 when you say that at least 3 of the 5 phases were a disappointment and you have complaints about the Space phase as well? This doesn't make sense to me....

When you review a movie, do you do the same thing? The trailer from Bangkok Dangerous certainly looks like it will be good. No one promised me that it was going to be a good movie. I went and saw it and it was awful. But, I'll give it a 10 anyway because they didn't promise me it would be good. It lived up to what it promised in that the scenes from the trailer were in the movie...so Bam! It's a 10! That's strange logic.

I like the game overall, don't get me wrong. It just seems like you don't want to be honest with yourself as far as your rating goes. You're not alone either. None of us wants to admit that something we've waited for for so long didn't turn out like we hoped it would.

And what did they actually promise? What do you consider a promise?

I don't think it came close to living up to what they promised. They made implied promises during the demos they performed. They showed us bits of the creature phase gameplay and implied that it would be entertaining, fun, and would be a good part of the game. This promise was not lived up to.

If nothing else, they made promises of omission, for lack of a better term. By NOT saying it would be bad, they implied it would be at least be good. This is basic business. They never said, "The creature phase is really shallow and anyone older than 10 will probably be bored with it in a couple hours." They also never said, "The creature phase will be deep, a lot of fun, and will provide hours of enjoyment for everyone." So they technically have not broken a spoken promise. Does that make it ok? Does that mean the game deserves a 10/10?

I just don't think your numerical rating matches your written review, but I can appreciate where you're coming from....

I'm confused... You gave the game 10/10 meaning it is perfect and couldn't have been any better yet you have complaints about nearly everything? Hmm... Sounds to me like you truly and deeply enjoy the game and think it should be a 10... and it is! Considering you ignore the flaws anyway...

I finally understand. You're not the TOTAL Fanboy who gives a high score despite contrary evidence. You're the fanboy who loves the IDEA of the game, is disappointed with the result... and expects others (or yourself) to fix it.

That’s OKAY but... it only confuses those who are still considering buying and trying to understand what spore actually is. (Yes, I have been following since the GDC 2005 vid, but as a casual gamer who’s life does not depend on a game.) With Spore, I feel the same confusion as I felt from the over hyping of Oblivion, while my initial assessment was it was Morrowind Fixed, I later realized it was Morrowind Broken and people were quick to assume that few people were playing "vanilla oblivion."

While I can applaud you for being honest and forthright about your disagreements with Spore, other Fanboy’s are not so forthcoming. Furthermore, their reviews are often lackluster and barely describe the game, let alone what they enjoy. Mainly I see bickering about the haters not appreciating what they’ve been given and the "hidden and totally secret" STUFF that is "Totally awwsome but u haf to look 4 it" is generally unexplained (okay, so insulting people for being vague by degrating their intellect is insultive, but there would be nothing to insult if people would stop being vague).

All I can say is, until people over the age of 13 start issuing positive reviews (I don't mean to imply that those under the age of 13 would like the game better, just that those over the age of 13 would be mature enough to write well described reviews [and not just wordy... I can do wordy with one hand.]), all I can go on the negative reviews and determine if the faults are worth the game.


While you state Spore delivered everything they promised, I have to disagree. Spore 2008 seems to have some of what it promised... but have none of what Spore 2005 promised. (Yes, I am aware that some people don't understand that any change in a program results in a different program and will complain that Spore is Spore.) Then again, given the program was "in development" one could argue that we were promised nothing and that EA could have sold us a Blu-Ray Disc with nothing on it but a single Word document saying "Spore has been Canceled… Buy the Sims 3." It’s just my 2 cents for all these "Spore vs Hype" arguments.

In answer to some of the posts here:
I consider Spore to be a game with large potential, if the game isn't already good... Then the thousands of Mods that will come up in no time will improve it beyond anything we could have imagined.

However, your correct, I do see so many flaws with this game. But that doesn't necessarily make it a "bad" game. For what they made, it's a perfectly enjoyable experience... Even when you are screaming at your planets as they fail to protect themselves, your "still having fun".
And when you break it down, that's the only thing that matters.

If you want to be pedantic and complain about features the game was never supposed to have, then join the other ranks of reviewers.

I gave it a 10 because dispite it's flaws, it is an amazingly fun game.

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Thing is, I don't see it doing 'everything it promised' as grounds for an automatic 10. If I promise that a game will have a plot, guns, round crosshairs, and an ending, is it excellent based on these criteria? Spore was over-simplified, and I personally haven't found any replay value after two or three races.
Spore does everything that it said it would, in a barebones sort of way. I'd like to think that a host of mods will solve everything, but I'm skeptical at the moment. Bad? No, great potential is there. Excellent? I wouldn't say so in it's current form.





Whereas everyone who doesn't worship the ground WW walks on is clearly a stupid-head. I don't care how long it took to produce, if it isn't fun, as a game, at it's core, I won't pretend that it is flawless.

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The seventh son of a seventh son's lesser known brother.

Herecy! Burn the witch!

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Bunny pancake cake rubarb bard useless cheese divide by zero panda purple smileyface entropy europe pangapus doctor lazor nine thousand obscure lamp spore lichen lay investiture mercantilism fued reality misspell mouse telegram prunecat typo lead verb joker candy matrix cheese jump kansas pointless kilory helpimtrapped school random words 42 mican finch cake lie uv gamma light thermal microwave color font odd even arm september pencil longer toto heracy last word

Full Avatar-Thanks ParoM

I'd agree with that, a bit more depth wouldn't have hurt casual gamers, but I like it the way it is in space... then again, I use alot of mods...

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Awesome sig by Wolffgang

I do not agree that spore is everything they said it was and nothing more it is even less then they said it was. Look at many features that had shown in videos that were supposed to be in the game and were not.

For example they said that you would see some differnt style planets instead they all seem pretty much the same. Look how they said you could get out of you're ufo but you can't. I have heard the getting out of the ufo thing and the different planet styles were cut out so EA game could make more money off of spore selling expansions.

They said that the game was going to take into account differnt parts and that reflect how the creature works and that is not true. For example the legs with more joins pretty much seem to have the same mechanics as legs with more joints. Ok the legs slightly behave the way they are but not as much as promised.

Many parts it just seems like one is called better without and real reason. For example there is a grasper that is basically a 3 pronged jagged claw it does less slashing damage apparently then the grasper that is almost an exact copy of human hands. Common was the person who programmed this stuff a total douche or is it just me?

There is many other things I could mention but I will make my own thread on here to talk about them. Just thought I would put it out there that really the game is only half of what it was said to be at best.

But at the same time I would not call it a steaming pile of poo. If I was asked if I like it I would say it is ok I guess but it is not exactly a great game. IT is more a mediocre game not good and not bad.

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