Spore Galactic Edition
by Electronic Arts
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List Price: Category: Video Games See more product details |
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Video Game Reviews of Spore Galactic Edition
Customer Review: What a disappointment
Summary: 1 Stars
My wife and I purchased Spore (the Galactic addition, no less) on the premise that we really enjoyed SimCity games, and the promise of the great Spore creature editor. However, the game itself is a major disappointment.
The game totally fails to deliver on the main promise: emergent gameplay. The tidal pool phase is the most fun, but this is basically just a button-clicker. "Decisions" here are arbitrary, and do impact later gameplay, but in a way that has very little effect on gameplay. The creature phase is brainless, consisting mostly of running around and looking for other creatures to stomp at. The civ phase is lacking depth or creativity, and feels like a brain-dead version of SimCity, Civ4 or Starcraft. With bad UI, and without the tension or gameplay balance of the mentioned games. I'd rather spend my time re-organizing my sock drawer than play another game of Spore.
Further, the DRM on Spore really cheeses me off. Draconian install policies and account settings are worse than useless--why should I have to register to play a single player game in my own home? Buying the game and then finding out about the limited number of activations is like salt on the wound.
After playing through the game once, trying very hard to enjoy it, I boxed it up and put it on the shelf. The creature creator editor (which is freely downloadable) is easily the best part of the game.
I wrote this review to provide an honest (and optimistic!) player's opinion, having played through the game (versus just complaining about DRM). The game stinks. The DRM stinks too. Don't waste your money or time!
Customer Review: Evolutionism? I think not.
Summary: 5 Stars
Here's the review:
It's the best strategy game out there, you know civilization? That's in here. The five stages (in order of appearance): Cell stage (like a little amoeba), creature stage (like a little bear), tribal stage ( like the chippewa), Civilization stage (like new york), and space stage. This would be the future of people, when we get interstellar travel.
It's fun is the bottom line. If you liked Lego's you will love this game. If you only liked the Lego sets, I'm sorry to disappoint you.
----Below isn't a review, but what all of the HATERS should read.----
I don't believe in evolution but guess what, its a game. This is South park's message people (and I know you watch it). Don't take everything so seriously, if you enjoy it but there's a little bit(about 3 clicks worth) of evolution in it, don't worry about it. This game wont make you an atheist, this game wont change you or your kids views.
SPORELER ALERT!! (Get it?)
3 clicks = literal. You click to say evolve and there's a short cutscene, I.E. put legs on your creature so it can run, than you see it run on land with 3 other creatures like it's self. Or see its brain get a little bigger and later turns into a tribe that builds things.
Now that wasn't so bad was it?
Another spoiler alert (last one was sporeler alert):
There is a cheat you can do to unlock all levels. You can start right off at the civilization stage and become a religious nation!! FUN RIGHT!!
If you rate this review down, give me a reason why, tell me what I personally did wrong with rating this with my own opinion.
_-_-WHAT OTHERS THINK-_-_
Check out metacritic rather than amazon's rating system.
Customer Review: Spore Glactic Edition
Summary: 5 Stars
I got the Glactic Edition after trying creature creator
My 10 yr old son loves it and it has been drawing in the neighbor kids
some of the hunting violence was unexpected but not too bad and there is enough expansion and sharing built in to stave off the boredom that usually sets in with other games. If done correctly it can be a great game with some really cool suprise extras.
The install was clean and the registration was fairly straightforward
However as expected the anti piracy software can cause a few problems
as a network administrator I avoided these problems by doing some homework prior to install So listen up because here are some important tips
DO: VERIFY THAT YOU HAVE A DVD DRIVE. installed on your computer ! the game comes on a DVD disk. The very handy bonus instructional disk is also a DVD that can be played on a regular DVD player.
DO: XP USERS INSTALL THE FINAL SERVICE PACK SP3 prior to installing any version of Spore because if you don't the service pack install will fail. this is because the anti piracy software in Spore installs unremovable files that the service pack attempts to overwrite
Do:VERIFY THAT YOU MEET THE HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS prior to installing Spore. if you install the game and it tells you that your memory or graphics card is insufficent and then you run out and get these upgrades the anti piracy software will determine that these changes to your system mean that it has been installed on a different computer and stop working.
Do: GRANT THE TARGET USER ADMINISTRATOR ACCESS
prior to installing Spore this level of access is needed to install and run
Customer Review: Unstable and disappointing
Summary: 1 Stars
I really wanted to like this game, but I was sorely disappointed. My husband and I had been following the game's development for years, and eagerly awaited its release. Now having installed and played the game, I am disappointed with both the game play and the endless bugs, crashes, and complete lack of customer support given by EA.
I did not know about the DRM/Securom issue until I had already purchased the game. It gave me pause. Only three installs? I used up two just starting the the game the first time. Plus I'd heard that Securom caused numerous system problems -- I was skeptical about this, but I have noticed unexplained lag in my everyday use of the computer. Spore and Securom are the only changes to the system that have been made, so I have no choice but to assume that's the culprit.
The gameplay is very shallow. Despite the infinite diversity of creatures you can make or encounter, there is very little you can actually do with them. Each stage has a limited number of choices and strategies to use, and little room for 'free-form' play. The space stage is a bit more open-ended, but still quickly becomes repetitive and boring. The space stage also lacks the personal charm of the cell or creature stage, where you interact closely with your creatures. Instead, you pilot your ship from one largely anonymous star system to another. For a game as costly as this one, I expected far more replayability.
The instability issues are extremely aggravating. My computer isn't top-flight, but it exceeded the specs for the game. Spore crashes frequently, resulting in savegame corruption. This is sometimes fixable, but sometimes not. In the numerous crashes I've lost individual games and even my entire galaxy. Often the entire savegame folder becomes corrupted, meaning even the single backup save that Spore makes cannot be restored. Also, crashes often damage the files Spore needs to run at all, resulting in a sudden inability to even load the game. This too is fixable, once you figure out the problem, but it shouldn't need to be.
During gameplay there were bugs such as sound lag and invisible objects that made playing very difficult or even impossible. Try hunting for sick critters in a timed minigame when you can't even see them!
There have been several patches released, but nothing I did, including a complete re-install of the game (there goes another one) allowed me to install them sucessfully.
My husband works in the industry, so I don't expect a game to run perfecty on every machine. I do expect the game to be playable and reasonably stable. If it does crash, recovery methods should be easily available (loading a previous save, for example.) Spore fails in all respects.
To inject a little fairness in my review, Spore has its good points. The first time through, the game is charming and fun. The various creature and building creators are endlessly fun. I can spend hours happily making weird critters or buildings or vehicles. The nifty packaging and extras that come with the Galactic Edition of Spore are very nice and worth the extra cost. It's sad when the thing you like the most about a game is the box!
Spore does have the potential to be a nice, if simple, game. For me, the frustration of getting it to work at all outweighed any fun I might have had with the game.
Customer Review: So much promise...
Summary: 2 Stars
To put it simply: the editors in this game are fun but the "game" part simply isn't. I'm not saying that the game parts aren't fun, I'm saying that they simply don't exist at all.
You basically just make something in the editor, play a minigame, then make something else, and repeat. The editors are fun for a while but you are much better served getting the $10 creature creator and skipping the full game.