Spore
by Electronic Arts
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Video Game Reviews of Spore
Customer Review: Terrible Game, Simply Horrible
Summary: 1 Stars
I had been looking forward to playing this conceptually amazing game since first hearing about it over a year ago. Unlike most of the other negative reviews, I don't know about and am not troubled by the DRM. My complaints are about the game itself.
First, throughout the game the controls are clumsy and ineffective. The early stages are childishly simple but kind of fun. Creating your creature is apparently the main highlight of this game. The civilization stage, where the action starts, is just a pathetic and lame mini-version of the real Civilization game. Unfortunatly, the civilization stage is the most fun and most user friendly stage of this game.
The final stage, the Spacefaring stage, is by far the worst of the entire game. It starts off sort of fun, like the game might possibly have been worth $50 bucks. For the first hour or so, it might even seem like this could possibly be the best video game ever. But, a few hours into it the fun abruptly stops. You are forced to perform menial tasks and "missions" that mostly involve trying to find where in the hell some particular planet might be, then locating some little object somewhere on that planet and then bringing the object back to the jerks who sent you off to get it. Chores, freaking chores: just what I want to do when playing a video game! These "missions" are extremely tedious and take up way too much game time. Another major problem is that it takes forever to accumulate enough money to do anything and by the time you do, the game will have long since stopped being fun: your planets and colonies will continuously be attacked, conquered, or destroyed by pirates and other larger empires. Other empires get to attack en mass and conquer your colonies and planets with whole armadas of spaceships while you have no such option. At the beginning you are only one (very ill equipped)spaceship (later you get to aquire a few allied ships and slowly earn enough money through trading to buy slightly better weapons), but even with better weapons and a few allied ships, there is no way that you can defend a planet or colony without dying multiple times (poor game controls are a major factor here) and there is absolutly no way to invade and conquer a planet (or even to re-conquer one that was stolen from you). It is very frustrating that nearly every enemy ship that you will encounter is way tougher and equipped with better weapons than your own ship, but the worst part is that you are always attacked by swarms of these enemy ships. You don't stand a chance. And with the clumsy controls, dogfighting with dozens of superior ships (which becomes more and more frequent and inescapable as the game progresses) becomes the very essence of tedium and frustration. And all of this is on the easy setting, playing off-line by myself. I could understand such intense competition on-line, playing against other real people. But the easy setting on a one player strategy game constantly generating my civilizations right next to huge expansionist empires with thousands of spaceships just makes the game impossibly frustrating.
I bought this game so that I could explore an imaginary galaxy, not constantly defend everything I'm tasked to create from unreasonable and overwhelming enemies. If this game wanted to be an action/fighting game then it needs to have way better game controls and then advertise it as such. Anyway, I hate this game. If you want to try it out, download it for free. You might enjoy parts of it. But don't give your money to Electronic Arts; they don't deserve it. They took what was probably the best idea ever for a video game and then made a complete turd instead.
Customer Review: More computer problems
Summary: 1 Stars
I installed spore, and I started getting computer freezes. I reformatted my HD, reinstalled OS and loaded spore again, still freezes. I contacted spore ea help, only to be given the run around (upgrade drivers, computer to low quality, empty temp folder, etc). I have a top of the line home made computer, so I knew it wasn't the computer. I asked EA customer support over and over for the uninstaller for the DRM SecuRom, but each avoided the question and sent me on another wild goose chase. Finally I have formatted my HD again, and reinstalled my OS. This time NO Spore on my computer and its working great again. I hear also the Sims 3 will have it :-( Guess No more EA games for my family. We not only "rent" the games, but have to deal with crashes due to software that treats us like thieves. No thanks EA!Customer Review: Ex"sproe"!
Summary: 4 Stars
At first take, it appeared that this "game" was another one of those "Sim" games - but I was totally WRONG! In my opinion, for whatever it is worth, this is quite a fun filled open ended "game" - nobody actually wins, and the whole incentive here is to be innovative and creative.
You take the role of a "Intelligent Creator" in which you guide your life form from a small cellular creature living in a primordal soup mixed with other creatures - as you collect/eat dna (either from a vegetarian or carnivore initiative), you can add parts to your "body" in order to survive and take the road to crawling up on land - which is the next phase, followed by three other phases (once you accomplish a specific amount of activities and "talents" - Tribe, Civilization, and Spacefaring). Of course, each level/phase has its own special way of presenting itself, and within each you get a chance to change/modify/evolve your creature (and other non-biological elements such as buildings, vehicles, clothing, etc.)utilizing various parts that become available to you while you "play".
When you get to the Spacefaring level/phase, you are now what I would call into an open ended game whereby you trade, fight, explore, make allies or enemies etc. throughout what appears to be an infinite galaxy of other solar systems - planets, and even moons. This phase reminded me of Star Control - a game that my youngest daughter and I had many months together playing every night - but Spore has many more possibilities, tremendous graphics, and of course, the Internet which allows you to share your creatures with others (with whom they share with you) so that you can modify even more - not only that, but the program "sucks down" other creatures automatically and places them in your "universe".
The only negative aspect is that the game tends to lock up every now and then - and for what reasons I do not know - I have a 3 Gigahertz speed Pentium 4 (not dual core) running on XP Professional with Cable ISP - so I am not sure why I am getting these problems - but they appear to take place while in the Spacefaring Mode - probably due to the complexities of that Phase and the number of things going on while in it.
All in all, this is quite an entertaining and educational piece of software - some folks may be offended by implying that there is an "Intelligent Creator" there (mainly you, the player), but even so, this is a very intense, deep, and enjoyable game - lots of re-plays - no repeats - every time you start off from scratch on a new planet, the possiblities of what can take place are endless!
Worth the money and worth the time!
Customer Review: One of the few Maxis games to punish you for creativity.
Summary: 1 Stars
One of the greatest joys of any Sims game was to let you play in the sandbox. Allow me to illustrate.
Sim ant let you expand where you wanted as you wanted. You could feel free to focus on the spots you wanted without worrying about your red ant enemies overrunning you if you decided to take a break from combat to play with the nest.
In Sim City, you could indulge yourself in whatever whims you wanted, like subways, buses, trains, or highways, and usually these wouldn't help you immediately, but they wouldn't hurt you either. If you had the money, well, GO FOR IT! It would help your city later on down the line, so there was a reward for you creativity beyond just playing the most efficient way.
In the Sims, they broke with tradition by SHOWING you the stats of everything in the house, and the people. Normally this would grind the game to a halt, since there is a clear "best" way to play it. But since you didn't control your people, they were inherently flawed, and the fun came from trying to work against your character's flaws. Seeing the interactions of the people and enviornments you created was priceless, and offered massive opportunities for creativity.
Spore has none of these things. It has four minigames (Cell through Civilization) which have less content than most of the flash games you'd find at a site like Newgrounds. They are strictly linear, with no room for creativity. Since you're just dressing up your creature, with small, hidden parts added for the stat boosts you want, it feels hollow, and boring. The space stage, the real meat of the game, is a horror. With no real tutorials, little to do except make money, incompetent allies and a goal which involves mindless grinding, the game destroys whatever creativity you hoped was available. You can't leave your system to explore until you're traded and missioned your way to an extremely high rank, because if you don't unlock all the tools to buy the weapons to quickly eradicate your enemies, they will ravage your worlds if you even think of making the mistake of exploring the massive universe available. Since your worlds are completely capable of defending themselves when you are around, you might think that it's okay to leave them. WRONG. The AI will automatically capture your cities if you leave them under attack, no matter how well or poorly defended. Your planets defenders will miraculously remember to fight back once you've returned, making the whole flow of the game feel like it's punishing you for trying to go out and enjoy the game.
My advice? Do not buy this game. The creation tools are too boring and sparse for adults and the space stage, which is 95% of the game, is too confusing and restrictive for children. Go pick up the creature creator for $5, or check out SimCity 2000 or SimAnt instead.
Customer Review: Spore Sadness
Summary: 1 Stars
I got this game and installed it, in great anticipation of it's gameplay hype. Right off the bat I was getting an error, where I had to go in and change the game's config file so that it would work!....*sigh*
I worked my way to the space age, and thought that it was a decent enough game. The very first stage, where you're floating around eating things to promote your creatures growth was really fun. I only saved the game once, in the civilization stage, because I had to go do something and come back to the game.
I finally get to the space age, and the game crashes! I thought it was only because I had been playing the game straight through and it bugged out for some reason. It's no big deal, right? Games always crash. Well I log back in to find out the game doesn't have an autosave feature! Wow...what progressively modern game does not have autosave these days? Ok I can deal with playing from the Civilization stage again...
As soon as I get into the space stage I save...then wham...another crash. I tried playing the space age many many times, and every time about 5-10 min into the game, it crashes. So I have this game I can't even play...
Later on I call up my brother to tell him what I thought about the game. He tells me that he can't play it. Surely he must be doing something wrong, right? Nope, see he can't get the internet right now where he lives...at all. So because of something entirely out of his hands, he can't play SPORE...all because EA came up with this great idea that you have to register online.
On top of all of this business, I've read about a number of people who are having even worse DRM issues. So if you buy this game, it's really a roll of the dice. I can play the game fine up to the space age...who knows...