So Spore has been in development since 2000 and hyping itself for the last three, and its such a disappoint, first lets get this straight this is not a game that charts the rise of a civilisation from cell to interstellar empire, it is a space game and a poor one at that, its no privateer or X beyond the frontier, thats the many game. the much vaunted first 4 stages are little more than the customisation options at the beginning of any RPG, long, overly and drawn out version, each epoch sets a different characteristic, and in the second epoch you can design your creature and in the 3rd and 4th dress them, and thats the crux of this game it really is just an RPG. The first epoch is fun the first time, being a cell, bobbing about, and the whole different scales of organisms is a nice touch. but it is over quickly and lacks any real depth, its be a mini game in any other game, but it has the RPG element that your see recurring of leveling up. then you have the creature stage, where you can put legs on your cell, and have your on personal abomination against the lord, wander round and commit genocide. Your goal is to earn experience points called DNA to level up your creature you also find new traits just lying around. This part of the game is an RPG with the fun part taken out, its find other creature kill or impress arbitrary number, ocasionally your herd migrants so you have to follow but thats all the missions are, then when you expanded your brain enough you goto the tribal stage and all your decisions are boiled down to 3 outcomes as with the cell stage this leads to the fun possibility of predatory herbivores, and all the rest of your decisions on the genetic traits and the allies and enemies you made become pointless as its wiped away just as in the cell stage (some physical traits like wings have an effect but offer no real advantage) and its off to the tribal stage, here you report the previous ally or kill but instead of one creature you control a group of them, rather than other tribes of your own species, several other species have similiarly climbed the lofty steps of civilisation, (all with breeding populations only pausible in the bible) so you do want any self respecting chieftain would do set about committing genocide,(or cultural subjugation since only your species will progress into the next epoch it same to assume your allies died out) Tribe is probably the easiest stage, you either give all your tribe musical instruments and impress the other tribes or the quicker route give them all weapons and wipe them out all of them. Then after this brief section its off to the civilisation stage, but if your expecting something akin to the civ games or any of its ilk then your be sorely disappointed. This is the first epoch were a previous decision really effects anything how you won the stage sets your start city type in the civilisation one, there are 3 choices Military, Religious and Economic, and you get an air sea and land unit that can be built for each type, economic cities can buy opposing cities, religious ones convert them and military conquer them. There is only one tech to be unlocked and that air units and you unlock that by conquering half the civilisation, everything else is unlocked from the start of the stage. This is in many ways just a repeat of the tribal stage and is other nearly as quickly.
these 4 section the games vaunted selling points take no more than a few hours to complete. Then we have the space stage, which is essential an RPG it has some weak story but i only played an hour or so of it, before taking the game back and getting a refund. The game has some nice touches and the designing of creatures, buildings and vechicles is fun but they're interspersed with touch much repetitive grind and too little actual game play. On the evolution front it fails to surpass Maxis own Simlife, and on the gameplay front you'll be let down if your not looking for a grindtastic RPG.
these 4 section the games vaunted selling points take no more than a few hours to complete. Then we have the space stage, which is essential an RPG it has some weak story but i only played an hour or so of it, before taking the game back and getting a refund. The game has some nice touches and the designing of creatures, buildings and vechicles is fun but they're interspersed with touch much repetitive grind and too little actual game play. On the evolution front it fails to surpass Maxis own Simlife, and on the gameplay front you'll be let down if your not looking for a grindtastic RPG.
