Spore (Mac/PC DVD)

Spore came out around 15 years ago. I purchased it at the time, and I'm looking back now at the premise and the gameplay.As a concept demonstrator, Spore was ground-breaking. It was entirely procedurally-driven; the player created their creatures within the first few stages of gameplay, adding features which worked with their mode of play. This was envisaged to be similar to actual evolution, and to be fair, it sort of is. In the next stage you develop intelligence in your creatures and they produce a settlement. Other creatures have also developed alongside yours, and now you can battle each other to see who has developed the stronger creatures. You pass various milestones as you go, and eventually you become able to take over the whole planet.The concept of procedurally-driven creatures and planets was amply demonstrated with Spore. Nowadays a huge variety of games use the same concepts. The only problem is that Spore wasn't really fun. Oh, it provided a few giggles when you created insane creatures without limbs which went on to wield clubs etc., but that was fleeting. It was quite simple to win, and after a while you'd find that there was a good way to build creatures and a bad way.In summary, Spore was a great idea, and proved out a great concept, but I bored of it very quickly.

This will not install on our Mac!! I have tried twice, the instal runs through to the end, says it is complete and you click close but the installer doesn't disappear and you try and close the window and then it says the install isn't complete??!! I tried to open Spore even though it says it is not complete, the application opens and says an update is available so I tried to download it, it runs through the download and then nothing happens and it then repeatedly asks if I wish to download an update. I eventually clicked no and tried to open Spore and got through to login screen and guess what?? Login fails! Total waste of money!!! I have one very disappointed boy and one annoyed Mum who has forked out for this!!!

Rarely in the course of modern gaming has a game been hyped so much by so many only to disappoint so totally.The game is divided into segments covering everything from the cell stage of a creature right through to a galactic empire. Each and every stage is extremely simplistic at best. The highest praise I can heap on the game is that is has character. It's quite charming growing your creature from a single cell to a walking tall tribesman. But each stage is just a point and click exercise. In the cell stage you click on stuff to eat and your cell swims towards it. You see a bigger predator you click away from it.In the Creature Stage you do the exact same, you click on food to run over to eat it, or click away if you find yourself getting attacked by something you can't handle.Tribal Stage consists of just 6 buildings, and one will do just fine to be honest. Again, just a case of clicking on whatever the objective bar tells you to.The civilisation phase plays like an extremely simple RTS, with just one resource and 3 vehicles. And much like the other stages the only tactic you need worry about is making sure you have more Hp's and more firepower than whatever you click on.The Galactic stage again is in theory like any other Space sim, but one that has been grossly oversimplified.I could not recommend this game for anyone other than younger children, or people who very rarely play games and are more interested in cute graphics than content.For anyone else there are games that do each stage 100 times better. Sins of a Solar Empire or Galactic Civilisations for the Space stage.Civilisations 4 or Sim City for the civilisation phase.Medieval 2 or even the dumbed down Settlers 4 for the tribal stage.And any beat em up for the creature stage.All this let down before you even get to the horrific DRM on this game. Its so restrictive you should know your renting the game not buying it. For example I would normal truck this game straight down to the games shops to sell second hand. But I can't do to the over the top DRM. And since you can only change your hardware or format your drive a total of 3 times before the game refuses to play it will last me at best 6 months. Mind you, not that I would be playing that long anyway.What a waste of money.

Firstly the positives, Spore is a beautiful and imaginative game with perhaps the freshest concept for quite some time. You start as a microscopic creature and evolve towards mastery of the galaxy. You can't beat a game scope like that. The game has excellent graphics and an intuitive interface. It's a great deal of fun to play with enough choices, puzzles and strategic decisions on creature design to fill many an hour.Alas now for the negatives.If Spore, as released, is a finished game, a pile of bricks is a house. The game is buggy, prone to hanging and crashing out and even 5 minutes spent on the EA support boards for the game confirms its buggy, crying out for a patch or three and generating a significant amount of anger from users driven mad by the untested, unfinished, almost unplayable state of the game. I'd love to comment on the more complex parts of the game but every time I try to access the "tribal" stage of the game, the game hangs on the loader screen. This is starting to seriously annoy me, if EA can't release a finished game we should bill them for unpaid Beta testing hours.AVOID for at least the next month (until October 2008 at least) until EA releases some patches to make the game actually work.BTW my PC is far beyond the minimal specs and doesn't have problems with any other game, additionally I work in the IT industry and have a respectable modicum of knowledge of how a PC, drivers, patching and software conflicts work.