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Does anybody play Spore? I've had it for a while, and I recently got back into it. I play with the expansion pack, and I think it really increased replay value. Post some comments.

Kinda big letdown, IMO. What with the multiple-year hype, it was hard for Maxis to live up to that kind of stuff. The Robin-Williams demo I always thought was hilarious, and that combined with the fact that Will Wright is probably one of the more skilled people in seeming like he's showing only a small amount of a game's potential, and the Sims' popularity, made this a game everyone wanted. And I think it was very good, I remember the excitement of opening up the creature creator for the first time, popping my eighty dollars' worth of worthless "extra-content-super-collectorz-edition-megaplus-plus" disc into the PC, and really liking it. Then I began to find flaws in the repetitive nature of some of the gameplay, the missing stages they "ended up not having" (curse the missing-ness of the underwater fish-animal-stage, I was looking forward to it), and I got bored with it before I even got halfway done with the space stage.

Despite these flaws, I think it was a great game, and if the hype wasn't so huge, I would of enjoyed it a whole lot more. Also, I think the emphasis on the space stage was completely the wrong way to go. The fact that they've expanded on that, and not on the whole concept of the game, epic evolutionary life-story, didn't go over too well with me. I didn't buy the expansion, but I played it at a friend's house, it seemed all right for what it was. Not for Spore.

I think in the end I was saddest about the missing stuff showed in the big E3 demo Will Wright did a few years back. That version sported the shark-like stage, the planet/flora editor (if you watch the menu screen, you'll see as the mouse passes over the various stages, the last three show the text "terrain," "flora," and "hut" editors. I think the game should've been more about the evolution than the single animal or group of animals. Of course, some technical problems presented themselves over time, i.e. dozens of sentient animals forma tribes, versus one dominant species, as was the case here on earth, and the translator translating alien languages instantaneously, but those didn't seem all that problematic. I'm also sad you can't fly through the stars, like the demo showed you could. Man, that demo was killer. I think some of the editor aspects in that demo version looked better, too.

All in all, good game, but not worth the hype.

The following post may contain some/a lot of spelling mistakes, and I don't feel like reading through it again just to make sure I got everything:

For me, Spore was a serious disappointment and a waste of my time.

The first time I heard about Spore was in a 35-minute video presentation, back in 2005, I was amazed by its concept, being able to create my own race of creatures and then see them behave realistically was a fantastic idea, which appealed greatly to me as well as to every other gamer I knew at the time, the huge mix of genres and styles seen in the video showcased the ammount of variety and possibilities the game would offer, I remember being blown away by the footage of the space stage, I could never had imagined that the whole evolution of the player controlled species would culminate in an epic galactic adventure, to see such a gigantic galaxy expanding over the screen, filled with thousands of interactive planets, was a great sight; I will say it again: the concept of this game is amazing... the execution of said concept, on the other hand, is not.

I got my hands on the game last year, by now I was hyped as hell, eager to play what was considered by many to be the greatest game of all time, and boy, was I disappointed when I spotted the new childish and less appealing game design. You see, originally the creators of Spore were going for a more realistic approach, the creatures would look and behave like animals, gameplay would be more focused on surviving and evolving to become the fittest species in the world, the game would be a tad more graphic, with the creatures actually bleeding, and coupling, instead of... dancing and digging for old bones (?)

So, okay, they decided to give it a more Pokémon-ish visual design, that's okay right? As long as it is fun and delivers what it promises, I'm cool with the changes. Problem is... the game is not fun, it is shallow and does not accomplish a great deal of things it established as goals.

First: they decided to throw the whole "evolution" thing outta the window, you may start the game with Creature A and by the end you will be in control of Creature Z, they don't even have to be related to each other and they may even be in the same level of aptitude, there is no evolution at all. Second: customization is as deceiving as it gets, if you want to make a dude with one thousand spikes on his back, you can't, because there is a stupid limit based on "gene points" or some bull**** like that, you are very, very limited by the "parts" you gain by digging fossils and that retarded parts limit, you can't fully exercise your creativity in this game and finally, the worst thing of all: the creature behavior, originally they were using a smart program that would recognize the form of things created by the player and give them a proper set of animations depending on how many limbs they had, which appendages were attached, their size, posture and the overall attitude of said creature; the results of said process spoke for themselves, you could just add three legs to this snake-like figure, give him a scorpion tail press "Ok" and watch him go, he would walk and attack as his body permitted, always going for the most logical and physically possible way of doing so. The conceptual Spore would require the player's creativity and intelligence to perfect his own creations in a way to make them better and more efficient and their tasks, the final game, on the other hand, got this retarded "add crazy appendages to the blob thingy to win" system, where you may attach a minimalistic pair of butterfly wings to a huge, rhinoceros-sized animal and see him magically fly, it's ridiculous and makes things way too dumb.

But enough about the creatures and promises that weren't delivered, let's talk about how pathetically uninteresting are the later stages of the game, granted I enjoyed the first two stages (that of the cellular level and creature level) for their novely value, the rest of the game is just painful! Tribal stage is just a very shallow and dumbed down age of empires rip-off, you will want to get to the end of it as quick as possible, because there is nothing to see here, then we reach the civilization level, where the behavior of your race up to now will define which stereotype your nation will adopt, then you may proceed to create your own techology in the buildings and vehicle editor, which are incredibly boring for some reason, then you put them into action in what is possibly the worst Real Time Strategy game you will ever play, and I'm not exaggerating here, it is preeeety bad, why? Well, combat is very cluttered, research is non-existant, construction is dumbed down, with the unique looks of your buildings having nothing more than aesthetical value. It is a poor excuse for a RTS.

Then we get to the cream of the crop: the space stage, the part where you loose all contact with the race which you have so lovingly cared for during the whole game, the part that brings me frustations to no end. My main gripe with the space stage is the lack of a space fleet for your species, I mean, everybody in the universe has one, why can't your guys have one too? I realy don't know! All I know is that you will be attacked by your enemies non-stop, be them the space pirates, that evil empire race with a weird name or some random aliens, it doesn't matter, they will be there. All. The Time. You will have to backtrack to your ridiculously defenseless homeplanet and colonies to stop the invaders, and that "defense" of yours will also be an exercise in frustrations, the controls of the space ship are so counterintuitive and poor, that you will be lucky if you even hit those guys. Sometimes you will be far away, in a different planet making experiments with the atmosphere and HQ will call telling you that the Golks are attacking, and it is such a waste of time to go all the way back to that planet under attack, that you will ignore the warning and keep doing whatever you are doing. Sometimes you will be attack by two or more enemies simultaneously, there was this one time when I defeated an enemy fleet, just to have another one coming from hyper-space or whatever, and then the pirates used their warp devices to teleport directly to my location and blow a hole in the hull of my ship, it was ridiculous.

The ammount of things you can do to a planet are far more limited than one may think, originally you were to alter the terrain with incredible tools, create geological formations as you saw fit, colonize underwater planets and basically play god. In the final version, you can alter the color of some planets, what is this Star Wars: The Coloring Book? That wouldn't suprise me.

So, as you can tell, I could go on and on, mention a ton more things I dislike about this game, how it was such a disappointment for me and for half of those who bought it, but I guess I have made a point already so I will stop here. For me, Spore is the biggest gaming failure of all time, it is a dumbed down game made for little kids basend on an original, creative, innovative and awesome idea. It is overrated, overhyped and I don't like it.

It was pretty fun for me. Replayability is a bit iffy, but the Space Stage is the best and worst part of the game. Great concept, everything seems great, if it weren't for one thing. Ecodisasters. My planets have so many ecodisasters it's not funny. In my opinion, ecodisasters ruin an otherwise great game.

I love this game! I haven't played it much though... When i got it was realy disappointing when i played through the main game but when i started using the editors a ton it wasn't as disappointing.
Anyways Stickman what's your username and add you. Mines Haffgrim <-- Click

@Nihillo
For the space stage I just ditch my homeplanet, buy a wormhole whatchamacallit, and go to god knows where, so I never have to go back. And Galactic adventures makes the space stage so much better.

@Valthero
Don't pay any attention to those, as they do pretty much squat. Then just do what I said before.

@Sev
I just added you, and my username is Stickman_Ben (Clicky Clicky).

I love Spore!

Its a very fun game, if you have the expansions.

After a couple months it got old. I would have gotten Galactic Adventures, but I had gotten TF2 working by that time, so...