SPORE™ Collection

8 years later, Spore is officially DRM free! Though the game is more interesting in the early stages, there are a lot of customization options, unfortunately for me the gameplay later on lacks a certain something, I cannot pinpoint exactly what it is. The later stages of the game feel rushed and the whole game leaves me with a sense of uneven, unbalanced gameplay evolution. But maybe that's just me.

Spore is no Sim Universe, but it is still a very enjoyable sim game that really shines once you reach past a certain point. Your goal in Spore is to raise an alien race from single-cell organism all the way to galactic empire. This is achieved in the different phases: the Pac-man like Cell phase, the third-person RPG inspired Creature phase, the mini-RTS Tribal stage, the full-blown RTS Civilization stage, and the heavily Starflight and Star Control inspired Space stage. You flesh out your creatures appearance in the Creature stages while fleshing their mentality and behavior through all stages. Sadly the Space stage is the only phase you will normally come back to, as satisfying it is to go through all stages it can also be tedious. That said the Space phase is the closest part of the game that lives up to the original hype, there is a lot to do and there are literally thousands of worlds to visit as well as thousands of aliens to meet made by other players. Galactic Adventures enhances the game further with its in-depth adventure creator and solid gameplay that builds on the creature's phases mechanics. The game's biggest strength is its creators, its flexibility is currently unmatched and its easy to lose yourself making hundreds of aliens, vehicles, buildings, and adventures without even playing anything else in the game. Despite the two having very different gameplay, Spore is very much a precursor to No Man's Sky: both are sci-fi themed games with elements of simulation and exploration with the promises of nearly infinite gameplay. To say these games didn't deliver is an understatement; however, there is one huge difference between these two games: Spore is actually fun.

This is the kind of game that is only as good as you are at it. If you have an imagination and you're good at very basic 3d modeling Spore will offer you a lot of replay value. The strength of this game isn't the actual game rather than tools that allow you to be creative with the game to make your own galaxy of creatures and civilizations. If you don't have much of an imagination nor the patience/ability to work with very basic 3d modeling, you're going to hate this game because that's really the majority of what it offers.

The first few hours of any Spore playthrough are fun as you progress from a single-celled organism to a pack of pre-sentient animals to a stone age tribe to a nation state to an interplanetary empire. However, once you've expanded a bit into space the game grinds to a halt as your single spaceship has to manage the economy and defense of your entire interplanetary empire. Forget crushing your enemies with a huge fleet or drowning in money from controlling sources of valuable spice. If you want to defend against pirates or invaders you have to do it yourself. If you want to make money you have to ship the spice yourself. If you want to explore the galaxy you have to do it yourself. And you want to do all those things, meaning you end up doing none of them once your empire reaches a certain size. Spore had a lot of potential, but it's sad that the most fun stages are the first four which are over in a flash and the least fun stage is the last which can go on forever.