SPORE™ Collection

It's one of the most versatile and fun character creators of all time wrapped around a bland and slow game that has no clear drive behind it.

Spore is amazing during the first three stages of the game. Completely engrossing and unique. However the game loses steam and becomes a slog on the last/longest stage of space travel and planetary conquest. Sure its fun to build your first tank, fortress, and spaceships. After that its just a repeat of the same over and over. The quests are uninspired and basically just time sinks. Taking over new planets is just a slog. Everything that you did during the evolution and advancement of your race has absolutely no bearing or effect on the endgame other than aesthetics. Did you make a violent race of 8 armed killers? Did you make a timid race of lute-playing bards? Doesn’t matter in Spore. I highly recommend you play this game if you never have. Just keep in mind that the endgame is boring and not worth playing for more than one planet.

Back in the days when it Spore came out I played it A LOT, and enjoyed the hell out of it. I've read that people were disappointed in it, because of the hype that surrounded the game, and that it didn't live up to the expectations, but well until it released I didn't know anything about it, so I just enjoyed the ride. An oh man, was it enjoyable! If you have a kid I think this is one of the best games you can buy for them, it teaches creativity, strategy, they can explore and have fun. So yeah I can only recommend this game to everyone who didn't experience it yet, it just the purest kind of fun.

If you enjoy designing things starting from a bacteria going all the way to a spaceship, you'll enjoy Spore, and if you like universe exploration Spore's got that too. Beginning of the game is, in recent terms, Agario-like. You eat other cells to evolve, eventually become a fish-like thingy and develop leg-like thingies finally become a creature of the land. You lay eggs, defend your nest, and destroy other nests, only to evolve into a social creature: let's call him "cave dude". The cave dudes you design, in time, triumph over other tribes and environments, become civilized dudes (as far as I remember that's where your bio evolution stops). Then you research and start to design your vehicles weapons etc. Finally once you dominate, indoctrinate or unite your planet you design your spaceship and sail off into the unknown to meet alien races and keep researching for better weapons, colonizing other planets etc etc. You discover other alien species, trade with, indoctrinate or dominate them. The end "end game" is discovering the center of the universe but the game is open ended. Most if not all your design choices are aesthetical, they don't serve much purpose, as in "this leg" you choose won't be stronger or faster than "that leg" or "this part of a tank" is not different than others, but it's fun to be able to make a rubber-ducky tank for example or you can eat things with your butt and put the other end to an unexpected place. It certainly doesn't give you a strategic advantage or has any practical use whatsoever but who cares?! Creepy&Cute is a fine addition since it gives you a whole lot of new pieces to play with. Galactic Adventures, plays like a hero based RTS and very poorly made. It's supposed to be a bunch of missions for your "ship captain", and was a disappointment for me. A word of warning: The strategy, space combat, trading, politics etc elements are simplistic/basic, Spore is NOT fully (only partially and very casually) a sim, nor a 4X nor an RTS game.

The game is a series of modes that go from "eat things to be bigger" to "simon says" to "really basic rts game" ending with the REAL start of the game, Space stage, where you explore randomly generated star systems and hobknob with the local aliens. Throughout the game, there's three possible playstyle archetypes (peaceful, aggressive, and in-between), and whichever playstyle you committed the most to in the gamemode you're in will decide what abilities you get for the rest of the game. For instance, if you finish cell stage as a herbivore, you'll have an ability in creature stage that lets you sing a calming song to briefly stop aggressive creatures. While none of the game is particularily complex, even in space stage, it's a great way to relax and just burn a few hours scanning wildlife and terraforming planets and trading artifacts you stole from other civilzations. You can even blow up other planets, which is kinda neat. However, the game never really goes past that kinda neat point. There's a LOT of further potential that you can feel behind the scenes, but it's ultimately a very surface-level evolution game. The difficulty settings seem to only affect how many hostile species you encounter, which is annoying. The more RTS-y parts of the game (tribal and civilization stages) are an absolute slog in my opinion, and creature stage is just long enough for you to start to get annoyed. This is circumvented somewhat by you being able to start a new game in any stage (as long as you've unlocked said stage at least once), but it comes with a massive drawback: you can't use any of the abilities you unlock by playing previous stages, so you start at a huge disadvantage. Space stage can get very tedious, but the inclusion of Galactic Adventures eases that by throwing some random third-person adventure that plays like the creature stage but with dialogue and quests. I'm running out of characters, so in summary: It's okay. For $30 it feels a little steep. Wait for sale.