SPORE™ Collection

No other parts of the game are worth playing other than the cell stage and creature stage. Every other part of the game is a terrible slow and painful grind. Had this forever ago on store bought disk and as much as I enjoyed it- it felt painfully lacking. I remember watching the video where they got robin williams to play with the creature editor at E3 2006 video here if anyone cares. RIP Robin Williams, he made spore more fun. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5TXEUiR1Xk And at that point I was thinking how cool the game WAS going to be, and I grabbed the game very late probably much longer after everyone else had got it too, or at least that's how I remember getting it. I played the game and got tired of it eventually after replaying the cell and creature stage numerous times and rage-quitting the civilization and space ship stages every single time. I heard many people on the internet talking about how a huge amount of content never really made it into the game, like certain things in the cell stage like genetics were toned down/removed completely because wonderful EA assumed it would be too complicated for some people (this is all things I heard others discussing) and there were rumors of something like water-cities or water-creatures stages or something? Never saw anything like that in the game and felt like maybe they must have toned down, or rather dumbed down the game immensely because everything I had hoped for and wished that I could do in the game was met with disappointment. Even when you try to swim out to sea or cross a little space in the ocean to some distant island you can see, EVEN IF YOU CAN SWIM LIKE AN OLYMPIC SWIMMER- a giant fish eats you so that you can't explore. EVEN IF YOU CAN FLY IN THE SKY LIKE A BIRD, fish eats you. WELP...... I'm officially allergic to EA forever.

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.

I hadn't played Spore until just a few days ago when it was released on GoG. I spent roughly three hours straight having a fairly good time in the cell and creature sections. The cell section was addicting, and it gave a good sense of progression and it actually felt like Darwinism, I'd have to evolve to handle new threats. It felt fantastic when I finally became king of the pool. This later became a recurring theme, but I wished it had lasted longer. Perhaps with more variety in the threats you encounter and more ways to deal with those threats, kind of like a puzzle game almost. Next was the creature section, which was largely more of the same except with a whole other dimension added onto it. I only dabbled in what was on offer, creating a relatively dangerous carnivore with a simple bite and charge attack, but I saw a number of things which gave me cause to think "I'll try that the next time I play through." The creature section was also quite fun, and it also gave a good sense of progression, although it seemed less like I was evolving to counter disparate threats and more to level up my attacks which quickly became a bit monotonous. The creature creator in this section is truly amazing however, beyond anything even by today's standards. Next was the tribal section, then city, then galactic. I'll lump all of these together as they are by far the weakest parts of the game. Firstly, no more customising your creature, which is understandable from a certain point of view, considering humans haven't drastically evolved (physically) for thousands of years, and you can see they wanted to shift the idea from creature evolution to societal and technological evolution. But there just isn't any. It's three set paths, you can be nice, bad or in between. This "morality" is in every stage, but in the later stages, it's your only choice and each time you play, it feels like you're "evolving" in a very scripted way. I'd pick this up for the first half only.

This is a game in 5 parts (cell, creature, tribe, and civilization), however parts 1-4 are just to get you to the main game, the Space Stage. My biggest gripe is that the planets and their spice resources are randomly generated when you first visit their star, which leads to A LOT of save scumming. Save scumming is never a good game design choice. Other than that, this game is still a lot of fun and you can spend hours just enjoying the game, playing around in the different creators (creature, building, vehicle, spaceship) and just chilling out.

So I finally got Spore and I really had fun the first four days. Then I reached Space and it got grindy. Cell Stage, Tribal Stage and Civ Stage are fun, albeit simplistic. Creature Stage starts fun but gets incredibly frustrating when you have to discard beautiful creature designs for ugly parts with better stats. That multiples of the same part do not stack does not help, and that you spend the most time hunting for bones to get the parts you want (or need for survival) does not help either. Getting enough DNA points was not that difficult, there are enough species around. The Space Stage promises to be the most fun - then you look at the requirements for upgrades and cry.The Space Adventures are a mixed bag, especially if you discarded all the upgrade parts and built the creature you originally wanted before going Civ - because you will need your creature stats again. Replacing them with special attacks from new equipment again requires grinding for XP. All things considered you have beautiful ideas and editors in a mediocre game. I still do not regret buying it, mostly for the editors.