Amazon.com: Spore Galactic Edition: PC: Video Games

252 Reviews

5 star:		(38)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(188)

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1.8 out of 5 stars (252 customer reviews)

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399 of 470 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars BITTER IS THE SPORE OF GREED, September 7, 2008

By	NeuroSplicer (Freeside, in geosynchronous orbit) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Fun:2.0 out of 5 stars

The game has been just released. But I am not going to buy it. I used to a have a standing pre-order but not anymore, that has been long canceled. I gave EA a chance to mend its ways but it failed. Here is why.

This is a warning Review. Warning of the dangers of the harbored Digital Rights Management (DRM) subroutine that comes unavoidably bundled with the game. This type of DRM (SecuROM 7x with Limited Installations) is well known as it has already been used in at least two other games (BIOSHOCK & MASS EFFECT). So my review is based on first-hand experience of a core aspect of the game.

Apparently EA would rather keep its customers in the dark. That is why, in the past month, EA Forums got censored, Wikipedia entries selectively edited and Amazon reviews repeatedly deleted. What is worse, Amazon (possibly without knowing it) is breaking the law which requires the full disclosure of bundled snoop-ware.

LIMITED INSTALLS? Yes, LIMITED INSTALLS!!! We only get to ride this shiny pony for...3 laps! The official announcement mentions "on 3 different computers" but avoids to clarify what a "different computer" makes: will changing the graphics card trigger the loss of a token? what about attaching a new hard-drive (internal or external) or adding a new user account. All the above have been reported to subtract installation tokens from BIOSHOCK or MASS EFFECT - and EA has intentionally left this area dark gray.

Moreover, in order to enforce the limited installations, exactly like BIOSHOCK, there will be IRREMOVABLE FOLDERS placed in our systems' Root that will effectively revoke our Administrator rights to our own PCs! Short of reformatting, there is no deleting them even if logged in as Administrators.

Is EA trying to pave the way towards a nightmarish future where PC gaming will be a continuously-billed service (such as direct-Pay TV) and not a product?
Is EA trying to trigger a lemmings stampede towards the Pay-per-Play cliff, where gamers will be regarded as herded cows to be milked over months and years?
Is the Company trying to turn our PC systems (that we bought and paid for) into their proprietary consoles, hence monstrosities such as SecuROM that offer zero anti-piracy protection?
According to statements by their own spokespersons (such as John Riccitiello, CEO of EA) the answer to all of the above question is YES. However, I want to make clear that none of these statements had any impact on my rating of this game. The game has enough troubles as it is...

Is it fair to rate badly a game based on its short duration or bad graphics? How about its instability and bugs? How about harboring potentially dangerous subroutines that will render it useless within a 12-16 months? You see how this is going?

In the end, after all is said, with SPORE it boils down to this: who will actually be owning my copy? Are we to pay $50 only to...RENT this from its publisher, be potentially pestered with the insulting need to prove our purchase forever and place our hardware and data in danger?
And what makes this even harder to understand: will such extreme measures actually prevent piracy? Of course NOT! They did not work for similarly DRM-plagued BIOSHOCK or MASS EFFECT, why should they start working now?

So, one has to ask: what is next in store for customers that make the mistake of buying such a product? Will they be required to pay again to buy another copy of the game when the first one expires?

Is THIS the solution that EA executives came up against piracy: since they cannot stop piracy, let's make all our paying customers PAY TWICE to make up for their million dollar bonuses?!

NO THANKS! No game is worth such harassment!

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311 of 368 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Draconian DRM and a dumbed down experience, September 7, 2008

By	Erich Maria Remarque (Magnolia, Arkansas USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Fun:1.0 out of 5 stars

The game incorporates a draconian DRM system that requires you to activate over the internet, and limits you to a grand total of 3 activations. If you reach that limit, then you'll have to call EA in order to add one extra activation. That's not as simple as it sounds, since when you reach that point EA will assume that you, the paying customer, are a filthy pirating thief. You will need to provide proof of purchase, reasons why the limit was reached, etc, etc (it has all happened before with another recent EA product, Mass Effect). EA, of course, is not obligated to grant you that extra activation or even provide that service. In a couple of years they might very well even shut down the general activation servers, because "it's not financially feasible" to keep them running. What you will be left with is a nice, colorful $50 coaster. And you will be required to pay for another copy/license if you want to continue playing.

This basically means that you are actually RENTING the game, instead of owning it. The game WILL stop to function in the future. That's inevitable, because even if EA keeps the activation servers going, there IS going to be a time when EA will simply cease to exist because of financial issues or federal laws (like most businesses eventually do).

Second, the game was dumbed down to oblivion. Evolution doesn't even matter anymore. For example, you can add as many legs to a creature as you want, but the multilegged creature won't be any faster than a single legged one with higher leg stats. This gameplay element makes "creating" your creatures entirely pointless (cosmetic only, because everything is based on stats), and brings you about the same amount of excitement as dressing up a plastic doll.

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105 of 122 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Warning Macintosh Users With Kids, September 10, 2008

By	David J. Sullivan (Jersey City, NJ) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Fun:1.0 out of 5 stars

*** 12 Sep 08 Update ****

I received a reply to my question from EA. It was boilerplate and mostly PC-centric. It, too, pointed to articles containing busted links (do they ever test?) and was no help.

However, after keeping a watchful eye on the web, it turns out that people have discovered that you MUST have admin rights to run the game. I granted it to the purpose-created SPORE account and the game connects and runs.

Why couldn't EA say that in the doc/install/README/reply? Sheesh.

Admin rights to play a game -- ugh! -- tosses all hopes of parental control and system integrity out the window.

*** Original review ***

My kids and I have been awaiting SPORE for what seems like forever.

We have a spiffy Apple Macintosh iMac with the latest, up-to-date OSX. Each family member has a separate user account on the machine (mostly so I can limit the amounts and time of day the kids can be on the system). As with most software, I installed in with an administrator account. Uh-oh. It seems that only the installing user can *use* the game! No one else can access it. They get unhelpful messages that they cannot connect to the SPORE servers and perhaps there is an internet problem; the original installing user, however, has no such problem. I could not find this documented anywhere in the installation instructions. I dug around the EA SPORE support site -- the one with many links that don't appear to work -- and found a warning that only one EA user can use the game, but that you could have multiple people use that account if they each pick a separate planet to form. Ugh.

I've read about the three-install issue, but I thought the prudent thing would be to de-install it, create a SPORE user account for all to share, and reinstall it there. De-install is a semi-manual process on a Mac (the initial README talks about it, I believe, as does a terse posting at the support site). So, I tossed the application folder and stuff from the user directory and then re-installed it under the new SPORE user on the Mac. It doesn't work. Same as before -- you can't connect to the SPORE servers, but no other message.

I now sit with three frustrated kids, waiting for a response from my support mail to EA.

Sigh.

I expected far more.