Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Spore

Top positive review

A great educational family friendly game for all ages

Reviewed in the United States on August 24, 2013

Spore is an excellent family-friendly game that can teach a wide variety of scientific subjects while being fun and inspiring a lot of creativity. There are 5 stages of the game, each one a kind of game in its own. Each one focuses on simple evolutionary concepts, anthropological concepts or cosmological concepts, sure to teach without the kids even being aware of it. One of the best things about Spore is that unlike most games, you are not forced to kill everything to advance the game. You can actually play the entire game never killing anything and being purely peaceful and making friends. This is one of the few games I don't mind my kids playing a lot.

The cell stage corresponds most closely to the evolution of single-celled organisms into multicellular cell colonies, mollusks and simple fish. Concepts of carnivore, omnivore and herbivore are taught and the connection with the type of mouth that is used. This stage is very easy and short, merely laying the groundwork for the meat of the game.

The Creature Stage is the most enjoyable for my kids. They literally have a hundred different saved games at the creature stage. This is basically a 3rd person action game. The level of creativity is very high since you have an impressively powerful and easy tool to create creatures. My 5-year-old can make some very unique creations with a minimal of effort. For an adult, you can create a huge variety of creatures, the possiblities seem endless. Your animal evolves and becomes more complex moving from the early amphibian stage of life up to human-level complexity. You can form Packs, learn about migrations and ecosystems, extinction, co-evolution and the general tendency of creatures to evolve into more complex forms with more specialized tools.

The Tribal stage advances your fully evolved creatures to stone-age level. Tribal huts are created, you learn technologies like Stone Axe, Torches and musical instruments (again so you can win the stage without killing your competition). This is actually an extension of the creature stage and is a straightforward realtime strategy game type.

Civilzation stage advances to a modern level of technologies, with air forces, cities, armies and navies. You can design your own vehicles of each type and several types of buildings to put in your cities. This is a rather simple strategy game and can be completed quite rapidly. .

Space stage for me is the most impressive from a teaching standpoint. In this stage the entire galaxy is your playground, and Spore has a GORGEOUS model of a spiral galaxy with tens of thousands of individual stars in it. You can discover planetary systems, dead worlds, alien worlds full of life, and alien civilizations. After many hours of playing and expanding your galactic empire, zoom out and discover how much of the galaxy you have really explored and you see that the whole enormous region of your empire is just a tiny insignificant region, swallowed up in a sea of stars. It gave my kids a great understanding of how vast the universe is and what kinds of stars and planets we can find out there. The space stage teaches many things, including the basics of economics and trade, diplomacy, astronomy and cosmology, and some great sci-fi concepts like Terraforming, Uplifting, Wormholes and more. What other game lets you blast enemy cities with asteroids that not only eradicate the city but also alter or destroy whole ecosystems? Hit your enemy with 3 -4 asteroids and watch their lush green world becomes an airless lifeless ball of rock. Likewise you can spend hours colonizing, exploring, terraforming and customizing your worlds and setting up trade routes.

Top critical review

Critical reviews›

Sean B.

i wanted to like this game

Reviewed in the United States on December 1, 2015

i wanted to like this game, i wanted to love it, but i just couldnt...

i was initially caught up in the hype of the premise of this game - i had been watching the development for a long time - it looked to be an amazing revolutionary combination of things, multiple different game types RTS, RPG, Arcadey Top Down scrollers, new technologies, procedurally generated worlds, procedurally generated animations, player freedom to build anything they wanted and to pull in other player created content dynamically and seemlessly... yes it all sounded good, but in the end i look of this as more of a tech demo proof of concept rather than a game

the basic premise of the game is incredibly epic in description - start as a single celled organism and expand and evolve to become a massive space faring civilization, controlling all stages of evolution in between

the game starts out solid, one of the greatest character/creature creators of its time, make crazy weird animals with weird leg set ups and the game just magically detects how they would squirm, walk or fly - it was an amazing thing - start from a single celled organism and be transplanted into a glob of primordial ooze, you must fight for survival and either grow finding plant based nutrients or hunt and devour other organism, these basic choice will dictate how you evolve over time - this stage was incredibly fun, you had a single purpose, to just survive and evolve building up your organism with more complex creature parts as you evolve eventually stepping out of the ocean and onto land for the first time

The next stage of the game started to lose some of the fun factor, but all in all wasnt bad - this creature phase took this new walking hopping or slithering creature and put it into a basic ecosystem with other creatures around - you needed to either hunt or find plant material to evolve again depending on how you progressed your early organism - monsters were varied in this phase from massive 40ft tall giants that would squash you if you got close, to flocks of bird/chicken like animals, some predatory, some passive, up to you to decide - eventually you will find a mate of your own species and procreate to evolve into the next phase

the tribe phase is where the game really started losing it for me and my wife - in this phase you build up your tribe by harvesting food and creating offspring which will eventually grow up and increase the size of your tribe - to progress through this phase you must become to preeminent tribe in your area either conquering or impressing nearby tribes to join you all the while defending your own tribe from invaders and monsters - my wife hated this section of the game and no longer would play when her creature got to this section - overall she hates conflicts and fights in games and this phase forced it upon you, whereas previously you could be totally herbivore and run away from the big baddies, here you were confronted with them and forced to fight - even the cultural spreading minigame designed to be a path around fighting seems like your tactically playing music to conquer other tribes - all in all lacking

form here the gameplay just continues to degrade forcing combat on to the player, if you dont want tanks that shoot bullets, you have to build music trucks that shoot happiness at things, still combat just with pretty green lines instead of deadly bullet tracers, its all combat - hence why my wife never even attempted this stage - for me it was boring and repetitive - build tanks/harvest resources/conquer neighbors - rinse repeat - there no story, nothings dynamic, there are x number of randomly placed civilizations on your planet, conquer them all (shooting bullets or shooting music) to progress to the next phase... sure you could take 15 hours to decide what those tanks or flying machines can look like, but that gets tiring really quick

the next space phase you just get totally lost in a massive sandbox with little to no direction or story to figure out what to do next, its just kinda like, hey do whatever you want to, want to make a volcano on a random planet, sure you can, but why?...

like i said previously everything seems very superficial, no one phase of the game seems completely fleshed out, it seems shallow - i think this could have been great and epic, but i'm sure things were rushed and corners had to be cut

i would not recommend this game

3 people found this helpful

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Mercy

A great educational family friendly game for all ages

Reviewed in the United States on August 24, 2013

Platform For Display: PC/MacEdition: StandardVerified Purchase

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tina

best game ever

Reviewed in the United States on February 11, 2012

Platform For Display: PC/MacEdition: StandardVerified Purchase

CELL STAGE: you start out as a cell eating plants or meat,there are three different types of diets herbivore,carnivore ,omnivore.to order to be an omnivore you must have to balance your diet in the stage you will probably find parts along the way the more food you eat you get more DNA points along the way you may find epic cells later in the stage once you completed the stage your cell grows a brain and gets smarter your will start as a slug.
CREATURE STAGE: in the creature stage you can ally or combat other creatures each diet has it's own ability you can not ally hostile creatures for an reason because the creature may be hostile because you may killed a baby or it was stronger combat stats and lower in socializing stats you may meet an epic creature along the the way but there is one you to ally them it must be a rouge the same species as the epic or it will not work.when you brain gets bigger you can add a pack to keep you company you can also add babies in your pack but will not be an good idea because when you evolve the baby becomes a adult and they have lower health. when you complete the creature stage you will go on into the tribe stage this will be you last time evolving.
TRIBE STAGE:in the tribe stage your creatures becomes a tribe. hint in the creature stage if you ally a creature and put it in you pack it will become a pet. you creature will learn how to use tools such as healing rods,fishing poles,torches, axes,and musical instruments you can also have a baby which cost 10 food to order to have a baby along the way you will see multiple tribes along the way.when a tribe member die it will be gone forever there is not way to get him back unless you have enough food to get a baby. you can also steal food from other tribes and other can also steal your food. if you ally a tribe they will give you gifts also you can give others tribes a give even if there hostile.once you completed the tribe stage you will move on to civilization stage.
CIVILIZATION STAGE:in the civilization stage you can created a city hall and a land vehicle deepening on what type you can also make water,more land,and air vehicles .players can also make bigger armies you can collect spice along the way on you map you may see a bunch of armies on the land you can also collect spices in the water (you must have a water vehicle to order to get the spice in the water). you will see epics in the stage expect they bigger and have 3000 health points epics will destroy vehicles and armies .once you complete the civilization stage you will move on the the space stage.
SPACE STAGE:the space stage is the final stage in the game the player controls a single spaceship when you die you can get a new one.the player can also abduct creatures inn the stage but not epics you can transport creatures to other planets to test a planet's habitability and to create ecosystems to stabilize a planet's atmosphere.the player may utilize various tools such as crop circles to interact with primitive lifeforms or place a monolith to the planet's atmosphere.there are over 500,000 planets in the game's galaxy orbiting around 100,000 stars (including earth).at the end of the game you will have a lots a planets
i hope you liked this reviewed.

4 people found this helpful

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Sean B.

i wanted to like this game

Reviewed in the United States on December 1, 2015

Platform For Display: PC/MacEdition: StandardVerified Purchase

3 people found this helpful

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K. McKenna

I'm not sure what everyone else is playing...

Reviewed in the United States on June 18, 2011

Platform For Display: PC/MacEdition: StandardVerified Purchase

I believe this is a great game, with high replay value. It captures my imagination. In this game you can create anything your heart desires, and it will come to life. Yes, EA is ridiculous with their protection issues, but you won't really run into that problem if you're just the casual gamer. Who plays the same game on more than 3 computers? Maybe households with multiple (MULTIPLE) children, which is inconvenient for them, but for the average person it's just a fun game to play on some downtime.

I bought this after the hype of it coming out, and I never heard about what it was supposed to be. I bought it after I played the iphone version because I loved it on the iphone and couldn't get enough. It met all of my expectations and more.

You start out at the cell stage, which is like one of those online games where you eat fish that are smaller than you, and are eaten by fish that are bigger than you. I've always enjoyed those, so it was great for me.
The next stage, the creature stage, after you grow legs, is all about collecting food and building relationships with/killing other creatures. It's like a point and click action type game. If you don't continue eating, you die, so your main objective is to find food.
After that, you proceed to a stage where you control a village of your creatures. Here you can choose to destroy them or befriend them. But you still must keep track of resources. There are different instruments/weapons you can unlock to finish your task of dominating the other species.
Then you come to the civilization stage, which was my favorite. You are either a religious/trade/military based city, and you have to convert/ally/conquer the other cities. I love the strategy behind it. It may be extremely easy, but I like to think this game is geared mostly towards children. It's a good introduction to strategy type games for children.
Afterwards is the space exploration type stage, but I didn't play it much. I was too excited to start all over again.
At the beginning of each stage you get to create all the necessary things for that stage. Your creature during the first two, your creature's clothing for the third, buildings and vehicles for the fourth, and your spaceship for the last. You have the option to change these at any time during the stages, it's a big part of "evolving". This is the best part of the game, and the reason it stands out.

Overall this game is great if you're the type of person who played the sims just to create awesome houses from your imagination rather than to control your own people. It's for the fun of your imagination. Do not go into this looking for a hardcore game with complexity. It's more like minecraft than heavy rain or mass effect.

3 people found this helpful

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RakuenWolf

Pleasantly surprised.

Reviewed in the United States on August 20, 2012

Platform For Display: PC/MacEdition: StandardVerified Purchase

I bought Spore and Spore Galactic Adventures on a whim when I saw some gameplay of the Spore by Nerdcubed. Normally, I have a very quick turn over rate with games but Spore has still has my attention over a month later, which hasn't happened with a game for years. There are only a few points that I would like to emphasis and explain who these effect.

1) Terrible DRM. You can only install the game 5 times. This isn't a problem unless you share the games, have multiple computers, or upgrade your computer frequently. There is evidently a way to "retrieve" installs, however, I have not used it and cannot give first hand experience. I have heard that the retrieval system does not work particularly well for Mac computers.

2) Imitated gameplay. Spores gameplay offers nothing new. The 5 stages to the game all imitate other types of games. (see other reviews for more depth) This makes the gameplay seem cheap, however, the gameplay is not what sells the game. If you buy spore, buy it for the creature creator which is very well done and offers a very intuitive designer that offers a large number of bits and pieces for your creatures. There is also a vehicle and building creator that is not as interesting to me, but offers that customization that makes the later stages of the game unique.

3) No hardcore aspects. The gameplay offers little challenge and is, quite literally, impossible to lose. If you die in any stage, you simply respawn. The acception is the tribal and city stages. I'm not sure what happens if you lose your bases in those stages but the enemy AI is very basic and very rarely poses a threat. Each stage also lacks depth of gameplay to the various roles that you can play.

Spore is a fun game with it's problems. If the DRM is going to be a huge problem for you I would not recommend the game. If your the hardcore type gamer who is looking for a challenge, your better off finding a different game. If your like me and your looking for a (mostly) simple game with easy and simplified gameplay and fun creation aspects, then this game is definitely suited for you.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Awesome game, awful software & hopefully helpful info

Reviewed in the United States on August 29, 2012

Platform For Display: PC/MacEdition: StandardVerified Purchase

My son said he loves the game, but the software is awful. It took us hours to get around the install problems and then we found out the key code had already been used! Based on the reviews and forum comments, I'm not even bothering with EA to try and resolve this issue. Our best guess is that someone has figured out their key algorithm and the codes are being activated illegally. So, even though we bought a brand new game, the verification key is useless and my son can only play a limited portion of the game.

Overall, it's a great game for a 9 year old kid. Some people think the game is shallow and have all sorts of critiques, but my son thinks it is fun and I think the concept of the game is cute. I don't really care about DRM issues in general because I had only planned for my son to use it on his computer; however, with EA's history of customer service and the suspected hacking of their key codes, it does become a problem.

Here are some tips for installing and starting the game that, after an unsuccessful install attempt, took me a while to find through searching multiple forums: (this is based on installing to a newer version of a MacBook Pro)

(1) When you put the DVD into the computer it says the install icon should appear on your desktop. It doesn't, but this doesn't matter because you can just access it via Finder.

(2) Once you go through the install process, click NO when it asks if you want to install the updates. According to what I read, if you say YES, it assumes a previous install/registration has taken place and then the game won't run at all. If you happen to go through the updates, just uninstall the software via their instructions and start over. This shouldn't affect anything since the key code was never entered. Others have stated that once you register and start the game the first time, just quit and restart the game to do the updates then.

(3) If you start the game and only get a black screen with a big blue cursor (sometimes I got music in the background, but I usually didn't), this doesn't appear to be a video compatibility issue, at least in our case. Once you get the Spore cursor on your screen, click command-Q. This will take you out of the game and give you a message that you must quit from inside the game. Click OK and then it takes you back to the game, but now you can see/hear everything. Odd, but it works - and it needs to be done every time you start the game.

(4) Now, you should finally be at the screen to register/create and EA account. Clicking "submit" never worked for us, so we clicked on the --> to continue. This is when I nearly lost it, after all this work we find out that "The registration key used to instal this game cannot be validated." If you click on help with registration it just takes you to a page for password recovery. I also tried to look at the technical support mentioned in the back of the book with the DVD for help. I can get to the main page, but there is no content at all.

If you get a game with a valid code, I'd say the game is great. If you don't, then you have to decide if paying full price for a game that only allows you acces to a limited number of the features is worth it.

9 people found this helpful

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Hannah

Cute fun game

Reviewed in the United States on November 25, 2011

Platform For Display: PC/MacEdition: StandardVerified Purchase

This game starts out very simple as you grow out of plasmodial ooze and into a little germ-like thing that can survive by eating other germs or algae. The more you eat, the bigger you get until slowly you evolve in to a fish, grow legs and begin to walk on land. This is where you interact with other creatures by becoming buddies, or eating them. After that is the tribal stage which gets a bit more complicated, because you have to watch out for other tribes. It is soooo hard to be friends with them because they're always trying to steal your food or stab you in the back. Same with the civilization stage where other countries are always killing each other off and attacking you when you're the weakest. I'm still in the space stage and I'm still not so sure how to go about handling everything "economically" as the game says it, because everyone keeps threatening to kill me or trying to convert me to their religion. Well anyways, it's a very cute and interesting game and if your the kind of person that likes to multitask and conquer worlds then it's perfect. It's so cool how pretty much everything can be customized, from the number of limbs on your creature, to the number of guns on your rocket ship. It's really easy to get sucked into though. As a fan of evolution and the sims I love it.

One person found this helpful

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Dallin Peterson

Love this game

Reviewed in the United States on March 28, 2023

Platform For Display: PC/MacEdition: StandardVerified Purchase

Love this game. However it is starting to get outdated and the newer computers won’t load as easily or won’t load at all.
One hiccup is that it always seems to crash in the Space Stage, so save frequently.

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Potpie55

Hard to load, but my 11 yo nephew liked it

Reviewed in the United States on November 25, 2009

Platform For Display: PC/MacEdition: StandardVerified Purchase

Ok, so I have not played this game as I bought it for my nephew and this seems to be the target audience. My nephew has played this allot since I bought it for him. The concept seems fun as you walk a creature through evolutionary steps. He is always laughing and showing off his creations. If my rating was based strictly on how much fun he is having with it I would give it a 5 star.

However, since I bought it for him, I was the one that had to load it, and that was not fun. I am not a computer programmer, but I can usually load a new piece of software on a PC. This took my sister and I an hour to get it to load. We had to go to youtube to figure out how to load it. That is why I gave it a 3 star. So other than the loading issue, I got a good price on Amazon and it shipped in plenty of time for his birthday. So if you are buying this for a kid I would recommend it.

One person found this helpful

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VW Smith

Fun for all ages

Reviewed in the United States on December 13, 2010

Platform For Display: PC/MacEdition: StandardVerified Purchase

My older son bought this for his younger brother as a birthday gift. I allow very few computer games and this was the one way he could sneak it by me :) I like that they make choices and see the results. They all hug the screen and want to watch what the other is doing, almost a group activity. I don't know that I would buy it for my kids but they LOVE it and I haven't found anything bloody or violent or disgusting. I gave it a 4 since it's not an "excellent" learning game. It is an interesting view of evolution and I have talked to my kids about that world view and explained real life versus a game. If you have a big problem with evolution I wouldn't recommend this particular game but it makes for a fun activity during our winter blizzards.

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