Apparently intelligent design consists of bland gameplay and unrealistic animals. Previews lied, ruined my 2008 gaming.
It is necessary to know the history of this game in order to know why you shouldn't purchase it. My biggest complaint has to be the fact that it is no longer a game based on "intelligent design" but a sculpting studio with miniature games attached to it. The creature creator itself is not bad, but it provides no incentives for wise decisions in design, nor does the game on a whole promote evolution, just making cute, fluffy, bunnies.
The graphics are alright at best, nothing spectacular. There are some cool sights in the space stage like when you encounter a cube planet for the first time or find a glitched water world. Turning a planet into a wasteland of lava is also some decent eye-candy.
Sound effects are once again decent. When in the shopping menu in the space stage you will occasionally hear a remix of the old MULE theme in the background (for those of you who don't know, MULE was essentially Sim City's predecessor). Sound effects don't really stand out in this game however, no realism involved so no need for realistic sound effects. No need to listen for the huge predator in the distance and purchase supersonic ears to do so, you are the predator, everyone else is your prey.
The gameplay itself is the core of my review. The game isn't one game at all, but five mini-games in one. The cell stage is alright, it reminds one of the game Feeding Frenzy, or the old Atari game where you were a fish trying to eat other fish and grow. It gets repetitive just as it ends, which is nice.
The creature stage is really a double-edged sword. On one end this is the ONLY stage where you will do any significant evolution (cell stage being the other, but it's really miniscule in comparison) but it's also extremely repetitive. This stage functions like an MMO styled grind and nothing else. You can play simon-says and make friends to become allies, get a pack and go hunting. Or you can just annihilate anything and everyone in your wake. Either way both options are easy, repetitive, and boring. At least in an MMO you socialize with other people, progress in gear by working with others, and can engage in other activities like roleplaying or just exploring the world. In Spore you're limited to the landmass you're on, you swim out too far and a fish eats you. There's also no real variety in scenery, no polar caps, no flows of lava, nothing of the sort. It's over within an hour or so and you feel like you haven't done much other than bash 4 keys and click a screen.
The tribal stage is really a downer for me. It functions like an RTS but you can either have your tribe dance and sing their way to victory, or commit mass genocide for victory. Once again both options are very easy to accomplish, it's just the annoying factor of food and how your troops can glitch and not eat, or keep eating, or freeze, or your chief will fly into outer space by accident because he has wings and starve to death. You can't evolve here at all, just try to dress your creature in crude "clothing" that looks like it was taped on and couldn't stay on any other way.
The civilization stage is where the game picked up for myself. It's fun. You can design buildings, and vehicles. What you "decorate" your vehicles with will affect its' ability to accomplish the task you're set out to do. Whether it's to preach to the world your religion, buy everybody out, or blow everybody up. Building placement is all about learning the best pattern, and then copying it consistently to each city you get. Unfortunately there is no free-building and no depth to where you put your buildings in cities. The city "decoration" feature is really insignificant and hardly noticeable. Oh, you also get more clothing and some hair to put on your creature if you so desire it. It's still as crude as ever.
Space.... The final frontier. What's that? I'm our race's only pilot? I can't build a squad of my own ships or command any other ships at all? I have to make allies through a repetitive process in order to get other ships that can't do anything, and get them to join me in a squad? The space stage is absolutely miserable. It takes at least a good forty minutes to be able to do anything useful, then it becomes a cakewalk. A cakewalk filled with defending allies and yourself from obnoxious space pirates, committing genocide, quelling diseases by burning animals, and terraforming planets. You also get some tin can clothing that you can wear if you so desire. The whole space stage feels like an MMO with no benefits and no progression. It has no real appeal past the first two hours of playing. It's repetitive, you do the same tasks for uglier aliens each time. The combat has no depth whatsoever, and you don't get an army! Apparently your race can only construct one spacecraft at a time. There's just no challenge to be held here or on any other stage at any difficulty setting.
The Spore team spent years making the game, then as Will Wright stated they spent a good two years to a year-and-a-half REMOVING content from the game. Which consisted of the realistic side of the game and some elements that EA removed so that they can re-sell them to us in a stuff-pack or lousy expansion pack. We're missing the underwater stage of evolution, one does not simply go from a cell to a creature, you have to make a stop in the murky depths first. The fact that a company would derail a game into a simplistic train wreck for the sake of catering to the simple minded is unbelievable, let alone lying to the consumer. Let's not forget the deliberate removal of content so that they can be re-sold to us like the stuff-pack released a month after Spore's release. Obviously that content could have just been shipped with the game, but it's the developer simply trying to make more money.
Though what is most troubling is the lack of trust the company has for the consumer with the inclusion of the hidden software known as DRM. It monitors your computer to ensure that you did not pirate the game, and it's caused numerous errors in the computers of gamers everywhere, and I had to reformat my whole system to get it up and running at normal speed. The irony of it all is that the software in question does not impact the pirates at all as it's only installed with legit copies of Spore.
With the DRM software comes a limit of five (I believe it's five now) installs. Yeah. If you uninstall it and reinstall it on the same computer that's only one install still, but if you wipe out your computer it uses up another install when you go to reinstall it. It prevents the consumer from selling the software after purchase, and cripples used software outlets' ability to sell the game. You lose your code or need more installs, you have to call and plead to EA for more. So really, you're just paying for an extended rental of the game.
Which is exactly what the game deserves, nothing more than a rental. Unfortunately you can't rent it without paying the forty dollars to buy its' plastic case. So, the software isn't worth it. The gameplay is dry and EA once again tries to suck more money out of the consumer by using stuff-packs and expansions packs filled with content that was deliberately removed from the game.
Buy games from a retailer that cares about its' customers. Obviously EA can't look past the monthly paycheck. Spore isn't worth the money, which is exactly why it became the most pirated game of all time, right up there with Crysis.