Spore | 
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| From: Electronic Arts
Category: Video Games
List Price: $49.99
Buy New: $42.00
You Save: $7.99 (16%)
New (16) Used (4) from $40.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  3148 reviews
Sales Rank: 34
Format: Dvd-rom
Platforms: Windows Xp, Windows Vista, Macintosh
ESRB: Everyone 10+
Media: DVD-ROM
Edition: Standard
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Operating System: Windows 2000
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.7
MPN: 19080
Model: 15352
UPC: 014633153521
EAN: 0014633153521
ASIN: B000FKBCX4
Release Date: September 7, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | Epic journey from the origin and evolution of life through the development of civilization and technology and outer space exploration | | • | Play any way you choose in the five evolutionary phases of Spore: Cell, Creature, Tribe, Civilization, and Space | | • | Grow, evolve, interact with and battle other cultures, and conquer the planet | | • | Visit literally millions of planets full of other player's creations | | • | Single-player game provides unlimited worlds to explore and play |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
The creators of The Sims present the next big bang - SPORE. Create your unique creature and guide it on an epic journey through a universe of your own creations. Play any way you choose in the five evolutionary phases of Spore: Cell, Creature, Tribe, Civilization, and Space. How you play and what you do with your universe is entirely up to you. Spore gives you a variety of powerful yet easy-to-use creation tools so you can create every aspect of your universe: creatures, vehicles, buildings, and even starships.
PC Minimum - Windows XP/Vista, 6 GB Hard Drive Space, 2.0 GHz P4 processor or equivalent, 768 MB RAM, 128 MB Video Card, with support for Pixel Shader 2.0 Mac Minimum - Mac OS X 10.5.3 Leopard or higher, 4.7GB Hard Drive Space, Intel Core Duo Processor, 1024 MB RAM; ATI X1600 or NVidia 7300 GT with 128 MB of Video RAM, or Intel Integrated GMA X3100
Amazon.com
Create universal wonder in Spore, an exciting new simulation game that lets you develop your own personal universe. Work your way through five evolutionary phases, including Cell, Creature, Tribe, Civilization and Space, that offer unique challenges, thrills and goals. For example, you can start in Cell and nurture one species from a simple aquatic organism all the way until it becomes a sentient life form. Or you can jump right in and begin building tribes and civilizations on multiple planets. What you do with your universe is totally up to you.
The powerful creation tools of Spore are easy to use, allowing you to effortlessly design every aspect of your universe. Creatures, vehicles, building and even starships are all within your grasp. While Spore is a single-player game, your creations and other players' creations are automatically shared between your galaxy and theirs, offering a nearly limitless number of worlds to visit and enjoy. You can also go online to view the incredible things other players have made and can even pull those items into your universe. Spore gives you the chance to make worlds and beings that evolve, grow and delight you every step of the way. SPORE CREATURE CREATORFinally all that hard work creating the perfect being can be put to good use. Import creatures that you created with the Spore Creature Creator and watch them live, breath and thrive in the full version of Spore. TAKE YOUR SPORE ONLINEWhile Spore is a single player game, your creations and other players' creations are automatically shared between your galaxy and theirs, providing a limitless number of worlds to explore and play within. Internet Connection Required. Minimum System RequirementsThis game will not run on PowerPC (G3/G4/G5) based Mac systems (PowerMac) - PC Minimum - Windows XP/Vista
- 6 GB Hard Drive Space
- 2.0 GHz P4 processor or equivalent
- 768 MB RAM
- 128 MB Video Card with support for Pixel Shader 2.0
- Mac Minimum - Mac OS X 10.5.3 Leopard or higher
- 4.7GB Hard Drive Space
- Intel Core Duo Processor
- 1024 MB RAM
- ATI X1600 or NVidia 7300 GT with 128 MB of Video RAM, or Intel Integrated GMA X3100
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3143 more reviews...
 Maxis must have paid NASA a ton of money to advertise this worthless game October 12, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Two years ago, when I looked at this game, I thought it would be a decent, fun game, and it would be worth paying 50 dollars for. Unfortunately, it isn't decent, it isn't fun, and it's really not even paying 10 bucks for. That's how bad it is. To sum up what this game is, it's just a bunch of depthless minigames that take about thirty minutes each to beat, until, that is, you get to the space stage. The first phase, cell phase, is the only semi-fun one; of course, it's probably the most dumbed down of all phases. This phase only takes a few minutes to beat. The creature phase can take a long time depending on whether you befriend or attack everything. This phase is aggravating and boring.
The tribal phase is so easy that it can only take you around 20 minutes to beat. In this phase, you're pretty much forced to ally with the other tribes, as using warfare takes forever and gets you nowhere. Once you get past the tribal phase, it's time for the civilization phase, which is more or less the same as the tribal phase, only it's a lot easier to kill everyone. In this phase, your people develope so quickly it's unrealistic; they get vehicles right after the tribal phase, and soon after develope ships and warplanes. Ultimately, this phase is the second most frustrating.
The space phase is the last and worst phase. If you don't ally with at least one major empire, you're screwed, for lack of a better word. Of course, you're forced to go stop ecodisasters and stop pirates, and for whatever reason, they can't do it themselves. The best items cost a ridiculous amount of sporebucks(the currency in spore), and it can take hours to get enough money just to get the planet buster, and you can only use it once before you buy another one.
After a while, you'll get used to killing pirates and stopping ecodisasters and defeating the Grox(the cheesy, borg-like rat-villains of the game). Your main goal, later on, is to get to the center of the universe. You'll find that most of the races in the universe sound the same, and that some even look the same; that being said, it makes it feel like there's no variety in races, which, there isn't much of. It's almost painful to reach the center of the universe. You have to not only defeat the Grox, but you have to beat the other hostile empires. This took me around 4 days for me to do, and that was to only get near the center of the universe. That's 4 days wasted.
To sum it all up, this game is a dumbed-down, boring piece of trash that was so overhyped that, in order to avoid a tide of hate mail, places like Gamespot gave it a positive review to save their butts.
I beg fellow gamers to either not buy this game, or pirate it. The game is not worth 50, or even 10 dollars, and the fact that there's a draconian DRM attached makes it even worse; you can only install the game 3 times on a computer. That means that if your computer loses all of its data 3 times, or you want to install it on 3 computers, you'll have to call EA customer support in order to get an extra install. EA games treats its customers like criminals. They've tightened their grip so much that this game is becoming the most pirated game of all time. I'd bet if NASA knew that this game would be THIS bad, they wouldn't shown it.
I say it again: Do not buy this game. Don't waste your time, money, or sanity trying to play or buy this game, and if you absolutely must have it, then pirate it. They thoroughly deserve it. It's pretty much a bunch of stupid minigames with a draconian DRM attached.
 Not bad, but not as great as expected October 12, 2008
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
Will Wright's new creation has all the makings of one of his signature top tier games. However, it suffers from the same type of replay value hangups the Sims franchise suffered from, only earlier. There is plenty of play value to be had, there is excellent humor, the graphics and procedural movements of the creatures you can create are stellar and, as always, there are fun disasters to deal with during each playthrough. If you are a fan of the Sims franchise and the premise of creating your very own race of aliens from amoeba to space-faring culture appeals to you, it is definitely worth the purchase.
 Too Simple, Too Quick, Not Engaging, Interesting or Addictive October 12, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I don't know anything about DRM. When my son installed this, he didn't activate the on-line features and just wanted to get the anticipated game play, so he didn't set up a Spore account or register a copy of the game, thinking we'd do it later after trying out the game. I wasn't here when he installed it, so don't know what firewall problems he encountered, if any. So, for me, it was just sitting down to play a greatly anticipated strategy game. I'm a HUGE fan of CIV and other strategy games and was hopeful this game would be interesting, engaging and addictive.
Even after watching some video previews of the game, I guess I wasn't entirely sure what to expect. I suppose I was expecting something along the lines of SIMS meets CIVILIZATION. I expected something where you play a creature that you've created and evolved in a world that changes and grows and is impacted by choices you make. This is not the case at all. Game play is OVERLY simple, WAY TOO QUICK and very repetitive. With some games, you can actually play on the surface for a quick game experience, but if you want something more meaningful and deep, you can delve into more complex game concepts or hidden levels. NOT with this game. There are no hidden depths, nothing extra to explore if you want to take the time, nothing. You zip through stages exceptionally quick. On his very first game, my son zipped through both the Tribal level and the Civilization Levels in less than 20 minutes combined (10 minutes each.) It took me slightly longer...to get through both levels, but it was still disappointingly quick and superficial. After beating the Creature and Civilization levels, I delayed "evolving" to explore each level some more...to see if there was somthing I was missing or to find anything more. And, there was NOTHING.
Here is another problem, just as you start to "get into" a level, or hope there is something "TO" the level, it's over. And you basically start another "MINI" Game at the next level. Everything you worked so hard to add to your creature no longer matters in the next level. In Creature mode, I worked hard to build up skills that didn't translate into anything in the next level... those skills virtually become obsolete without being exchanged for new skills that might be useful in the next level... you just lose everything and start over. Any evolution points you earn, are erased. Thus, this game does not have that "addictive" aspect...there is no motivation to keep playing to do better, earn more, or evolve into something more complex. You can easily max out all your skills VERY quickly and there is nothing more to do. There is nothing to explore, nothing to grow, nothing that you can do that will impact or enhance the next level of game play. Each level is different than the proceeding one...so it is like playing five different overly simply, overly quick, mini-games. Cell is the quickest of the levels...lasting just minutes. Creature, Tribe and Civ can all be finished in less than one evening of play.
The bottom line is that I became BORED before finishing my first game, started a second game and played through a couple hours of Space mode before becoming even more BORED, spent time learning there is no depth, no hidden levels, nothing left to learn, grow or explore, and abandoned the game after only a week. I'm left to ponder who EA's target audience was? 10 year olds, perhaps? Certainly not intelligent adults who are craving some complex and involved game play.
EXCEPTIONALLY DISAPPOINTING!!!!!!
Spore October 12, 2008
0 out of 5 found this review helpful
Awesome! Get so engaged don't want to stop for anything (eat, sleep)
WOW
Groundhog Day October 12, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Spore is like the movie Groundhog Day. It's an endless repeat of your prior efforts. The game can be summed up in a single sentence:
"Spore is a endless effort in frustration."
Yes, the paranoid 3 activation limit and DRM is crap. But even if this game didn't have that, it would still be a 1 out of 5 rated game. You just never accomplish anything during this game and are stuck in an endless cycle of repetitiveness. There's just no fun to be had with this game and that's too bad, because it could have been so much more.
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