<Game Reviews>

Disclaimer:

Gaming experiences may change by reading reviews!!!

For those lazy ones who don't want to read a lot of text:

Pro

• Innovative
• Flexible
• In essence 4 games in one
• Truly one universe

Con

• Simple
• High rate of repeatability

Rating: 4/5

For the less lazy ones:

Introduction/Description

Welcome to the world, the planet is just newly born and you consist of just a few cells. See if you can get this thing into space, huh. A galactic empire thou shalt form! Where did we hear that last time...hello Darth Vader.

Oh sorry for wandering off the path, but this is what Spore is about. Follow the path and learn from your mistakes. You can choose to be an evil carnivore, a versatile omnivore, or maybe even an herbivore, continuously on the run from the hungry monsters out there. It's all yours to choose. Towards the Milky Way the road is set to explore the unseen. This is the longest and most interesting part of the game. In the process, you have to keep everyone in one happy group. Again this is possible in many ways. Choose what fits you: war or allies. For the more big minded this game also has the option to make new life on planets, even on planets that do not initially support life. To make life possible on those you have a wide variety of tools available. The 42 will help you tremendously on doing this. 42. Does that number ring a bell? Don't think of this as an easy task! It does take a lot of care and work to keep the newly fragile planets alive.

You will go through 4 stages. The first ones are the path to get knowledge. During the "Boost your brain" stage, you will have to convince many folks and other races to join your epic move. This can be done with force, like in wars, or by impressing them with your outstanding dancing skills. Don't worry, you will not need to use a dance pad like in other games, so even I could complete this stage (trees and dancing ends up in a little more than shaking but that's about it).

Interface

The interface is very uniform and even when you’re switching between many different perspectives (third person to first person view and back again) it feels natural. You will not need to learn key commands; you will instinctively find them. However, the whole game feels a little slow and sluggish, especially in the space age where you start to be annoyed by the landing procedure. The game needs to load the whole planet every time you land on it. This takes a few seconds and this you will need to do very very often, it becomes annoying after a while (for some special equipment you only need to do this 800 times :-) ). Despite the natural interface it is not a very precise and comfortable one. It takes some practice to survive battles.

Graphics

The art style is cartoonish, but very nice, no comments here. It fully suits the theme of the game.

Creativity

The creativity is not only limited to building your very own species. You’re also allowed to design all your houses and transporters, or you can download them off the net. By designing it all yourself you feel more connected to the game.

Fladrif's Rating

I would rate this game 4 out of 5 trees due to the very annoying interface and that the game is slightly limited in the space stage.