Starting the game was easy, in fact this is definitely a game that you can skip reading the instructions. The in game prompts are simple and informative enough that you can jump right into playing the game. At first this may seem like a good thing, except it soon became apparent that the reason you didn't need a manual was because there really wasn't much to do.
The first stage of the game has you playing as a single cell amoeba wandering around in the primordial ooze looking for food. Your biggest decision at this point is whether you want to be a carnivore or a herbivore. I decided to start as a carnivore because the thought of life as a bovine didn't sound to appealing. For the next 30 minutes I spent my time killing those cells smaller then me, and running like hell from the ones bigger then me. Basically, I spent 30 minutes playing an advanced version of Feeding Frenzy.
By the time I was getting frustrated playing as a bacteria, I was ready to advance to the next stage of the game as a newly formed land creature. This part was a lot more exciting since there were tons of options to customize your creature. I decided to max out my meat eating side and develop my creature into something between a velociraptor and a shark with dragon wings.
Needless to say this was not something you wanted to run into while out on a camping trip. By the time I was done with the animal stage I had ravaged just about every other species on the planet. While this may sound fun, it slowly began to grow dull as combat was nothing more then clicking on the same 4 buttons over and over again. You deployed the same strategy no matter what creature you came across. However, just as I was about to bring the entire ecosystem to its knees it was time to move on to the Tribal phase.
As a tribe of vicious shark dragons, my first steps into civilization closely mimicked my time as an animal. In less then an hour I had wiped clean all the other tribes on the continent. Combat was nothing more then pointing and clicking. There was really nothing more to do besides sitting back and watching my minions beat the living hell out of everything in sight. Then it was off to the Civilization stage.
I spent some time designing my City Hall, House, and other city buildings...all 4 of them. Because as we all know, a proper civilization is based solely on factories, movie theaters, and a place to sleep. Again I had a lot of fun designing my "War Pig" because intelligent meat-eating carnivores need a car loaded to the hilt with guns. After putting the finishing touches on my tanks and planes, it was off to conquer the globe...which took all of 20 mins. Just like the previous stages, it was nothing more then pointing and clicking. The AI wasn't even smart enough to mount a single attack on my capital.
I ended the campaign in a fireball of nuclear devastation, as I pummeled the last of my enemies into the ground with a series of ICBMs. While the world in ruin it only made sense that it was now time to take my carnage to the stars. I didn't get much time to play around with space flight, but it seems like the end game was an endless loop of Galactic Civ without any fleet battles.
Overall, Spore was a lot of fun for the 5 hours I played it. If you are the kind of person that gets lots out of creating and designing units then this game will provide you with hours of enjoyment. However,if you are looking for a strategic challenge then you will find Spore wanting. I think you are better off buying one of the many galactic empire building games and saving yourself the 5-6 hours of pointless evolution. I mean, once all is said and done the game end with you exploring the galaxy, trading with aliens, creating colonies, and fighting aliens with no sense of military strategy. Then again you could start from scratch and create a race of six legged canaries.
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