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Spore
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List Price:
$49.99
Homebizpc.com Price:
$43.99
Your Savings: $ 6.00 ( 12% )
Subject To Change Without Notice
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Electronic Arts
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Average Customer Rating:   
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Batteries Included: 0
Binding: DVD-ROM
Brand: Electronic Arts
EAN: 0014633153521
ESRB Age Rating: Everyone 10+
Feature: Epic journey from the origin and evolution of life through the development of civilization and technology and outer space exploration
Format: DVD-ROM
Is Autographed: 0
Is Memorabilia: 0
Label: Electronic Arts
Manufacturer: Electronic Arts
Model: 15352
Platform: Windows XP
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Release Date: 2008-09-07
Studio: Electronic Arts
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Features
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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:
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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
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Fun didn't last very long
Comment: The game starts off very fun: creating, growing, surviving. The game takes you through different gameplay styles from 3rd person action adventure to RTS style gameplay. However, the missions remain the same and as you progress through the game it gets tedious and boring. 3 Stars for the game. 1 Star overall for the use of SecuRom.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A 14 yr. olds Review of a HORRIBLE game
Comment: When I first heard of Spore I was very excited because all of the reviews had been positive praising the games ability to let the user evolve the creature, and also sculpt huge empires. I was hugely disappointed when I played the game. My favorite games in the past have been the Age of Empires series as well as the Civilization series. When I heard of sculpting an empire and having your own creatures living inside of it I was absolutely pulled into the huge net that EA and Will Wright had spun. The truth is, you have little "science" involved in making your creature, and once you advance to the civilization stage you have no interaction with your creature at all. What I had wished for was to remain a god like figure during the entire game, but in the last stage (space) I found I was taking orders from my own creatures who would then give e 6 minutes to scan an area of over 100 stars travel to the planets and retrieve spice? Although the graphics were great the game play was childish, and I feel that I have been robbed of my complete experience.
Over the course of Spore, one must evolve their creature through five different stages in order to take over the galaxy.
1.) Cell
2.) Creature
3.) Tribal
4.) Civilization
5.) Space
The cell portion of the game simply involved my amoeba floating around while pressing one button to move forward. This allowed me to eat much like Pacman. This section reminded of the little kids playing some Sponge bob game in the apple store. This game was advertised to take 10 hours; I collected all of the body parts, and ate enough food in about 20 minutes. For the first half it was actually rather addicting yet it became a repetitive task. In this section the evolution seemed quite accurate. You had to choose between carnivorous or herbivorous, and had to make sacrifices for speed and defense. The graphics were stunning. The water rippled with each move. Smaller creatures jumped out of my way and screamed in little voice, while bigger creatures slowly lumbered by me. One thing that was rather confusing was the fact that one cold die, and be reborn instantaneously with no penalty. After beating this section I went back to play it again just for kicks, and found that it had lost all of its appeal.
The creature part was the longest more boring part of the game. In terms of evolution, it was also the most unrealistic. I had to take my creature, run him around the screen meeting other creatures, which led me into two options; combat or befriend. You have two options to befriend, dance or sing which are both illogical, hurt my ears during the high pitch singing, and didn't serve a function. The rudiments of the game were to accumulate as many DNA points as possible in order to give your creature the best chance of survival. With your creature being able to instantaneously revive, and having no gains as a result of peaceful negotiations I was forced to hunt. This ended taking me 3 hours because a creature called the "Epic Mk31" always was next to me when I respawned and killed me. When I tried to evolve my creature I noticed that it still had all of the options for herbivorous open, yet I was clearly a carnivore. Simple things like these and having to switch nests for no apparent reason built up my frustration, and I was relieved when I finally finished the section. The graphics and sound were great once again, yet the overly simplistic game play, little depth, and unrealistic evolution led to me feeling cheated.
It is worth noting here that once you leave your creature era you have no control over how you creature will look ever again. Looking at the history flow chart there is about 5 million years between the creature and the space, yet my creature still has never changed his looks. This game also pulls many corny moments out of movies like in the movie Space Odyssey, when the monkey has the stick. This hardly drew a chuckle, and led me to believe that that was aimed at parents who were helping their 6 year olds play the game. The difficultly with the creature creator should also be noted. I call myself a fairly adept person on the computer, yet even with the "new graphics core engine" in the game the tail on my creature would shoot straight through my creatures body while walking. I liked the look while it was standing still yet I had to change it for when it was walking.
The tribal stage was a repeat of the difficulty and the amount of time of the cell age. My experience of building an empire was confined to 12 villagers that went hungry every two minutes, even passing out in combat, as well as equipping them with stone axes which did no additional damage then the fists they were using before. This time was actually my favorite as it was fast paced and was much like age of empires. At this stage though you lose all control your creatures bodily form, and instead give it apparel such as goggles or a hat. WOW COOL! (sarcastic) This stage is also set in RTS, which made it fun too. Sadly I was forced to move on too the Civilization stage.
Civilization for me was basically making a vehicle and slowly waiting for it to kill every house then slowly convert the city. Minus the convert time this also probably took me 30 minutes. The process of designing your houses, and ships could be really fun if you are a graphic designer, but for the average Joes it was a gruesome and arduous task with no quick build function. The other civilizations on the map put up no resistance and once again I was off into another level, with my hopes of this game smashed.
I had the highest hopes for the space age. Everything that EA had advertised about the space age seemed to be the pinnacle of the game. I was cast into the game quickly making a space ship, then a box popped up. It was my creature speaking to me telling me that I had to go to some random planet to do a mission. Wait.... When did I become a chore boy? I pressed on thinking that this was some kind of "initiation" and I quickly did the task. Soon afterwards he gave me the options of 3 more quest, and I realized that this is what the end of Spore is. It was supposed to have an open-ended story line yet I was thrust into the world of carting around different animals I had abducted in order to get into the favor of some random emperor. One more thing. Your ship requires energy, which means that every 5 minutes you have to go back to your home world to charge for free, or go to some other empire and charge up for half of the money you have. At this point I quit the game, and I haven't played it since.
To me, Spore is a huge let down. I fell into EA's scams, and I learned the lesson of waiting for things to get reviewed by fans like me, and not letting some multi-billion dollar corporation convince me to get a shallow game just so they can make a quick buck. Although the graphics were amazing, the game had true potential yet Will Wright, and his development team screwed it all up creating a game that a kindergartener could master without ever reading the instructions. I feel cheated, and I want my money back, but because of the DRM no one will ever take it since I have used one of the installs, and the game is registered under my name. Thanks a lot EA.
Graphics: 10
Sound: 8.5
Story: 4
Gameplay: 2
Impression: 1
Customer Rating:
Summary: My kids LOVE this game
Comment: OK, so it was purchased as a present for my husband, but its actually my 6 and 8yo boys who adore this game. They play it almost daily, and even have friends come over to "watch". It definitely, to me, is great for younger kids, and I would ignore the 10+ rating. My 10yo daughter likes it too. I can understand the low marks this game received since it was marketed to adults but is really a child's game. I love the concepts it has taught my kids about life, life cycles, and evolution.
Customer Rating:
Summary: CANT RESELL
Comment: The game is so so I found it fun when I played it but after I got used to it and found myself not playing it anymore I wanted to sell it..I did...now I am going to get low ratings and or put some poor buyer through uneccissary crap because I have to get a return and they dont get to play the game unless i give my EA account username and password. EA should be ashamed. I sould be able to resell a game i buy from them. I will NEVER buy another game from anyone game company that tries to use DRM or this rediculas registeration stunt.....
The game itself is fun but playing it will make me madd now!If I ever play it at all again....
Customer Rating:
Summary: Spore honest review
Comment: Spore is fun in the first two stages (Cell and Creature) but then the tribal stage is boring and the Civilization stage is the same thing and Space is the same as creature except you get more tools and there is no storyline so it gets boring after the first 20 solar systems that you take.
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