Spore Review (Whiteswart)
Spore is one of those games that tried to reach the stars, failed in that and was justly criticized for being quite mediocre in many points of gameplay. And it was not like "hey, we've tried to build a moon lift, but managed only a third of it". A third of a moon lift would be totally meaningless in terms of resources consumed but at the same time a very magnificent instalment. Spore case is different.
It's closer to the idea of baking pizza from several hundreds of ingredients that, surprisingly, not collide together all that well. And yeah, theoretically, we have a working solution: we just need to roll the dough for some meters in length. But we don't have an appropriate oven to bake it all, so we cut our job in five stages, planning to build them all together after the oven stage. And that's where it all fails. Especially when your oven is running on electricity, and someone cuts you off the grid when you're not complete with baking all the pieces.
Spore is much under-developed. It divides into 5 different fragments, with drastically different gameplay between those parts, and the good half of the game is seriously underbaked, while the biggest, the final stage, when your species finally reach the space, is so big, so rich with particles, and so empty in terms of connected, entertaining gameplay, that it makes the stars blow out from impatience, from overly long expectations, from the ridiculous grind, from the absence of at least some sort of order...
And yet Spore is still a great game. My kids enjoy playing it, hours after hours. They rarely make it to the 4th stage, the civilization, let alone the 5th, that Space Void that is so big and depressing. But the first and second stages, where Spore is not an underdeveloped strategy game yet, but a good action-RPG with so rich options to build your character, while observing or participating all these events that are possible in such a giant sandbox, which this game is... That's really cool!
Sure, the game lacks achievements, lacks certain goals on all stages. Even more, it lacks the proper development on the 3rd, tribal stage, with at least as many options as we had on the 2nd (preferably more). It lacks some better control options and scope of events on the 4th stage. And it certainly lacks some glue, some intermediate stimulus to run through space on the final 5th stage. Oh, and maybe better tutorials and languages support for a younger audience.
All in all, despite all the misfortunes of the Spore development, production, the disastrous politics of the publisher which almost sunk Spore under the pile of excrements... It is a very good sandbox game. Where you build your character from a single cell into the reasonable creature, which makes its way up the evolution ladder all the distance to the stars and what beyond.
My mark is 7/10, I certainly recommend it for kids above 4-5 years old. Many players might find this sandbox both over- and underwhelming, due to its inconsistency. But hey, it's a unique title. One of a kind. And it is more than able to provide some delight with its gameplay, despite all weak spots. You just need an open mind to catch it.