Word first broke of Spore around 2004 after being in development for 4 years. I am personally not a big fan of "The Sims" games though I have them all, but from the second I heard about Spore and the way you created and evovled your creature I was VERY interested.
Spore was released Yesterday in Europe and I was one of many waiting in line to collect my "Galactic Edition" (Collectors Edition with art book, poster, making of, small guide and a documentary). In total I spent 7 hours yesterday enjoying Spore and in order to review it I must break it down into the five stages as each stage is a game in itself.
The first stage is called the "Cell Stage" , a comet hits the planet you have chosen and lands in the water. Your bacteria comes off the comet and you start swimming around looking for food and dodgeing predators. This is very much like FlOw on the PS3/PSP. After you have gotten big enough everything in the background come forward and it is an advance in stage. If you are a herbivore you are looking out for the green circles ad dodgeing predators, if you decide to be a carnivore you can scavange the meat floating around but this method will not earn you any new parts for your cell, the carnivores work around a simple mechanic;
Small Fish > Medium Fish > Big Fish
Though this can be broken it is generally the main principal. Omnivores can eat both but they are not as good hunters as Carnivore so it would be best for them to scavange. In order to advance you need to pick up creature tokens which give you a part of that creature, then you must click the mating call button to enter the Cell editor. Here you can give your Cell I think it's nine (it could be more) add-ons and you get to determine the shape and colour of him also. You can enter the Cell Editor at any time to make improvements. A few negative things about the Cell stage would be that it is a bit short and that there is room for imrovement regarding the parts you colect.
The second stage is called the Creature Stage. Your Cell is after growing large enough and has developed legs, so a group of them swim up on to the beach and make a nest there. This stage is most like the Sims games, your creature must eat and either convince a member of another nest to become allies (by singing, dancing or posing) or make the species extinct ( by attacking them). This stage is the most reliant on your creatures anatomy, if you are a predator and you only have a mouth to bite with it is going to take longer than if you had claws or a venom sac. This stage can get a bit tedious though if you are doing the same thing over and over, my advice would be to mix it up ( Kill one species be-friend another). Every so often after you have gotten big enough your tribe migrate to a different nest and you must follow them, this is like a stage advancement as the creatures by your new nest will be tougher to kill or impress. During this stage it is imprortant to save as if you go for some reason you could lose around 2-3 hours gameplay.
The third stage is called the Tribal Stage and is by far the worst stage. It is not terrible but it is the worst of the five stages. Yor creature starts of by discovering fire and building a centre building. During this stage you are no longer in control of one creature you are in charge of a tribe which is maxed out at 12. Each member of the tribe can be selected on their own and assigned different jobs.Once again there are two ways to complete this stage by becoming allies with a village (by conducting a band and pressing buttons at the right time.) or by force (destroying the enemy's village) both of the methods are flawed. The good way of conducting a band gets boring VERY quick while attacking the village is hard unless you do it early. To be honest this stage is way too long and the methods are just plain tedious.
The fourth stage is called the Civ Stage. This is a very good RTS game in my opinion, maybe not as good as Age of Empires or Dawn of War but it is still decent. You create nearly everything about your town the houses, the factory, the entertainement, the clothes your people wear even the national anthem. The people themselves arn't selectable in this stage but the vehicles you make are. They are your units now the land, sea and air vehicles you make (you make everything about them) you can use them to capture spice geysers, capture an enemy base or attack the enemy vehicles. The communication aspect of this stage is very good you can communicate with the leader of every city and establish trade routes or give them gifts either way you can improve relations or you can declare war. If your empire becomes to big the enemy will become negative towards you and may perhaps attack your city. If you drop nukes everyone will dislike you. But there is a way around this called a ICBM which is a super nuke which destroys all the enemys citys and ends the Civ Stage.
The fifth and last stage is the Space Stage. I will not review this stage as it would be a spoiler. Lets just say it is THE best stage and is really good.
Only joking- the space stage is by far the best stage. You start off flying the space ship you create around your own planet and then you go around the galaxy. Seriously there is over 20 hours play time in the space stage. You can colonise planets you can agree alliances, trade routes. You do quests for other races in order to be-friend them. It is more hardcore than the rest of the stages. It would be even better if I could download my friends creations (Spores servers were crippled within hours.) but I see that coming very soon.
All in all it is a very good game.
