If Spore's combat had been fun, or its social minigame interesting, it might have been worth wrestling past these claustrophobic limitations, or waiting for the community to do so. As it is, there's still some entertainment in designing a cool planet, filling it with your favourite creatures and scripting a simple journey. But if a game's going to cost more that bargain-bin price and take three sodding minutes to start up, it needs to offer much more than that.
