 Best Sellers | | Info@Gemini5Electronics.com |  | |  | | | Spore | | | | | SKU:
U14633153521 | | In Stock | | Availability:
Usually ships in 1 business days | | | | | | From the creators of The Sims comes Spore, where you evolve a single-celled organism into a galactic god whose personality and abilities are completely up to you. Then interact with other players' creatures-including ones made by celebrities! EA Games. PC/MAC, NDS. | | | |
List Price:
| $19.99 | |
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| $13.99
& eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25.
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| | Product Details | | Product Length: | 7.5 inches | | Product Width: | 5.5 inches | | Product Height: | 0.5 inches | | Product Weight: | 0.28 pounds | | Package Length: | 7.1 inches | | Package Width: | 5.4 inches | | Package Height: | 0.7 inches | | Package Weight: | 0.35 pounds | | Release Date: | September 07, 2008 | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 3288 reviews |
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| | Game Information | | Platform: | Windows Vista / Mac / Windows XP | | Media: | DVD-ROM | | Item Quantity: | 1 |
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| | Features | Epic journey from the origin and evolution of life through the development of civilization and technology and outer space explorationPlay any way you choose in the five evolutionary phases of Spore: Cell, Creature, Tribe, Civilization, and SpaceGrow, evolve, interact with and battle other cultures, and conquer the planetVisit literally millions of planets full of other player's creationsSingle-player game provides unlimited worlds to explore and play
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| | Customer Reviews | Average Customer Review: ( 3288 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8505 of 9264 found the following review helpful:
 Dumbed down experience and draconian DRM Sep 07, 2008
By Erich Maria Remarque
See those older 5-star reviews from 2006 (two years before the game was released)? Well, they had a reason to be excited. Spore was supposed to be a revolutionary experience, combining multiple genres while concentrating on evolution and genetics.
Fast forward two years and here we have the finished product, ready to be installed on our hard drives.
First of all, the game incorporates a draconian DRM system that requires you to activate over the internet, and limits you to a grand total of 3 activations. If you reach that limit, then you'll have to call EA in order to add one extra activation. That's not as simple as it sounds, since when you reach that point EA will assume that you, the paying customer, are a filthy pirating thief. You will need to provide proof of purchase, reasons why the limit was reached, etc, etc (it has all happened before with another recent EA product, Mass Effect). EA, of course, is not obligated to grant you that extra activation or even provide that service. In a couple of years they might very well even shut down the general activation servers, because "it's not financially feasible" to keep them running. What you will be left with is a nice, colorful $50 coaster. And you will be required to pay for another copy/license if you want to continue playing.
This basically means that you are actually RENTING the game, instead of owning it. The game WILL stop to function in the future. That's inevitable, because even if EA keeps the activation servers going, there IS going to be a time when EA will simply cease to exist because of financial issues or federal laws (like most businesses eventually do).
Second, the game was dumbed down to oblivion. Evolution doesn't even matter anymore. For example, you can add as many legs to a creature as you want, but the multi-legged creature won't be any faster than a single-legged one with higher leg stats. This gameplay element makes "creating" your creatures entirely pointless (cosmetic only, because everything is based on stats), and brings you about the same amount of excitement as dressing up a plastic doll.
422 of 458 found the following review helpful:
Extremely disappointing and shallow. Sep 12, 2008
By C. Fredericks
I've been a fan of Will Wright for many years and when I first started hearing about Spore years ago I was very excited.
I watched the videos and they looked superb. I downloaded the creature creator and it too was excellent!
Finally the day came when Spore was released and I went to my friend's house to play it. I was super excited!
He said it was so lame that I could have it. I didn't listen to him and was overjoyed to have been given his copy! I rushed home and installed it.
EPIC DISAPPOINTMENT.
I played through the whole thing hoping in vain that it would get better but feeling the bitter sting of FAIL with every passing moment.
The Cell phase- A pretty and cute rehash of the PSP game "Flow".
Lasted all of 20 minutes with the only consequence being choosing a mouth and a diet.
The Creature phase- The best of all the levels, but that's not saying much.You painstakingly created a creature by grinding through a bland "world", and performing the same repetitive actions over and over again; killing or charming creatures that all hang around sullenly by identical nests. By the time you "level up" your creature and are ready to progress to Tribal phase, you get a nasty surprise.
Tribal phase- All the stats you grinded for in the Creature phase are now useless and you now get to play an insultingly simplistic, kiddie version of Age of Empires or other similar RTS games.
Again you must repetitively charm or attack other creatures but this time you are viewing your painstakingly designed creature as a speck from a bird's eye view. You get to dress your creature in clothes now (only a few choices) and Tribal phase is over faster than you can say "WTF?"
Civilized phase- Now you have a crappy template city and you design your buildings, ships and such with the sweet editor only to once again view them as specs. Now you're playing Starcraft but the shiny, shallow kids version. Why did I design all this cool stuff again? I can't even see it and I'm bogged down by a boring, linear clone of an old game.
Space phase- You are now trapped in your speck-sized spaceship for the rest of the game and can only get out as a clunky "hologram" that cannot interact with anything (but can be killed by other creatures for some reason.) You have ONE ship and spend your time jumping from star to star looking at planet after bland planet and running errands for aliens who appear as icons similar to games released in the early 90's.
So that's it. You can visit and terraform planets (which more or less all look the same) and look at other colonies, trapped in your spaceship and constantly under attack from "pirates" of whom you must destroy using the buggy space laser system. You can create another dull planet if you like to contain another template "city" but that's it.
That's the end.
The whole game is a collection of 5 unoriginal, regurgitated, simplistic and insultingly easy minigames with a nice custom content editor that serves no purpose whatsoever in the game itself.
All the customizable content is 100% cosmetic. For looks only and nothing more.
My extreme disappointment can barely be verbalized. The videos of the game still look superb and EA doubtlessly reserved these features for the real cash cow - expansion packs.
Hey, Will. Make a Sims 2 style Spore with lots of complexity, voluntary combat, interaction,variation and surprises and you may have something.
Right now all you have is a lousy collection of minigames and a whole lot of disappointed fans.
Glad I didn't buy it and hope my review saves others from the total let down that is Spore.
1026 of 1130 found the following review helpful:
I don't understand magazine reviews giving this game high marks Sep 09, 2008
By Jakub Reczek
This game has some revolutionary concepts, such as automatically shared user content and amazing design tools (that were already introducted and perfected, and some would say superior by Galactic Civilizations 2 years ago).
However, there is no 'game' here. As some people put, the 'game' amounts to over simplified tasks that are monotonous and repetitive. The creature stage isn't as fun as you would imagine, as not all the parts are available, and even if they were, you are encouraged to use the 'highest stat' part effectively limiting you to maybe 6-10 parts to place onto your creature.
Why would you use a cool looking mouth with a social rating of '1' if that means that you can't befriend the other tribes and hence progress in the game?? Basically, many of the parts become useless, no matter how good they look. Furthermore, other creature nests (only one nest per species) are arranged with weak creatures immediately around you, and progressively higher level creatures at increasing distances. How predictable. Basically, its designed so that you only explore or run around your immediate nest. I always imagined finding random creatures walking around, hunting, eating, grazing, finding mates, etc. Nope. All creatures basically hang around IN or NEXT TO their nest. How lame. So basically there is no mixing of the creatures. Creatures dont wander around the world as you would think. They are all found in clumps and really only have limited interactions with each other (limited since they only interact [partially] with surrounding nests, as they dont wander around the world)
The civilization stage is HORRIBLE. Basically it amounts to the most simplified and boring RTS I have ever played. Quickly grab a few resources, and then keep clicking on 'create vehicle' and send it to the enemy city. Repeat the last 2 steps endlessly and you have the game. No strategy, no thinking, no variety. You might as well have a script do this for you.
Then there's the DRM. Let me just clarify what people are saying by adding, it not only counts installations, but changes to your hardware ! Upgrade a system component (memory, CPU, vid card) and you are out an installation. Not that it matters because its really a pretty bad game (except for the creation tools) Nice job. Basically I just paid $50 for a coaster.
1281 of 1430 found the following review helpful:
Returning the game... Sep 08, 2008
By SCF
"Software Developer"
I played with the creature creator a bit and had a good time. I long ago pre-ordered Spore and have not had time to look further into the game as it approaches release. When I finally did, a few days ago, I discovered that they are implementing the absurd SecuROM DRM.
I have no interest in paying full price for a game that I will be severely restricted from being able to play at a later point. Presuming installation is flawless, the current restriction to "three installs" is something any user will exceed long before their interest in the game does.
In my situation, I would be installing it on my desktop and my laptop. I would only ever be playing one of these systems at a time so there would be no violation of the ridiculous EULA most products have. Only one instance would ever be operated simultaneously and only by me, the owner (well, renter as EA and SecuROM would have it). This would mean that as soon as I ever had to reinstall an OS on my desktop or laptop, I'd be screwed out of the game unless I wanted to buy it again for full price (and what happens if you want to enjoy the game a few years down the road and re-install it)?
Think about that for a minute. Even if you never upgrade your hardware or buy a new computer or use a different computer -- how often (presuming you're using Windows of course) do you reinstall your operating system? And each time, you have to reinstall the game. If you're an XP user, you'll probably install the game. Then you'll upgrade to Vista. That'll be another install. Two down; one to go. Then you may need to re-install vista from scratch for any number of miserable reasons. And that will be your third strike. You better hope that you never *ever* need to change or adjust that system for any reason if you like Spore.
Imagine applying this to other products. What if you could only watch purchased DVDs on one specific DVD player and once you've played it on that system, you could never play them on another one. No lending them to your friends. No buying a new player. No watching it on your payer in different rooms. No selling your used DVDs. And if your player dies and you buy a new one, you'll have to re-purchase the movie. Wouldn't that be silly? Perfectly good content that you have physically sitting in your hand that you paid handily for and have every right to own and use... only... you don't own it and can't use it.
I only wish I had known this sooner. It is already in the process of being shipped so I can't cancel the order. Once it arrives, you better believe I'm going to hand it right back to the UPS driver and tell him I refuse to accept delivery.
This is truly unfortunate. I'm a fan of Will Wright, even if some of his more recent games have not been geared toward the traditional simulation or Sim City fan and have been aimed more at the "decorate a bedroom and play house" crowd. I'd love to give Wright my support. But EA is making that impossible with this ridiculous scheme. I'm not a thief. Don't treat me like one.
636 of 708 found the following review helpful:
Fun but no multi-login! Sep 08, 2008
By ...
"Why EA?"
With 1 computer we were planning on playing Spore with our seperate logons the same way we play other games. But that's a big no go! EA has seen fit to not allow multiple logons ON THE SAME COMPUTER!! So we have to settle for limiting ourselves with sharing the universe. This would be OK if it were just the 2 of us but I'd like to let my son play too. But with 3 of us we're limited to 2 planets per and will end up unlocking things that the other 2 haven't earned yet etc...
This user limitation is just dumb. Does EA expect families to have 1 computer per family member?!? I'd love that but can't afford it.
I will be attempting to return the game. Maybe later on we can buy it again when EA fixes this issue.
See all 3288 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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