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Spore
Studio : Electronic Arts
by Electronic Arts
Brand : Electronic Arts
Model : 15352
Platform : Windows Vista, Mac, Windows XP
Release Date : 2008-09-07
Publisher : Electronic Arts
Manufacturer Minimum Age : 10.0 Years
Availability : Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Number of Items : 1
EAN : 0014633153521
UPC : 014633153521
Avg. Customer Rating: (based on 3560 reviews)
List Price : $29.99
Our Price : $15.49
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Epic journey from the origin and evolution of life through the development of civilization and technology and outer space exploration
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Play any way you choose in the five evolutionary phases of Spore: Cell, Creature, Tribe, Civilization, and Space
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Grow, evolve, interact with and battle other cultures, and conquer the planet
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Visit literally millions of planets full of other player's creations
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Single-player game provides unlimited worlds to explore and play
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Product Description |
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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. |
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Harvardbooksellers.com |
Create universal wonder in Spore, an exciting new simulation game that lets you develop your own personal universe. Work your way through five evolutionary phases, including Cell, Creature, Tribe, Civilization and Space, that offer unique challenges, thrills and goals. For example, you can start in Cell and nurture one species from a simple aquatic organism all the way until it becomes a sentient life form. Or you can jump right in and begin building tribes and civilizations on multiple planets. What you do with your universe is totally up to you.
The powerful creation tools of Spore are easy to use, allowing you to effortlessly design every aspect of your universe. Creatures, vehicles, building and even starships are all within your grasp. While Spore is a single-player game, your creations and other players' creations are automatically shared between your galaxy and theirs, offering a nearly limitless number of worlds to visit and enjoy. You can also go online to view the incredible things other players have made and can even pull those items into your universe. Spore gives you the chance to make worlds and beings that evolve, grow and delight you every step of the way.   SPORE CREATURE CREATOR Finally all that hard work creating the perfect being can be put to good use. Import creatures that you created with the Spore Creature Creator and watch them live, breath and thrive in the full version of Spore. TAKE YOUR SPORE ONLINE While Spore is a single player game, your creations and other players’ creations are automatically shared between your galaxy and theirs, providing a limitless number of worlds to explore and play within. Internet Connection Required. Minimum System Requirements This game will not run on PowerPC (G3/G4/G5) based Mac systems (PowerMac) - PC Minimum - Windows XP/Vista
- 2.0 GHz P4 processor or equivalent
- 512 MB RAM/768 MB RAM
- 128 MB Video Card with support for Pixel Shader 2.0
- The latest version of DirectX 9.0c
- Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 1
- At least 4 GB of hard drive space, with at least 1 GB additional space for creations
- Mac Minimum - Mac OS X 10.5.3 Leopard or higher
- Intel Core Duo Processor
- 1024 MB RAM
- ATI X1600 or NVIDIA 7300 GT with 128 MB of Video RAM, or Intel Integrated GMA X3100
- At least 4 GB of hard drive space, with at least 1 GB additional space for creations
- This game will not run on PowerPC (G3/G4/G5) based Mac systems (PowerMac), or the GMA 950 class of integrated video cards
- For computers using built-in graphics chipsets under Windows, the game requires at least:
- Intel Integrated Chipset, 945GM or above
- 2.6 GHz Pentium D CPU, or 1.8 GHz Core 2 Duo, or equivalent
- 768 MB RAM
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Great Game, Wrong REGION |
Somehow, we ended up with a copy of Spore from -- no, we're not making this up -- Ireland. The documentation was all full of references to VAT taxes, Euros, etc. There was even a number to call if we didn't need the international number, because we were *inside* Ireland.
So, our return had nothing to do with the game, which my 12 year old loves. It has to do with the vendor who picked up a batch of cheap disks from someplace |
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One of the greatest gaming ideas ever ended in a total fail... |
Spore had some of the most potential a game has ever had. It was a game that was to accurately portray evolution and alien life. We all watched the presentations that came from 2005 and 2006 and such. Spore looked amazing, the scope of it, its flexibility, the creativity it would allow, the unexplored regions of gameplay it would expose. A game that lets you take species through different stages of advancement, evolving along the way until they have the opportunity to explore an entire galaxy. Sure, it had its issues, but we'd never seen anything like it. I got giddy thinking about buying Spore, the things we'd be able to do! We were already thinking about the planets, creatures, buildings and vehicles we'd make. I could hardly bare to wait for Spore to come out, I was bursting with excitement.
I actually watched those aforementioned demonstrations during 2008, and I knew that Spore was different now, but I paid that no mind. A copy of Spore came into my possession. I started the game up, and everything went straight to shell. The entire enormous thrill of getting to play Spore was converted into something called epic disappointment. It wasn't realised at first, but it came, slowly but surely.
Why is it that having Spore on your computer is so problematic? My copy of Spore would refuse to start up around seven times until I could finally turn the game on, and then there are the DRM issues, SECUROM issues and the installation/registry limitations. All of this is so frustrating and unnecessary! Spore is just supposed to be a game that requires no disk to play once installed. There are problems with accounts too, the copy of Spore you're using on your computer can only have one master account, it's extremely frustrating and I had to create another screen name so my little brother could save creations under his own mantle.
All of that madness is nothing compared to what I found within the game. There are five stages: Cell, Creature, Tribal, Civilization, and Space. You can be good, bad, or neutral during these stages, and that will affect your species in the future, though the results are usually ridiculous. You choose a planet to start life on; this is essentially one of your files. In Spore, you can only start life through the concept of Panspermia. There are other ways for life to begin in this universe, and the fact that only one of them is included in the final game makes it feel totally narrow minded. The developers didn't even include a short explanation of Panspermia in the game, leaving people unfamiliar with the topic either baffled or thinking that the idea makes no sense.
With the Cell Stage comes the choice of herbivore or carnivore, not that cells so early in their evolution could even eat things. In fact, these aren't really cells, they're weird bug things that float around the primordial ooze, munching on microscopic seaweed or hunting each other. They can have jaws, spikes, electric nubs, poison, jets, and can be bulbous or wormy. You of course won't start off with many parts at all, but instead of unlocking more biologically advanced parts through your species existing for a longer amount of time, you just go around finding parts to add to your collection. You can mate with another bug thing to go into the cell editor, change up the species, and fast forward millions of years. It's ludicrous, cells don't have these kinds of parts and they don't mate! So instead of letting you make your own cell species, you're forced to mess around with micro bugs.
Next you would go into some kind of aquatic stage, right? No, you go straight to land. The "cells" are suddenly large creatures that decide to make their way above. No, there is no option to stay underwater. While you're on land you can eventually become avian, right? No, but you can evolve wings to glide for short periods of time. You're in the Creature Stage, a bizarrely named phase (you never stop being a creature, do you?) where you've got to go through the same old song and dance (literally) or just kill and eat. Again, you have to find random parts, and while you will be able to get omnivorous parts, if you were a carnivore in the Cell Stage, you can't find herbivorous parts, and vice versa, which is excruciatingly annoying. In Spore, species evolve because they feel like it, not because of natural selection, not because of environmental change, nothing like that. Evolution is not accurately portrayed here, accuracy could have easily been incorporated, but it wasn't. And it really doesn't matter what your creature is like, it's all about stats. Your species could have ten legs, and yet another with only one leg might be able to go faster simply because of its stats. No matter how cool or reasonable a certain part may look, if its stats are too low, you could be hard pressed trying to beat the Creature Stage.
Following the Creature Stage is the Tribal Stage. You get one last chance to evolve, and then certain species on the planet have gained sentience and have formed tribes. It's a watered down real time strategy game that excels in repetition. There aren't any social sandbox tools like I thought there were going to be, it's simple repeating of actions with boring down time. Plus, the world is quite boring, all creatures hang around in their own clumps, never journeying anywhere. You won't see them interacting with new creatures, grazing, foraging, mating, nothing, they fumble around with their own kind.
For some reason, when you enter the Civilization Stage, all other sentient species have disappeared. You might not have chosen to drive them extinct in the Tribal Stage, but they're still gone. So now the world is populated by other nations of your kind, and depending on your choices in the previous stages, you'll have access to either religious, economic, or military resources. This is pretty limiting, and you have to carry out the same actions over and over again. Curiously, you have to mine "spice" from spice geysers to gain currency. Weird, it's like Frank Herbert's Dune. The Civilization Stage is a painful RTS that has you mining resources and clicking "create vehicle", it's mind numbing.
Finally, we reach the pinnacle of existence, the goal on everyone's mind, it's what you've been waiting for, this is what it's always been about, and you've been lead to this, prepared for it, excited for it, ready to explore every nook and cranny of it. And sadly, it sucks. I'm talking about the last stage in the game, the Space Stage. Navigation is done by means of a single spacecraft, and an entire galaxy is at your disposal. Unfortunately, many alien empires will try as hard as they can to kill you for no apparent reason, valuable resources are impossibly expensive, missions are redundant and boring, it's tedious to fly back and forth between far apart locations, any worlds you do own will be plagued by eco-disasters and alien raids, and you can't even leave your spaceship. With all these problems, how are you ever supposed to take on the Grox, make it to the center of the galaxy, talk to Steve, and obtain the Staff of Life? You can never focus on anything you might want to do, like terraforming, colonizing, or diplomacy, because there are so many preposterous problems being thrown at you all at once. I thought I was going to go fanatical with glee editing every planet I saw, no such luck. I thought I was going to unite the galaxy with my own version of the PAN Galactic Alliance, not a chance. I thought I'd be witnessing all sorts of interstellar phenomena, like star shells, supernovae, and nebulae, but these things are scarce or nowhere to be found at all.
Of course, Spore does have things going for it. Its creation tools are, for the most part, pretty awesome. There are lots of things to create, Creatures, Buildings, Vehicles, Spaceships. We could do without the complexity meter, and it would be a lot better if creatures could have hair. I also mostly like how sharing with the community is integrated and made easy. It's made quite simple to find things in the Sporepedia, and Sporecasts are a great idea. Interacting with the online community and creating things are the fun parts of Spore.
Spore is a jack of all trades, master of none. It's the sum of its parts. It didn't live up to the years of hype. There are glimmers of awesomeness in this game, but they are more often than not overshadowed by the mediocrity that it emits. 4/10 |
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Completely dumbed down and cartoony |
Far far far from the original concept and vision of the game. Completely dumbed down and linear, creature creator is only good for asthetics and doesnt effect anything else other then body part attributes (shape doesnt matter).
BAD! |
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BSODs Galore |
My wife and son bought this against my recommendation. Game play aside, I knew from the reviews that it would be a challenge just to make this thing run. And I will be having my "I-Told-You-So" moments, shortly.
I've spent hours trying to make thing thing work for my disappointed kid. I got past the first hurdle when I discovered that there was a conflict with the way the game phoned home, and the way K-9 allowed access to the internet for minors. After disabling K-9 just to get the game activated, it seemed to run pretty well. For a day.
The next day, it Blue Screened every time we launched it. I tried updating the video driver, playing with compatibility modes, and launching as an administrator. We tried installing the 1.05 patch (which, humorously, wanted you to be running first to download it). Nothing worked.
This is not some exotic system we're using. Windows 7 with an Intel chip and an nVidia graphics card. If it can't run on this, I can't imagine what it was designed for.
I'm sure there is some collection of drivers and patches that'll make this work. If not, there wouldn't be some many reviews about the unimaginative game-play. But I've gone past the amount of effort I'm going to put into a game. And the rest of my family has learned a lot about buying DRM riddled garbage from EA. |
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AWESOME!!! |
Spore is a five star game. You get to create your own creature- from a one-cell organism to creatures like us. It's the best ever!!!
Anonymous, age 9
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