The question now is: does Maxis’ new game live up to the hype? Has it been worth waiting for, for so long? And the answer: Well, yeah, it does.
Everything is finely crafted down to the last detail. The Cell Stage is all about eating food, and not getting eaten by bigger things. Simple. The idea of that is very similar to many arcade games on the Internet that I know of. However, Spore’s version is, quite obviously, better, mainly due to the available upgrades and design choice of your cell. Evolution is explained by mating – that is, if you want to evolve a new part, you find a mating partner, lay an egg, and off you go as your offspring. Simple really. And the longer you survive, the more of your type of cell appear, just going to prove that the best design will multiply quickly.
The creature stage is probably the weakest part of the game. Mostly, you wander around eating and fighting, and picking up new parts. You’re supposed to be able to ally with all races, but to be honest, at times it’s impossibly hard to impress other creatures, and you end up fighting over and over, and over again. It’s like a 3 year old’s idea of a MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game).
Design your own creation
After that, however, the game picks up again. The Tribal stage is quite fun, when you begin building your area, creating weapons and musical instruments, to kill or join rival tribes. The concept is quite odd in places, but again, it’s quite fun to find the other versions of your species wandering around and to slaughter them mindlessly.
The Civilisation stage is similar, but with food replaced by Sporebucks, and spears replaced by vehicles. You no longer have direct control over your creatures, but instead have overall control of your cities and creations. Of course, keeping with Spore’s main attraction, you design every building and vehicle, leading to a unique experience. This does, however, get old quite quickly, especially as you have to design 4 or 5 buildings, and 3 vehicles. But on the bright side, when you’ve finished this, you’ve taken over the world.
One problem. Turns out there’s thousands of other worlds with bigger and stronger empires. Welcome to the Space Stage. You fly around in a home designed space ship (Mine looks like a TIE Fighter) doing whatever you like. Terraforming planets, abducting aliens, all sorts. Or at least, that’s what Maxis promised. Instead, much of your time is spent trading spice to get enough money for terraforming tools, fending off pirates, or paying massive amounts of money to avoid a war between yourself and the war/religion obsessed freaks you call your neighbours. It’s fun, undeniably, but it’s not what Maxis said would really happen, so I’m a little disappointed.
But apart from the flaws I’ve mentioned, this game is great. The gameplay is fun, the bits that aren’t are covered up by the many bits that are, and it’s infinitely replayable. What more could you want?
Oh, and for those people worrying about “taking thousands and thousands of years to evolve, blah de blah…” I managed it in roughly 7 hours, from cell to Space Age. It’s a wonder we haven’t managed so much yet. Now, where did I put my rocket fuel…?
Nometet.com says: 
+Fun
+Replayable to infinity
+Building is good
+Easy, mostly
-Creature Stage a bit slow and MMORPG-like
-Space Age disappointing
