3.5/5 ★ – JayTheCh1cken's review of Spore.

This game is jank, but this game is fun. Unlike a lot of people who were expecting more from this game based on the prerelease footage, I never saw that so I guess I'm probably a little more forgiving of it than most. The cell stage is simple, but still pretty fun to grind through since it only takes about 20 minutes. The creature stage is too much of a slog for me though, going on for twice as long as you really want it to even when the gameplay is only a little more complex than the cell stage. Tribal stage stinks, way too boring to have any fun with. The civilization stage is back to being good though even with how similar it is on the surface level to the tribal stage, and I don't really know why. Its just fun building an army of tanks and planes and blasting other cities to dust for daring to try and take your spice. Finally there's the space stage, the best one by far but a too little too late in the grand scheme of things. Interacting with our galactic empires sounds fun but you can't really do much other than trade and ally with them. I found terraforming planets to be a much more fun way of expanding my empire but even that has its limits, as just going to war and taking over other empires' colonies is much more efficient. Exploring the galaxy is fun but it's hard to do when your ship's energy depletes so quickly, though I still liked finding Earth and reaching the Galactic Core to be fun. All in all, this game isn't amazing but I still couldn't help but get attached to my stupid little creatures as they evolved all the way from tiny cells in the ocean to the strongest empire in the universe, so I guess the game succeeded in that regard.