It took me maybe 6 hours to reach the space stage last night. There are parts of that game-the way you build your creature, the way  the game magically generates that creatures movement on the fly(animating a creature that doesn't exist is up there with gaming's greatest technical achievements), the surprising free-form gameplay in the space stage- that convince me that Will Wright is a god damn genius.
But the gameplay isn't mind blowing and the five stages feel so disconnected. Obviously the point of the four other modes is to get the player to the space stage, but none of the first 4 modes(excpept the Cell Stage to the Hunting stage) mesh particularly well. Evolution is all about the subtle gaining of mutations over billions and billions of years, while Spore is all about getting the player to the whiz-bang madness of science.
So, in a roundabout sort of way, I wish that the five stages didn't feel so severed.They all could have used a little more depth of some kind.
But hey: I'm still having fun. The one point of agreement: I want Spore to be played in schools. Spore relative simplicity has the potential to be this generation of student's Oregon Trail or Treasure Mathstorm.
Of course it won't unseat the kind of Edutainment, The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis!