Creating your own weird creatures and discovering those created by others is a fair bit of fun and is where the strength of Spore lies. But as a game Spore mostly just fails.

The introductory Cell stage is reminiscent of something like Pac-Man or Flow and is entertaining in all its arcadey simplicity. The following Creature stage was epic disappointmenton however. I was curious and spiritful. The introduction with your little animal swimming towards land made me smile. It was a brand new world for me and my creature. I was curious to find out what we would discover on our adventures.

Turns out the Creature stage is pretty much the same as the Cell stage, only 3D and you get the option of fighting or socalizing with creatures. There is some gameplay in there when it comes to avoiding predators, but mostly it's just some sort of simplistic MMORPG-ish grind where you run around and click things. However, after the initial soulcrushing disappointment I grew to realize the whole thing had some appeal to it. It has a little bit of a world simulation/ecosystem feel to it, it can be fun to discover what other players have created, and you sort of grow attached to you own creature. Ultimately, it's probably pretty ok I guess.

Currently I'm at the Tribal stage. It doesn't seem to allow me to play the game the way I want to and has been really frustrating so far. I was trying to create a friendly, diplomatic tribe, but the game kept sending other tribes at me to steal my apples and burn down my huts.

I'm not terribly keen on continuing to play. Perhaps I'll pop in to mess around with the creature creator, but as for the game part of it... I mean, I'm not terribly hopeful for the last two stages and the Tribal stage has been shit to be honest.