Spore

The best part of Spore, in my opinion, is one of the elements that made The Sims so enjoyable. It's the fact that it makes hard-core gaming losers scream and gnash their teeth about how "It's not really a game! There's no points! There's no goal! I can't pwn n00bs in 1v1! What a waste of my precious time" etc etc etc.

So, what, Maxis shouldn't even bother to sell it? Because it violates some ancient gaming law about what games should be? Put it into perspective, you're not doing anything important anyway, that's why you're playing a fucking game. You're amusing yourself. When you stay up late at night jacking off to MILF porn on your quad-core gaming rig, it's not like you instantly go on a porn site message board afterwards and complain that squirting your load in a tissue had no point. No, because that's one of your favorite hobbies aside from maximizing your build orders in Starcraft or something similarly horrible. It has no point except you enjoyed it. Gaming has no point except for enjoyment. If your only source of self-worth comes from winning online video games against strangers and spreadsheeting various damages versus various unit types, then you yourself have no point. Deal with it and shut the fuck up.

The only problem here is that while The Sims was fun despite nerd ranting and a best-seller to boot, Spore is not really that good. I myself like many others bought it because of that one video Wil Wright made a year or so ago showing the progression from cell to animal to spaceman, and it was amazing. In contrast, Spore the Actual Game is just an amusing little software toy built within the framework of 5 different, mostly boring mini-games: Pac-Man (cell), World of Warcraft lite (creature), Starcraft lite (tribe), Civilization ultra-lite (City) and Spore in Space. The only modes I would even consider sitting down and playing at this point are the Space, Cell and maybe Creature stages. City stage was so horrendously boring that I only played it once, and I will always use a cheat code to skip it if I ever play the game seriously again. I managed to build a vehicle composed of tank treads, robot legs, strobe lights and guns that I named "KILLMONSTER," but other than building custom stuff I can't remember doing anything fun.

But, it's not even a serious game, so why complain? Maybe I care because I spent 50 bucks on it. FUCK.

Rating: Disappointing >:(
Pros: Sporn
Cons: Anti-sandbox game nerds win the argument
Second Opinion Rating: It is real, okay? I created it, and it's real.