Spore

Spore (stylized as SPORE) is a multi-genre life simulation video game, developed by EA Maxis and published by Electronic Arts on September 7th 2008. It revolves around creating and simulating life with an emphasis on its asset creation tools.

It received three expansion packs: "Creepy and Cute", which added additional parts and textures for the "Creature Creator", "Galactic Adventures", which focused around creating adventures for players to explore in the "Space Stage", and "Bot Parts Pack" which added few of robot-like parts. other expansion packs: "Creature Keeper" and "Depth" were planned but were unfortunately cancelled.

Plot
Spore is about simulating life and its evolution from single celled microbe to galactic empire. Split between five distinct states of life: Cell, Creature, Tribal, Civilization and Space, players must guide and evolve their creature to survive and adapt to the unique challenges presented by each stage in order to meet an overarching goal in each stage and progress.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) One of the most technically advanced asset creation systems in a game to date, allowing players to create a near infinite amount of unique creations (from recognisable to horrifying to downright silly) and have the game automatically animate them.
 * 2) * Players can make and shape almost everything in the game: from microbial life to complex buildings and spacecraft, players can even make their own stories and adventures with the Galactic Adventures expansion pack.
 * 3) Players can share all of their creations online through the in-game "Sporepedia", where they can be downloaded by other players for use in their games, or automatically shared and downloaded through the in game "pollination" system.
 * 4) Procedurally generated music that adapts to certain criteria in your game, such as your creature's ability to fight or socialise, or events that happen during gameplay.
 * 5) Excellent ambient genre music composed by Brian Eno, Saul Stokes and Cliff Martinez.
 * 6) Five different stages in the game, Cell, Creature, Tribal, Civilization, and Space Stage. Each stage has its own separate genre that keeps gameplay new and interesting.
 * 7) Good replayability with to the asset creation systems and online creation sharing allowing for a unique experience with every playthrough.
 * 8) Actions throughout each stage have consequences that affect certain aspects of subsequent stages, from the traits and consequence abilities which are unlocked as a result of player's actions in a previous stage, to small details such as the location of your starting civilisation being the exact location of your starting tribal village, which in turn was the exact location of your creature's nest when it became sapient.
 * 9) There are plenty of Easter Eggs and references and to other popular franchises such as M.U.L.E. and 2001: A Space Odyssey.
 * 10) Easy to install (albeit limited) modding community, full of mods for both utility and additional parts for editors.
 * 11) Great and beautiful graphics and animations for 2008 standards.
 * 12) The "Creppy & Cute", while not changing the gameplay, adds more parts to "Creature Creator", making it much more fun to creating creatures.
 * 13) The "Galactic Adventures" adds new feature called "Adventures", which are missions for "Space Stage" and two new editors called "Captain Outfitter" and "Adventure Creator", making it much more fun to play.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Despite being a game about the simulating life and evolution, it is extremely scientifically inaccurate, with a number of inaccuracies and hand-waved factors present throughout the game, ranging from the unnaturally rapid and drastic change a species can undergo to how DNA in the Spore universe is more akin to a currency rather than a set of instructions for protein synthesis.
 * 2) Lots of game glitches are present. Some may enhance the experience or give a few laughs, however. Also, the game is prone to breaking and crashing seconds after launching when hardware configurations are changed or you change your hard disk partition size. Usually this issue is fixed by using Origin's "Repair" functionality on Spore and its expansion pack, Spore: Galactic Adventures, which makes the game rebuild the content database.
 * 3) The DRM implemented at release only allowed you to install on up to three computers, which created a controversy and is likely one of the reasons why the game was the most pirated game on its launch.
 * 4) Some of the cutscenes can drag on for too long.
 * 5) The complexity meter is one of the most despised gameplay features.

Game Tips

 * 1) Hold the I key when hovering over a part in the Creature Creator or an Outfitter to see what the part actually is.
 * 2) Hold Alt and Ctrl and scroll the mouse wheel to zoom out or in further than normal in Creature Stage and an Adventure.
 * 3) In the Space Stage, Purple Spice is the most valuable commodity in the galaxy, setting up colonies on planets that are abundant in Purple Spice can become an easy source of income. An even better way to profit off purple spice planets is to evolve a species on the purple spice planet till they become a space stage creature, then buy the new homeplanet from them.
 * 4) The game may not properly detect newer hardware and not use the graphics hardware to render shine and shadows, even on high settings, if this occurs then go to this page on the Spore forums to get a fix.