Spore lets you take an extremely high-concept journey from a single-cell life form swimming through the seas to a continent-spanning superpower to the overlord of a galactic empire.

There's never been a game with as wide a scope as Spore.

No auto-save; no planetary automation; and an occasional crash deny Spore a Kick Ass

There's been a lot of hype about Spore, the big new game from Will Wright and his hardworking crew at Electronic Arts. Wright is the creator of The Sims, and Spore took six years to make. It's supposed to be the biggest thing he'll ever do. But does Spore live up to the hype?

Completely immersive gameplay experience; Creature Creator rocks; share creatures and worlds online

Takes time to install; some camera angle issues; graphics could be better

The idea behind Spore (if you have never played it) is to take your creature through the evolutionary process.

Easy to get into; Great design tools; Varied Levels

Last level an anticlimax

Will Wright and Maxis, responsible for top-selling franchises such as The Sims and Sim City, started working on Spore almost eight years ago. Even in the initial stages of development it seemed like an ambitious project.

Incredibly detailed life creation sim; intuitive and easy-to-learn; imaginatively showing various stages of evolution of your very own custom-made species; admirable production values; solid replayability; great online potential; very funny at times

Could disappoint as a single-player experience; some stages are too simple and feel slightly random when compared to others

Spore doesn't achieve the seamless evolutionary process and absolute player expression it first promised. What it turns out to be is something quite different altogether, a bizarre experiment of ideas that, incredibly, focus into something truly remarkable.

Spore is an enjoyable game that pulls off an interesting balancing act. On one hand, it lets you create a creature and guide its maturation from a single cell to a galactic civilization through an unusual process of evolutionary development.

Intuitive and comprehensive customization tools; Oozes charm at every turn; Impressively broad scope; Great audio and art design

Individual gameplay elements are extremely simple; Early stages aren't very engaging

Maxis and Electronic Arts have teamed up to bring us Spore , a game that was considered by many to have the most daring and complex concept ever. And there is no other possible way to describe it, since this game plans to simulate the entire process of genetic evolution, from cell stage to...

It's been years since Sims creator Will Wright first announced their ambitious game Spore , and now that it's finally in stores, it's easy to look back on this game's hype and be at least a little disappointed.

For me, Spore feels like wasted potential. There are so many opportunities to make the game more in-depth and challenging, but it was somewhat squandered. Spore tries too hard to be like every game imaginable and the jack-of-all-trades mentality doesn't work.

First Impressions My reaction is Did you ever stop to wonder why some things are as they are? Why some birds fly and some don't, or why animals have four legs? What would you do if you could do things differently?