Spore Creature Creator

Even though it was just a preview of the game, it really showed the time that's been going into the final product: Spore. The level of customization is amazing. A good deal more than a million different creatures have already been created by players of this game. The interface is very user-friendly, and I can tell that Spore is going to have great game-play and graphics.

We tried to put this program on our Mac first, and it didn't work. So we tried it on my XP-running PC. There was no problem installing it there, and it was amazing how quickly we started creating creatures, we being myself and my 12-year-old daughter.

You decide what qualities you want your creature to have, and you're given choices of limbs and extras to give your creature those characteristics. Add wings, and your character can glide. Add a spikey tail, and watch your character's attack points go up. Add armor parts to make your character's health go up. You can then watch your character attack, dance hip hop, swoon with love and more. It's so much fun!

I suspect this will probably get about 30 hours of play before my daughter gets bored of it, but 30 hours of entertainment for $[...] isn't bad at all. I'm not sure if she'll ever play with her characters online (we don't approve of violent video games), but that's fine with us. Spore Creature Creator is loads of fun on its own.

Seriously, this is worth the $[...] if you have a creative teen or tween.

I saw a video of this product that made it look easy and fun so I ordered it. It would never install and the support on the Spore site did not address the issue. So I had to return it.

Too bad.

It is a fun tool and great toy for anyone who likes computer animation. The creatures created are a lot of fun and finding new ways to use parts and colors is a challenge to keep you busy for quite some time to come.

That said, EA kinna kills it.

There is as of today in game advertising. This is not mentioned on any box or information sheet. The AT&T advert even makes it difficult to see things in the Sporepedia. It also drops in doubleclick and atdmt scripts and tracking cookies on ya. Or it tries to if you let it. This was done after the product was demonstrated in the trade shows publicly.

The game has bugs that have not been addressed since start and the forums are a barely moderated mess. Seems the main plan was to get adverts going less than a month away more than fixing bugs. Enough time to test the adverts but not enough time for most pre-order people to be notified.

If folks were warned ahead of time of in game advertising, spyware loaded onto your system via part of the website, and the general lack of EA assistance. I doubt many would have purchased this or pre-ordered Spore. The fact they waited to show it off at trade shows then bait and switch is hard to swallow.

There are Customer service issues abound. A number of mistaken bans, banning the person who reported a unsuitable item rather than the offender. Folks with DRM trouble having to wait over a week for a new code, and only after asking for it a few times. No real support with any bugs other than some user discovered workarounds.

Generally a mess an a half. Nice program. Shame about any support except unwanted and unwarranted additions.

EA can't manage even to produce a decent demo (that they make you pay for!). We bought the full demo to pass the time on a rainy vacation. My kids anxiously watched my try to install it. Emphasis on try. The thing didn't work. I tried 2 different operating systems on computers that met all the required specs. I scoured the net for advice. I followed all the advice and tips I found, changed files in the game, uninstalled the EA download manager... the game still freezes and crashes to desktop. All creatures lost, nothing saves. No way on earth will I buy the full version of this game until I can get some guarantee that it will actually run. I'm very disappointed in EA.