It's ambitious, it's cute. But what Spore lacks is the fact of open end wide variety of gameplay.
If you don't know Spore, it's basically a game where you create a species and guiding it from a cell stage swimming around in the water, evolving to creature stage where you have a nest and go hunting on other nests, then Tribe stage where you have a village, then civilization then finally space stage.
The idea of it sounds ambitious, and with the game's main feature on customising your own creature is real awesome and tireless. You can assign horns, different eyes and legs. You can adjust their positions, sizes and all these organs have skills applied to it. It is great to have all these things as you start off in the early parts wandering around and either attack enemies or make allies with them.
Perhaps the main problem with Spore for me was that the gameplay was quite repetitive. Though with five stages and you get through all these maybe in eight hours, it is easy to find that these stages are pretty much the same. The cell stage which haves you swimming around and either be a carnivore eating smaller animals and meat or a herbivore which you eat little plant micro organisms.
Furthermore into the later stages things get repeating but in quite a different scale. You just have to go around explore yourself and find different species. Some are friendly and some are aggressive. These are all great things and each time you start a new species, the world generates random ones. But the thing is that basically you either make friends with them or kill them to evolve. There aren't much depth inside them like cheating on them, preach communism and use them like dogs. It's basic and straightfoward.
But of course, the stage isn't the game's main feature. Spore brings out as mentioned before, a customisable option. You can actually choose not to buy the game and just head off to download the spore creator and create lots and lots of cute species. But of course you won't be able to try and have fun with your creature.
In a technical term Spore is above average in a way. The voice acting of these cute guys calling (Roaring, screaming....whatever you call them) make them attractive and so adorable you would really want to take a big leap and hug them (Well, maybe not with the sharp teeth ones). The graphics are great comical styled, with great lighting effects though the textures feels a bit dull. Surprisingly though Spore has a low requirements and certainly this is a game that 7 year old kids and can buy without whining about frame rates.
Overall speaking, Spore is a great enhanced version from the Sims. The creatures are awesome. Customisation is excellent. And great support from the sound and graphics makes them look even cuter than ever. But if you are those that like great action and strategists, you probably will find Spore quite disappointing.