Full of promise, brilliant design, nifty execution..... but sadly, so unstable the frustrations weigh ya down.
For the battle seeking gamer, SPORE provides something, but only a little something. For the crafting and creative gamer SPORE provides an explosion of possibilities, and access to a world audience. Indeed, your creations can randomly be populated in other people's games (if you wish) and you can track that.
The game has 3 distinct phases. You may elect to begin at the beginning or skip directly to the final (SPACE) phase. Each phase has it's intriguing character and should you choose to play all 3 in sequence you contribute to the final ability of the SPACE-faring race differently than if you simply start as a space-faring race.
It is a solo play engagement exclusively. You share creations with the world, you may choose from creations offered by other players. The creations include creatures, plants, buildings, and vehicles.
In the main, I find SPORE fun, engaging, and very well conceived and executed.
Regrettably, some very few characteristics generated my low rating (3.0).
While you can save during game-play there is no provision documented for saving your game to restore after a re-install. There is no archival save.
I, and numerous others, suffer a crash to desktop when attempting to leave our homeworld after combat. Many report similar crashes in different circumstances. Support is through EA and limited to routine responses, clear your temp folder, uninstall and reinstall, and the like. There is no warning in these aids that following them will delete the game you've been playing.
So, while the promise is great, the basic game premise and execution brilliant, the PRODUCT as sold by EA is so flawed that I can not recommend it.