10 Reasons to Avoid Spore

Forget about peace

We gave peace a chance and found it wholly unsatisfying. Playing nice during the early phases involves going through some tedious follow-the-leader games where you need to pick up special moves by installing body parts that up one's charisma. Adding new body parts for the sake of learning new dance moves instead of watching and mimicking over time doesn't seem very smart for an evolving creature. If singing and dancing don't impress the neighbors, you'll need to subjugate other tribes however you can to add their instruments to your inventory. That way you'll be able to please demanding audiences that need a lot more than flutes. Or you could simply kill them all and burn their huts to the ground. Killing and burning often yields the fastest results, since none of the tribes you make peace with make it to the Civilization Stage anyway.

You could argue that there's a benefit to peacefully annexing cities in the Civilization stage, in that you don't have to rebuild all the structures you blow up. However, since there's no technology tree or building upgrades, rebuilding is just a minor inconvenience. In the Space Stage, no one is smart enough to develop cures when you infect them with deadly viruses. If you're not converting or buying out alien species, the only option is to completely eradicate them. You can't keep any as pets, slaves or food. What kind of evolved species is that?

12/09/08