I am pretty unimpressed on many levels. The game itself is very nicely crafted - great graphics and the sound/music is good and the controls and customization is very very nice. The problem is that it is incredibly INCREDIBLY easy and very very short. Of the 5 phases it took me about 8 hours total for me to complete them and please note that I took my time for the most part. I did everything there is to do on pretty much each stage. 8 hours compared to any other game.. give me a break.
1. Cell stage. Equivalent to pacman. My favorite stage because it is so simple yet I love the way you grow and its like you are looking at a microscope and changing the view from say 40x to 30x to 20x to 10x each stage so the things that were huge are now your snacks as you progress. I also like how the tide affects you so its like you are really struggling against the current. You also have to swim away from predators desperately and chase down prey (or eat plants and compete against other herbivores). Problem? It is over in 20 minutes. Tops.
2. Creature phase. Not even sure what to compare this to other than to say taking a nap. Zzzzz. All you do is run from point A to point B and click on DNA piles that give you new abilities or either kill other creators or try to "befriend them." Either way you are targeting things and pressing 1,2,3,4 over and over. Talk about boring. This part took zero skill and I've played through it 3 times and tried it as carnivore/omnivore/herbivore and tried the kill and friend approach each. Either way its incredibly boring and easy.
3. Tribal phase. A really simplified game of Civ. I'm not even sure this was really a phase to be honest. I told my guys to run over and kill an enemy village and they had no problems doing it by themselves. I did it 4 more times and won. I think it took 15 minutes.
4. Civ stage. An even more simplified game of civ. Again - build some units and tell them to go conquer stuff. Then go to the kitchen and make something to eat while your troops win the game for you. Building things in cities and making different kinds of cities, as far as i could tell, was irrelevant. I simply built tanks and destroyed the entire map.
5. Space stage. The stage they obviously spent the most time on because it has the most depth. This stage has missions and a lot of things you can do. Its sort of a split between Civ and Galactic Civilizations. There is a lot of freedom here and a lot of things to do. This is the only redeeming quality to the entire game to be honest. I could see myself tweaking out on the Space stage and really trying to do a lot of different things in it if I had the free time right not to dedicate to it (work is killing my free time).
I guess the 1 good thing about this game is that in order to really feel like I'm getting the most of out my space stage gaming, I would feel the need to play through starting at the cell stage and really develop my creature/tribe/civ into what I want it to be in the space stage so I would replay those stages a few times to get that experience and they aren't too crazy long to make it a waste of time.
As a lot of other reviewers are saying - this isn't a hardcore gamer's game at all. This is the type of game where you want to sit back and design a creature and simply play for the fun of watching your creature interact fluidly with the environment you create and having the freedom to add your personal touch and have it all actually work properly without bugs and stuff. Also its kind of cool to be running around with a new creature you are working on and have an alien space ship come by and you look up and realize its a space ship you designed and is being flown by your old creature which is now a space empire. Kind of a fun experience.
Overall though i think they could have done a LOT LOT more with the first 4 stages. They are very polished just very lacking in depth.
