For $9.95 Spore is a great price for a competent mobile game. With that being said Spore For Google Android is not a direct take on the PC game of the same name by SIM Games inventor Will Wright. Instead this mobile version of the popular game focuses on one goal, building up your characters in order to fight them. We like to think of it as a pokemon for adults. The premise is simple, create a character and then strategically build up their strength from a single cell organism to a fierce predator that can take on other computer generate creatures and even other online players.
Here's a quick screenshot, as you can see the characters are not what we would call "advanced" in the way they look, which was a slight let down:
As you maneuver your character through 18 different levels of gameplay, all of which increase in difficulty along the way you will need to find powerups, defense mechanisms and any other "bonuses" available in order to create a stronger creature than those you fight against.
As previously mentioned your character isn't stuck to "device play" and can in fact play online against friends and other random players. This is a great option if you want to build up your character while proving that you're the best player on Spore. At the same time the gameplay is actually very fast, on the T-Mobile Edge network we didn't experience any slow gameplay and the game even completed the initial network connection in a matter of seconds.
Here are a few ways you can also choose to change the way your character acts: increasing offense, defence, perception, and movement. The game is also very perceptive to exactly how much of each variation your character has and those areas will determine how well you fight (damage you give) and defende yourself (equivalent of hitpoints on RPGs).
Gameplay is easy to pickup with reading through various directions and you'll find the actual game loads quickly and plays just as fast.
Spore For Google Android isn't a direct take on the PC and in all honesty with the complexity of the PC version it couldn't be given the available technology currently available on cell phones. With that being said it's still a fun, addictive and intriguing game. If you want to download Spore you can find it at Handango for a very reasonable $9.95 and for that price we don't think you'll be disappointed.