Spore-Dark Injection Review

Introduction
Are you ready to revisit some memories of playing Spore? Everyone that I know has played Spore in their past to create their perfect creature! There is no game like Spore on the market, it is a unique game that other games try to emulate but no game can get close to the perfection that Spore is able to emulate. There are many bugs, crashes, and problems in Spore but somehow, we all love the game.

For this review I have taken a twist to the usual Spore gameplay, we have inserted some Dark Injection into Spore! This a huge mod that alters many aspects of Spore, one of the major changes is that you are able to find more parts to create the creature that you want to create. Another huge upgrade is that it removes the complex meter from the game, this means you can create the creature that you want in any way that you see fit. No longer the annoying message that you have plastered to many parts on your creature, this also applies to buildings and vehicles. There are some bug fixes here and there but this does not fix the constant crashing.  I have made a full gameplay video for Spore-Dark Injection!

In Spore, you begin as a tiny cell that needs to evolve to a space-faring creature while you decide if you are going to be friendly or going to be aggressive! Depending on the way that you play, you end up with a different class at the end. All the different classes have different skills that can be very useful in the space stage.
In this review, I won’t make a part of what I thought before playing Spore since I really have no idea anymore what I thought 12 years ago before playing but I am going to make a what did you think before playing Spore-Dark Injection! I will fuse the Gameplay with the story, we will look at all the phases that you go through in Spore-Dark Injection.

What did I think of playing Spore-Dark Injection before playing?
I wanted to do something unique for Spore and I had the choice of two mods, Titan spore, and Dark Injection but how can I compare the original Spore to the normal Spore if I have played it a few years ago for the last time?
I played from the cell phase all the way up to the space stage and a bit further in the original spore before I even looked at Dark Injection and Titan Spore! I decided to look at the features that the mods would add.

The Titan spore mod was harder to find and also almost impossible to find a feature list so I decided to look at the Dark Injection mod. The Dark Injection mod has a nice website with a how-to install and a feature list!
One of the major things that I really liked was that they removed the complex meter for your creature, this seemed like a huge bonus to me! It would also add new vehicle options and over 600 new creature parts!
There were even more added options like a complete overhaul of the user interface and more paint jobs for your creature, it also added some new props for making adventures but that is not really a rabbit hole that I am diving into.

The features looked amazing and I was very curious if this was implemented well and how the creature parts looked. My first Spore run was a clean one with many crashes and I did not expect to much change with this mod.
Installing the mod was very easy to do and it only took about 30 minutes before I could start playing the game. I booted up the game and started playing, I really wanted to create a creature with many legs for some reason.

I need to rate this a bit different since this is not a normal rating, I need to look at what the mod promises and if it excites joy in people. Is this an attractive mod and how hard is it to install?
I rate Spore-Dark Injection before playing with a 9.
The website was a really nice touch, it has clear instructions and it promises many new features that would excite any spore player! Don’t you know how many possibilities open up with that many new parts? Infinite parts to plaster on your creature?
The idea that Spore-Dark Injection promised seemed almost too wonderful to be actually true!

Gameplay
The gameplay works very differently in Spore compared to many other games, Spore-Dark Injections is not any different. The core mechanics and gameplay has not been touched at all but this has been fluffed up a lot!
You can include many different creatures in your game from all kinds of creators or even upload your creations, you can still do this with Spore-Dark Injection but for someone else to download them they will also need Spore-Dark Injection.

Spore-Dark Injection Cell Stage
The game starts with a meteor crashing to a planet, this meteor contains many micro-organisms, one of them is you! As you come out of the meteor you will need to scrounge up food while avoiding the bigger predators that want to eat you!
You are not alone in this struggle for survival though, you will see many of your species swimming in the water. Your goal is to collect enough food while evolving through many generations to start growing a brain! When you mate with one of your own species you will be able to change the cell to your liking. The cell stage does not offer many options yet as there are only six parts to find while looking for food. When you eat food, you will gain DNA points to grow new parts. Choosing a different skin color or pattern does not cost DNA points. These can include an extra mouth or some spikes but you will need to find these parts first.

You can find them in meteors or by killing cells with these parts. With Spore-Dark Injection you can keep gaining DNA points to keep upgrading your cell but this is a little bit futile as you will gain much stronger parts in the creature stage of Spore-Dark Injection. The parts that you have added in the cell stage can help you get started in the creature stage. When you have eaten Enough and grown a small brain you can choose to go to the next stage in Spore-Dark Injection. You can choose three paths and they will affect your class later in the game and what mouths you will find in the next stage. If you are a herbivore you will only find herbivore mouths, the same goes for omnivore and carnivore. You will need to grow legs before you can walk on land but you can also choose to not grow legs and become a snake or something else that either slithers or crawls over the ground.

A good thing to note is that most snakes or worms cannot dance which you might need later in the game! You can also grow some arms but once again it is not needed, your creature will use his mouth to grab tools and other items. Hands and arms are needed for posing which is also useful later in the game but you can get by without if you really want to. When you have chosen what your creature looks like for now, you can continue, believe me, your creature will change a lot in the next stage of Spore-Dark Injection!

I rate the cell stage with an 8.2.
The cell stage is really simple and small but we all have to start somewhere, right?

Spore-Dark Injection Creature Stage
This might be one of the most important stages in Spore-Dark Injection, these skills will still be used in later stages! You are now on land and you will need to evolve to continue your journey, you can find parts in many ways in this stage. This phase works like a Role-playing game where you can sort of earn experience points, these experience points are called DNA points. You can keep evolving your creature and become stronger. This is the phase where you have the most control of your creature without a vehicle. You can starve in this phase and you will need to either eat berries or creatures that you have killed or roadkill, this depends on if you are a herbivore or a carnivore. Omnivores can eat both berries and meat.

You can just keep on wandering throughout the lands and finding piles of bones, these include new parts for your creature. The bigger the pile of bones is, the better the item that you find will be. Spore-Dark Injection has many different items to find so finding the item you want might be difficult. You will spend a lot of time in this phase making the creature stronger and mold it in the image that you want it to be. You can also choose to be friendly with other species that have also evolved and wandered onto land. You will need to interact with their leader and have a dance-off. You can summon some creatures to help you in the dance-off or when you have evolved more add some party members to your party. Next to dancing, they might also start singing, other options are posing and charming you. It is a good idea to try and get all the social skills to level one as fast as possible. This way you can at least show off all your moves in the dance-off. If you win three dance-offs with creatures from the same nest you will gain a DNA bonus and you are able to rest at their nest. If you want, you can even add one of the creatures from that nest to your party. When you win the dance-off when challenging the leader, you will gain a new part for your creature.

There are multiple different tiers in creatures that you will meet.  Some of the creatures don’t want to dance and just want to shred you to pieces, it might be wise to have some defensive skills for when this happens. It is also a good idea to have some skills to run away or use stealth to sneak away. There are eight skills to learn and they all go up to level five as the max but getting them all to level five would cost a lot of DNA points, these parts are usually also rare. If you choose to be an aggressive carnivore it might be easier to gain some parts for your creature. You can kill leaders of the nests that you encounter for new parts, going on a full-on rampage will earn you loads of DNA points and parts for your creature. As you start to evolve you will become stronger and also gain more health points, you can keep on collecting parts even after you get the message that you can continue to the Tribal Stage.

There are some random events that can occur while you are playing the creature stage, one of these is that your nest migrates. To start evolving your creature you will need to mate with one of your species, you will start with a new generation but any party members that you have will still be in your party. It is not a wise idea to swim too far into the ocean or you will be attacked by a giant sea monster. Once you have fully evolved and are satisfied with your creature and the skills that you can use, you can use the button to go to the next phase of Spore-Dark Injection. Your species will learn how to use fire and tools and the next phase of Spore-Dark Injection will start. Once again you will see what path you have chosen and this will affect the skills that your species can use in the tribal stage. These can help you make friends or kill enemies faster.

The masterpiece of Spore, this is one of the most amazing feats that Spore and Spore-Dark Injection pull off!
I rate the creature stage with a 9.7.
I don’t have to tell you why right? This part of the game is amazing.

Spore-Dark Injection Tribal Stage
This phase will alter the gameplay a lot, you will no longer be able to control a single creature like in the previous phase. You will need to control your whole tribe, you will need to order them around like in a strategy game while also building the first steps that will lead you into civilization. You can start by gathering some food, depending on if you have chosen to become an herbivore or a carnivore you will need different methods. The best idea is to have an omnivore but for being an herbivore you will need to gather berries that surround your little tribe. If you are a carnivore you can hunt down the creatures that have not evolved and eat their meat. You will need food to get further in this stage, food is used for almost everything. If you want to add more members to your tribe you will need food but beware there are also wild animals that want to steal your food. You can chase these away by smashing them to pieces, all separate tribe members need to be fed so you will always need food. You can also fish if you are a carnivore or omnivore but the closest fishing spot might be far away.

You can also build some buildings, these can give your tribe new tools to work with. You will only start with a few buildings, this depends on what path you have chosen in the previous phases. You will also have the ability to use special skills, these are different depending on the path that you have walked so far. One friendly skill is fireworks, this can be used to become friends easier with other tribes. An aggressive skill is throwing firebombs at your enemies. You don’t need food to give your tribe clothing, these can increase your combat prowess or even make them gather food better. While gathering food you will soon get a message saying that a new tribe has risen. You can either try to befriend them or destroy them and take their ideas for buildings and clothing. You can then also steal their food. Fighting these tribes can be really tough but if you want to win you will need to have strong combat abilities and a large army. Some tools to increase your damage or heal your army might also be a good idea. This can take a lot of planning but beware they can also choose to attack you! If you do manage to defeat their army, you will need to defeat their central building to put the nail in the coffin. You won’t have much time to regrow your army since attacking one tribe will make the other tribes angry at you.

If you choose the more friendly path it might be easier, to befriend another tribe you will need music instruments and some food to present as a gift. You will need many tribe members with all the musical instruments that are currently available to you. You will need to play for the tribe that you want to befriend, they will let you know which instrument they want to hear and then you will need to play that instrument. If you do this successfully, they will share their spoils with you, including a totem for you. When you have either befriended or destroyed enough tribes you will gain the ability to have more tribe members as you slowly advance to the next stage of Spore-Dark Injection. When you have conquered or befriended all the tribes you will be able to advance to the next phase, depending on the path that you have walked so far, your species will become religious priests that want to convert the whole world or they are hell-bent on world domination. My pick is usually to go with the species that want to convert other species. When you are hell-bent on world domination your species will destroy a whole city while conquering the city, this means you will need to rebuild all the cities while conquering. When your species end up wanting to convert everyone you do not have to rebuild every city.

I rate the tribal stage with an 8.8.
It is the first part of Spore-Dark Injection where you will need to use strategy to overcome the obstacles that await your species in their journey to the stars, it is quite simple but the gameplay is very solid.

Spore-Dark Injection Civilization Stage
Your species are hell-bent on world domination as all of the tribes have evolved but scattered over the many years that have passed since the tribal stage, this phase loses the hunger bar. That is one less thing to worry about but many new elements will be added in this phase of Spore-Dark Injection. You will need to create three kinds of vehicles that you are going to need to collect spices or fight with other cities. Your goal is to own all the cities in the end or be friends with everyone, becoming friends with everyone is really hard to do. Other cities will usually hate each other and ask you to help them to take down a city but if you refuse the offer to help them take down that city, they will start to dislike you. You will need to earn money to start building your city, the spices can be collected to earn more money but you will also need to put factories in your city but if you only put down factories you will have sad creatures, these sad creatures are vulnerable to other priests that want to convert you. You can also build houses and entertainment centers. You will need to arrange the city so it earns you money and that the creatures that are living there are still happy.

You will also be able to build turrets to defend your city against incoming attacks. You will need more houses to be able to create more vehicles, creating vehicles will also cost you money. When you are ready to either attacking another city or try becoming friends you will need to select a city and then choose your action. If you want to become friends with another city the best option is to give a present, you will need loads of money for this. Becoming aggressive is the best idea in this stage, the best way is to already have a religious town or capture one as soon as possible, this way you can make priests that are able to start with converting other cities. When you have captured or converted another city you can build more houses and factories, having more houses means that you can build more vehicles and factories will earn you more money.

When you have claimed four cities you can build airplanes, these can capture or convert a city very quickly, it won’t take long before you have captured all of the cities if you keep building more houses and factories. You have four special skills that change depending on the path that you have walked so far but the last one is usually really expensive, these can alter your gameplay a lot but launching the last special skill that costs over 30k gold will initiate an instant-win. Once you have united all of your species by converting or capturing the cities you are ready for the last phase in Spore-Dark Injection.

I rate the civilization stage with an 8.0.
This is the shortest part in the game but this stage is more of a setup to get ready for the space stage.

Spore-Dark Injection Space Stage
You have reached the final and endless space stage of Spore-Dark Injection, your species will now take to the stars to expand their empire. Other empires will also have reached the stars by now and you can either befriend them or destroy them. If you become friends you will need to eventually purchase their solar system which can cost you loads of dough. Fighting them is also really hard in the beginning, I would advise following a guide to becoming the Zealot class. This will give you an instant win button but it will make other empires mad. You can avoid them while you are waiting for the cooldown to end, this takes a bit of time though. Next to capturing more solar systems or buying them out your species will gather more spices and trade them with other colonies or empires to earn loads of money. If you find a new planet you can place down a colony that will start mining spices on that planet. Some planets are not very good to live in so you will need to terraform them by unlocking new tools and bringing creatures and plants from other worlds to that planet.

You can take on missions to beam yourself down to planets and complete a mission, remember that I said that skills from the creature stage would come in later? Combat skills that you have learned in the creature stage will come in handy when you are doing missions, get ready for loads of crashes though! I had to restart a complete playthrough for a new video since the game kept crashing so much and messing up the video, that’s right I have played spore from cell to space three times in one week! Along with all the other games that I needed to play for reviews. Spore is really amazing and fun to play so I did not mind too much about this fact. You can also make your own adventures or use adventures from other people. When you are exploring space, you will also encounter the evil race called the Grox, these will try to annihilate you on sight but you can also befriend them! Befriending them is hard but if you use the Zealot skill to conquer many empires you can make the strongest species in the game your friends! The space stage is endless and you can keep on growing your empire and the space map is huge, this is a really awesome phase of Spore-Dark Injection. There is no real end-game here and that is the most fun part of Spore-Dark Injection.

The endgame of Spore-Dark Injection is an endless loop of fun and frustration and the developer did an amazing job with creating this gameplay stage.
I rate the space stage with a 9.4.
There is just so much to do here, it is pretty insane and there are so many options with how you handle the other empires in space.

Sound and Graphics
The sound is great in Spore-Dark Injection and the sound effects fit perfectly and they have aged well, the graphics, however. The graphics are still good and I enjoy them in Spore-Dark Injection, it would not be Spore-Dark Injection otherwise. They have not aged as well as I had hoped but that is not the biggest problem in this game. The animations are really wonky and they will also clip through the floor and through walls a lot. The animation of walking is also really buggy and weird but it will also make you chuckle a lot. It has not aged very well but unless there would be a Spore 2 I am very glad for the graphics and Animations.

I rate the sound and graphics with a 7.4
This is the weakest point of Spore but we all accept it because Spore is a masterpiece that we need to adore.

What did I think of Spore-Dark-Injection after playing?
Spore-Dark Injection was really amazing, re-visiting this gem from the past with many new features was the best idea ever!
It held up to my expectations even better than I had hoped, the new creature parts are really amazing and I could construct my creature exactly the way that I wanted to!
I had many new parts to test and try out, this also makes the creature stage a lot bigger since you have many more parts to hunt down. The upgraded user interface works wonder to spruce up Spore-Dark Injection.
The HUD also looks much better and clean when you are creating a creature, the mod of Dark Injection does not touch any core mechanics but it only adds elements to what makes this game a masterpiece.

I did have to play through Spore and Spore-Dark Injection three times but I would not even mind doing it a fourth time as Spore-Dark Injection has such great replay value, maybe one of the best replay values ever!
There were many bugs like suddenly changing a language or many crashes but I can live with that with how amazing this game is, I would not recommend you to play the temple of spood space adventure. This one is really bugged and will always crash your game!

As I mentioned before Spore-Dark Injection has exceeded all my expectations, the new options are truly amazing. There will never be another game as perfect as Spore again.
My rating of Spore-Dark Injection after playing is a 9.3.
The chances of ever having a Spore 2 is zero, We have been granted one masterpiece by the developing gods.

My Personal Rating of Spore-Dark Injection
I have enjoyed playing through both Spore and Spore-Dark Injection for this review, I have also felt a lot of frustration that comes with the crashing and bugs but that is also what makes Spore the game that it is.
Collecting the new parts and creating weird creatures was an amazing experience once again. This is a game that I will keep re-visiting in the future.
There is actually a lot that is wrong with Spore and Spore-Dark Injection but for some reason, no one cares since this game is perfect.

My personal rating is a 9.4

Pros and Cons

Pros
– Spore-Dark Injection adds many new creature parts for you to hunt down in the creature stage.
– Spore-Dark Injection makes the user interface much better and cleans up a lot of the clutter.
– There is no longer a complexity meter that stops you from creating the creature that you want to create.
– The gameplay in Spore-Dark Injection is unique and is a one-of-a-kind game.
– The sound has aged well with this old game.
– Spore-Dark Injection has amazing replay value.
– You will gain a class depending on the path that you take in your journey to a space-exploring creature.
– The endgame of Spore-Dark Injection lasts as long as you want it to.
– All the phases that you go through while evolving will matter even when you have entered the last phase of the game.

Cons
– The graphics have not aged very well.
– Many crashes, bugs, and errors will happen when Playing either Spore or Spore-Dark Injection.
– The space stage has many adventures that will make your game crash, saving before doing a space adventure is highly recommended.
–  The chances that there will be a Spore 2 are less than zero.

I would recommend this game to anyone, Both Spore and Spore-Dark Injection will fit all your gaming moods. If you have never played Spore before you have been missing one of the greatest adventures of your gaming life.
My Final rating of Spore-Dark Injection is…. drumroll…

8.7

Don’t forget to leave your thoughts about Spore-Dark Injection in the comments or leave your own rating.
I hope you enjoyed reading this review, I hope to see you in the next review