That 1 1/2 star rating on Amazon is pretty meaningless because most of the 1 star reviews were from people JUST railing about the DRM regardless of whether they'd played the game or not.
I'm no friend of DRM, but if I were Amazon, I'd have deleted those reviews because of their specious nature.
I didn't like Spore all that much myself, however there's another Will Wright game that I didn't like all that much: The Sims. I thought that was boring as hell, but a lot of people seemed to like it, so you might understand why EA thought it would be wise to advertise the game heavily.
The difference was expectations. The Sims billed itself as a life simulation game, and as such it was a very fun one. Spore claimed to be a revolutionary worldchanging game. People called it the Citizen Kane of games. It was the end-all be-all to the history of gaming, the game that did it all. Turns out it was just a lifesim game, and a lot of people who thought they were playing the best game ever stopped playing within a day. I know I did, and I'm still a bit mad at Will Wright for that.
I'm no friend of DRM, but if I were Amazon, I'd have deleted those reviews because of their specious nature.
I didn't like Spore all that much myself, however there's another Will Wright game that I didn't like all that much: The Sims. I thought that was boring as hell, but a lot of people seemed to like it, so you might understand why EA thought it would be wise to advertise the game heavily.