10 Video Games That Completely Switched Genre Halfway Through
3. Spore
To be completely fair to Maxis' genre-hopping god game Spore, it's really five different games in one, as players develop a species from their inception through to their evolution into a spacefaring race.
The adventure is defined by five different stages. The first two, Cell and Creature, see the player foraging for food and resources in not dissimilar fashion, but the third and fourth stages in the middle of the game, Tribal and Civilisation, change things up dramatically.
At this point the game shifts genres from action-RPG to real-time strategy, as players command an entire tribe of creatures for most of Spore's remainder.
The fifth and final stage, Space, however pivots once again into sci-fi sandbox territory as you now command an entire galactic empire.
Though well-received by critics upon release, Spore's legacy today is defined by divisiveness, many feeling that it spread itself too thinly across its stages and failed to deliver fully on all the colossal hype.