The Process of Evolution
Given the massive press coverage that Spore has received over the past few months you would literally have to be living in the primordial soup to not know at least a little about it by now. But for those of you not gifted with the abilities of a sentient being – Spore is the hottest new thing from developer Maxis, the guys who brought you Sim City and The Sims. Fortunately, this time around you won't be building cities or managing the pathetic lives of your digital idols – you'll be creating an entirely new species of creature, and helping it grow through all five key stages of it's evolution.

Soup's up!
Spore begins exactly as it should – with a chunk of meteor carrying an assortment of single-cell organisms crashing into an uninhabited planet, and you begin by moulding one of those organisms into almost any shape you see fit. This is where you'll first be able to try a simplified version of the magnificent creature creator you've probably already heard so much about. You wont have a great deal of options just yet, but it expands as the game moves forward.


After choosing from either the Herbivore or Carnivore options, you will be hurled headfirst into the primordial soup, and left to make you're way through the process of evolution. This portion of the game play is very basic; you'll be floating around what looks sort of like a small pond, with vibrant colours and awesome water effects present throughout – eating either plants or other organisms to grow bigger and evolve your little creature. During this process you will come across new parts that can be added to your creature by mating with other creatures of your species and making little baby versions of you, with the new parts intact. It's when doing this that you'll begin to notice just how rad the creature creator really is, but hold on tight because it's about to get a whole lot better.

Ears and Eyes and Nose and Mouth…
Once you've had you're fill of cellular plants or flesh, it's time to move forward into the creature stage of your evolution. You will be given one last chance to modify your cell before you continue, and add a fresh new pair of legs to it. The creature stage plays out a little like 3rd-Person MMO games such as World of Warcraft – as you'll now be running around your planet in 3rd-Person completing various tasks, collecting new pieces to add to your creature, and slowly growing your brain.


As you explore the beautiful scenery of your planet with your new legs you'll have 3 options on how to progress, again stemming from either Herbivore or Carnivore, and with Omnivore added to the mix for those that have discovered the required pieces (Omnivore is available in all stages but is usually a mix between the Herbivore and Carnivore play styles). Herbivores will progress by eating plants and making allies with other species – done by impressing them with dance, song and other means that will require you to find and add new pieces to your creature to unlock. Carnivores will instead be required to make those species extinct, by ripping them to shreds.

Progress a little further and you will begin to collect new parts from other species, and just like in the cell stage can add them to yourself by mating with another of your kind. Doing so will open the Creature Creator – this is where the juice in Spore is found. I spent hours in here the first time, and many more on subsequent plays because you can literally make almost anything you like. It works basically by stretching, shaping and enlarging the vertebra bones in you're creature until you have a style you like, then adding as many eyes, ears, noses, claws, fangs, arms, legs, horns (I could go on…) as you like until you're happy. The longer you spend exploring the world here, the more parts you will have access to, and the more options you'll have for your Creature Creator. As your brain grows, you'll come closer and closer to the end of the creature stage – be sure to make the final changes to your creature before you progress as the end o this stage marks the end of your physical evolution, and you won be able to make any further changes to your gene structure.

Wood + Friction = Fire! Didn't know that did ya?
Equipped now with an oversized brain, most likely stuffed into a tiny little head located in between the ninth and tenth arse of your deformed monstrosity of a creature, you will be able to create fire and with it take your first steps into civilised life. This is Tribal Stage, and the game style here changes dramatically as you merge from a 3rd-Person style game into a simplified RTS. It can be a bit disorientating to begin with but it only takes a few minutes to get a feel for it then you're straight into the action.

This is also the point in the game where you'll start to feel the burn in the lack of direction provided by Spore – and it could be the point where you stop playing forever, or fall in love and commit the next few months of your life to it. The lack of tutorial works around the principal that If you give a child a toy with no instruction, they will find their own way to play with it, other than that intended by the creator. Many people that have played Spore recently have only really begun to enjoy it after they realised this. Over-analysing Spore can lead to frustration and an un-enjoyable experience, you instead need to relax and take it as it comes – figuring this out as you go, just like the creature you're controlling is trying to do.


As I mentioned above, the Tribal Stage plays as a very simple RTS, I felt the need to mention this again as it's important to stress just how simple this RTS is. There's not a lot to it – create babies, hunt for food, equip new weapons or instruments and  wage war or ally with the other species that have advanced to this stage. Unlike all the other stages in Spore the Tribal Stage doesn't have a creator – well it does but it's really more of an outfitter allowing you to add tribal style adornments to your creature that add certain benefits to your attack, gathering or social skills. Herbivores this time will need to impress other tribes to ally with them, achieving this first with an offering of food followed by performing for them using various instruments that can be equipped by adding buildings to your town. Carnivores will once again need to wipe the other species from the planet in order to move forward, and can do so by equipping Axes, Spear and Torches to their tribe and assaulting the opposing villages. It is also during the Tribal Stage that the Omnivore style path – now called Industrious – starts to flesh out a little more.

Aside from how you progress, the path you choose for your species also determines your consequences – special traits that are unlocked as you move from stage to stage. Every time you move forward into another stage you acquire one additional talent to add to your arsenal, which is determined by what type of species you are controlling when you're finished. So for example if you had finished the Cell Stage as a Carnivore you would inherit the Raging Roar skill to take into the Creature Stage, and if you finished the Creature Stage as an Omnivore (or Adaptable as it's called in that particular stage) then you would inherit the Beastmaster skill to take into the Tribal Stage, as opposed to the Fire Bombs skill you would have received if you had remained a Carnivore. All of these results are combined together at the Space Stage to create your Philosophy, or your way of life of which there are 10 possible combinations. You will receive your final skill based on this, and it will reflect all the choices you have made in the game. It's a bit much to take in all at once, but take my word for it – it's all very awesome.

To nuke, or not to nuke.
Upon domination or alliance of the tribal races you will move forward into the Civilisation Stage – an era of Economics, Nukes and Religion (by now you should be catching on to how this all works). You'll begin this stage in you're new Creator, and are asked to build yourself a City Hall and a Land Vehicle. Once again the possibilities are almost endless here, and you could spend hours here tweaking your creations to your personal liking – or load up the Sporepedia and choose from the once Maxis (Or the rest of the world – more on this later) have made. Further along you will have even more customisation available to you in your city, with the option to design your own houses, factories and entertainment centres to increase profits and manage the happiness of your citizens. You will even have the ability to create your own City Anthem, using a surprisingly customisable music maker located in your city hall. This is just another of the small additions to the game that really make a big difference.


The world begins to get busy now, as more and more species advance to the civilisation stage and the world begins to populate. Whilst still an RTS, it is much more advanced than before. You will have ground, sea and air vehicles to construct and command, spice-mining stations to seize and control, and an assortment of interaction options for progression. You can open trade routes with other nations, spread the religious words of your nation through friendly activity or once again erase their existence from the planet – this time using nuclear warfare. There is a certain element of randomness here too that pleasantly caught me by surprise. Some species will be more inclined to like you than others depending on the decisions you've made in the past, such as the religious factions taking a certain dislike against military factionsdue to their particular beliefs. This is all generated randomly creating a new world for you to conquer every time you play. On my first play through this stage I thought myself very sneaky as I allied with one of the larger nations and destroyed the puny ones. This however backfired rather badly when let off my first nuke, only to find that my so-called allies were strongly opposed to that type of warfare, and now wanted my head on a platter. The good thing about nukes though is that they mess shit up rather well – lets just say they won't be turning their backs on me again in the near future… bastards.

When you take a step back and look at the Civilisation Stage it really isn't all that in-depth, it just appears that way at first glance. There are only 3 units and 3 types of buildings, one source of income and one map, and as such seasoned players of the RTS genre are going to feel the bitter bite of disappointment with this one, as many of them – including myself- were expecting a great deal more. On the other hand, you'll be hand-designing those units and buildings, you'll have several different choices in how to interact with the other races, and the element of randomness here is more than I've ever experienced before. If nothing else this part of the game will provide a great starting point for future RTS players, a brilliant creative outlet for those that have been waiting for it, and an ultimately fun experience for everyone else that can look past it's minor flaws.

To Infinity… and straight back to hell bitch.
Space is hard, really hard. I'm sure there are plenty of players out there that found it a breeze and finished the whole section in a few hours – but I'm getting the feeling that there are a whole lot more that didn't – and for the most part this really is a good thing because the first 4 stages of Spore aren't all that big. My first attempt at complete control of the galaxy ended in bitter demise, mostly because I was racing through the place trying to get to the end, and not really exploring and learning as much as I should have been. My second time however, was amazing.

You'll begin with an actual tutorial for this stage (not that it really helps all that much), most likely because of how much more in-depth it is compared to the rest of the game. After building your very own space shuttle you'll complete some basic movement controls, explore a few planets in your solar system, then enter the galaxy. Be careful, the first time you see it may cause you to faint, and if your room looks anything like mine that could be a dangerous situation. There are hundred and hundreds of start systems, all filled with an assortment of different planets, gas giants, moons, suns, black holes, worm holes and the like. It's a technological marvel and as you can probably tell, I'm pretty excited about it – so much so in fact that I've racked up a total of 19 restraining orders so far screaming it into random strangers faces at the train station over the weekend.


You'll spend your time in space doing a great number of things, exploring new planets for precious artifacts, terraforming planets so theat they can sustain life, allying with or annihilating alien species, exploring the cosmos, setting up trade routes, purchasing star systems, buying and selling spices, or embarking on a journey to the centre of the universe (the universe in spore actually being a galaxy... but who gives a crap). The first time you zoom out into the galaxy is a lot like the first time a girl takes off her clothes in front of you, you knew this stuff was there but you've only just realised that you have no idea what to do with it. But also not unlike those first precious moments with a woman, careful exploration and time will see you mastering the situation, and before you know it your looking at houses and choosing the colour of the lounge room curtains.

You're still here?
I love this damn game. I love it so much that my addiction to it led to the discovery of a new medical condition (Medical Specialists are calling it 'OMGWTFINSOMNIA!'… it's a little rough on the eyes at first but it'll catch on). Believe it or not there is a plethora of other features that I haven't even begun to mention yet, like the Sporepedia that collects not only all of your own information but the information of all the other players of Spore that have uploaded it to the database. Meaning that in your subsequent play-throughs you'll not only be bumping into your own creations and those of all of the friends you enticed with promises of cake to come over to your house, then shoved them into your computer chair to watch them create creatures that you could ridicule and boast how much better your own were - but also those of other players around the globe.


Then there's the in-game video capture function, the individual access to the creature creators, and almost unlimited replayability. It's visually stunning with reasonably low system specs, the sound is superb and you can create your own, and it's hilarious all the way from the expressions on the cell sludge to the random gibberish muttered by the space aliens from the Silax System. But Spore, like everything, is not without it's flaws. It has limited depth in many of the stages, suffers a sever lack of direction (debateable as to whether it's a flaw but for point and purpose I'm putting it here), no auto-save feature, some strange and sometimes game-breaking bugs, and it doesnt really last that long without starting over. But if beauty is in the eye of the beholder then innovation probably is too, and whilst Spore might not have lived up to the expectations of some of the hard-core gamers it more than did for me.