Spore [PC]

So you may be sitting there, wondering what you'll be able to do with the cute little creature that you've created using Spore's popular Creature Creator editor released two weeks ago. Since the tool was released, more than 1.3 million creatures have been created, and the full game isn't shipping till September. (Will Wright recently told an audience at the Apple Store in San Francisco that he originally hoped to have 100,000 user-made creatures in time for the game shipping.) Luckily, we had a chance to briefly play the civilization stage of Spore to see what some of the latter game is like.

During his appearance at the Apple Store, Wright explained that each stage of Spore plays like a different genre of game. In the beginning, you're in the cell stage, as you control a single-cellular organism as it swims around its watery environment in the struggle to eat, grow, and eventually evolve. Wright likened this style of gameplay to an old school arcade game. In fact, it's not unlike Pac-Man or the PS3 game Flow. Eventually, you'll evolve into the creature stage, where you're a terrestrial creature whose job it is to roam around the land and continue to grow and evolve. Wright likened this to a third-person action game.

Creature stage leads to tribal stage; it's not about physical evolution as it is about societal evolution, and this is sort of like a real-time strategy game. Tribal stage leads to civilization stage, which is a cross between SimCity and Civilization in a way (appropriate since SimCity IV designer Soren Johnson now works at Maxis). This is the stage that we got to play, but before we get there we'll note that civilization stage leads to the final stage in the game: space. Wright likened the space stage to being sort of like an MMO, even though Spore is a single-player game. Like an MMO, you have a single character (here, a spaceship) that flies around the galaxy doing whatever you want. You can terraform planets, mess around with primitive cultures, or even converse with other spacefaring civilizations and pursue missions that they give you. (Or, you can wage war with them.) Wright did assure the audience that there is an ultimate goal to the space game and Spore if you're interested in pursuing it, but he wouldn't mention what it is. He did hint that it does sort of tie into the beginning of the game. Spore opens with a comet crashing to a planet, and thus seeding it with bacteria. This is the concept of Panspermia, or the theory that life on Earth originated from outer space somehow.

But back to civilization stage, which plays out as a global strategy game. The planet is divided into provinces, with cities that can be razed or captured, along with territories that have spice nodes, which are the key resource in this stage. (This may be a tip of the hat to Dune, only without the giant sand worms.)

You start with a single city and a single vehicle, which you can design in the vehicle editor or download from the entire universe of Spore content, both Maxis and user made. (We will note that while you don't need a 30-inch LCD to play the game, having one is very nice to have when using the in-game content browser, because dozens of objects from the catalog fill the screen at once).

The strategy in civilization mode is to build vehicles to capture spice nodes, which gives you money to upgrade your city and build more vehicles. Each city has a limited number of build nodes, so what you decide to place on each node determines what type of strategy to pursue. For instance, a factory would let you churn out more units faster. Taking over other cities can be done in different ways. There's the regular military conquest idea, where you build vehicles and aircraft and bulldoze the opposition. But there's also a spiritual method of conversion, which can be done by constructing special units that basically roll up outside a city and start blasting them with propaganda. In Spore's case, it's a giant holographic version of your creature.

If you had fun with the creature creator you're going to have more fun with the various editors in civilization stage. There's a building editor, which lets you create all sorts of buildings. (We swear that we saw some type of nun building.) The aircraft editor lets you also make everything from bi-planes, jet fighters, or something really unconventional (again, think flying nun.) And the vehicle editor is also as flexible. Sure, there are tanks and wheeled vehicles, but you're also free to go a different path (we didn't see a nun vehicle, but that doesn't mean it's not out there.)

And that was our brief look at the civilization stage. One of the cool things about Spore is that once you play through the game you can start a new one at any stage, so if you want to skip the cell and creature and tribal stages, you can do so. And this is only a fraction of the content in the game. Throughout the entire demonstration we were impressed at how everything ultimately ties together and how your actions help determine what type of creature and society that you ultimately build. It's quite a head trip, and we can't wait to learn more. Spore ships on September 7.

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