Not Sporing at all!

Spore is the new simulation game being introduced by Maxis. This is how Wikipedia describes the game,

It allows a player to control the evolution of a species from its beginnings as a unicellular organism, through development as an intelligent and social creature, to interstellar exploration as a space faring culture. It has drawn wide attention for its massive scope, and its use of open-ended game play and procedural generation.

The full game hasn't been released yet, but the Creature Creator part of the game has and its pretty awesome. It allows you to create your own little creature, by adding different body parts and resizing them to what ever body you choose. This little trial of the game is limited on how many different parts and how much you can actually add to the creatures body, but it's still lots of fun. I'm hoping the full version will be as in depth as CoH character creator, which in my book is among the best out there.

The only controversial issue with this game, so far, is that you'll need online authorization to activate the game. I don't see a problem with this, there are already lots of popular games that use this system, such as Valve's Steam, which I find more intrusive. Besides the internet is pretty much everywhere and if they didn't require an internet connection, you would probably have to keep up with the disk to play. They will not be using the SecuROM's 10-day periodic re-authentication as originally thought. You can find more information here.

Once you create your creature, you can have it dance around, reproduce and do all kinds of interesting animation. There is also the option to take pictures of your creature or make a movie, which you can upload to the web. So far I've only taken a few pictures.



This is Boogie, my first attempted at a creature.



My second attempt wasn't that great, but it was still fun. You can also modify the body color, give it spots or stripes. Again, lots of fun.



There is an option to spawn three little babies that look just like it.

So far this game has me hooked. I could spend hours just creating creatures. lol It reminds me a lot of the original Black & White game, which I never finished but enjoyed a bunch. I like games that think outside the box and provide the gamer with something different. I can see this game being anything but boring.