Spore

Yet another hectic day at the E3 goes by. On top of several scheduled meetings, the presentation of Spore was on my agenda today. Spore is the latest endeavor of the legendary game designer Will Wright, known for creating classics such as Sim City and The Sims.

Nice scaly skin...

Earth is probably gonna look like that someday.

Right from the start, it was obvious that EA and Maxis are doing their best to offer something original and fresh in terms of gameplay. As you may or may not have heard by now, Spore allows players to create life forms in any way they wish. (I prefer the tried and true method of creation, if you get my drift. -Mo) Accordingly, you also get to witness your creature as it evolves through various stages of life. What's interesting is that you can design a particular organism from scratch. The demo that was on display (operated by Will himself) showed us, what seems to be, the main interface for the game, featuring six essential icons representing six diverse evolutionary phases - cellular, creature, tribal, city, global and space. The presentation involved a creature which was gradually altered via an intuitive editing system. You are allowed to adjust almost any imaginable feature, including color, height, limbs, etc. As you witness the miracle of evolution, more and more options for on-the-spot modification will be unlocked. The whole process looks pretty cool and it gives players an opportunity to come up will all sorts of different creatures just by using their imagination (Assuming they have one -Mo).

Once the creature hits the road, or in this case its home planet, we were able to watch it adapt to various living conditions. At first, the creature began to interact with other beings in the surrounding area. Aside from having to fight against various animals, our inexperienced little critter issued out a mating call (But nobody answered, right? - Vader). This portion of the game, pretty much lets you mess around with genetics and biological features.

The following segment of the demo took us through a somewhat different aspect of gameplay. We managed to discern an entire city, where you gain various technologies, eventually discovering space voyage and even creating your own spaceships (which may also be customized to suit your preferences).

Space travel brings yet another different style of play into the picture. At this stage, players are given a chance to travel across the galaxy and explore other planets and worlds. The camera then zoomed out to demonstrate the universe perspective. The universe is vast... to say the least. Believe it or not, there will be approximately 500,000 starts in the universe, each containing four unique planets just waiting to be discovered, colonized... or conquered by force if need be.

Initially, other civilizations may appear friendly when they see your spacecraft hovering above their dominion. On the other hand, you can seriously screw things up if you feel the need. For instance, you are able to fly over a city and beam up a few inhabitants and them drop them on the ground (Oops, *SPLAT*), at which point the city dwellers will get pissed and start firing at your ship (Honestly, why would they do such a thing? - Ed. Vader).

Like it so far? Well, I have to tell you, Spore does look promising and all, and according to the development team, there will be plenty of content and it will take many hours just to go though one of the segments of the game. Additionally, we were told that practically everything in the game can be altered via the intuitive editor. This will clearly make way for a completely open-ended gameplay, in addition to allowing gamers to generate creatures and colonize worlds in their own unique fashion.

Spore is, regrettably, scheduled to arrive during April 2007. Although, judging from what I've seen thus far, the game will certainly be worth the wait.

-- Uros '2Lions' Jojic