Wright then located the home world of an intelligent race and flew down to one of their cities. Brilliantly, the game uses player-created content to populate the universe with new life forms like these, connecting to a main server and downloading tiny packets of creatures, plants and cellular designs by other gamers.

By shooting out fireworks from the UFO, Wright impressed his new friends so much that they began to worship him. Of course, you can also launch attacks. Wright killed one creature by dropping it from a great height, triggering a defensive attack by the inhabitants and introducing us to another of your worries at the space phase - intergalactic diplomacy.

By assaulting this race, Wright angered their far more techno-equipped allies, and he was quickly bombarded by reports from his creature's home world, now under attack from his new enemies.

The sheer size of Spore's environment - from cellular ooze to starry universe - is overwhelming. But it's pleasing to see the ways the game works behind the scenes to improve the experience, from automatically animating your creature's movement to populating other worlds with player-designed life. We can't wait to play God for ourselves with our first hands-on play-test soon.