The never-ending game

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Spore offers more than you can see in a lifetime

There’s still plenty left to do even if you accomplish this epic task, which is just one of many accomplishments you can complete with your creations. Spore’s Space Phase boggles the mind with its sheer vastness. “You technically could conquer every species in here, but it would probably take you several hundred years (in real-time) to do it,” said designer, Will Wright when asked about the size and scale of Spore’s Space Phase.

Despite all the talk about fusing genres and reinventing the god game, Spore’s most shiny feature continues to be its robust editor, which lets you build and design your own creatures, vehicles and buildings. After checking out the latest version of Spore’s editor, demonstrations like the one whereRobin Williams designed his own creatureappear to accurately represent how easy it is to design complex objects to populate the virtual worlds you create and rule.


Above: According to Will Wright, it would probably take you several hundred years (in real-time) to conquer every species in Spore

Creatures that look like the cast of South Park, animals shaped like alphabets with stripes and polka dots, and futuristic planes and tanks were all on display to show off not only the level of detail you have control over, but how accessible the editor is as well. But what’s the fun of taking the time to create your multi-eyeballed masterpiece if you can’t share it?

Spore has gone the way of the social networking site by letting you share and import content from other players. We don’t really see ourselves dirtying our neat galaxy with the half-baked creatures and vehicles submitted by the anonymous masses out there on the internet. But how much or how little you take advantage of the ability to share and import content is up to you. So if you change your mind and decide you want purge the buildings shaped like bongs and psychedelic mushrooms that your old college roommate sent in, you can do so whenever you want. We’re curious to see if publisher EA uses these new Spore-casts to promote their game post-launch with content from the development team and Will Wright himself. While they’re at it, maybe they should give Robin Williams another call?

We’re still a bit skeptical about how Spore could possibly live up to all its hype. But after seeing the latest build of the game, we doubt that anyone who has ever lost hours to games like The Sims, SimCity or Civilization will feel sorely dissapointed when the game releases on Sep 7, 2008 this year. In the meantime,click herefor the latest screenshots.

Feb 13, 2008