Spore

Background

Have you wanted to control the cycle of life? Now you can. In Spore, you start out as a microrganism. You have to eat other organisms, and get bigger. After a while, you can choose the course of how you want to evolve. You can choose from being more humanlike, fishlike, or anything else. After growing and getting bigger, you can invade other planets, and explore new depths. Adapting to your environment and survival are keys to the game. Do you think you have what it takes to survive?

Gameplay

Remember the Sims? Yes, you once again have full control over something, but not just a household, try this: an entire UNIVERSE. Yes, you start out with a micro-organic population, and you must manage them into evovled species, and this is done through eating other blobs that are other organisms, once your creature is bigger, you are the jury. You decide how it's DNA is going to change, and through this is has new food sources and can reproduce further. This is how life starts, and through the game you're going to deal with many different species in many different worlds of the universe. Sounds gigantic, and it gets bigger when you learn that through online capabilities, other people can explore with their own creatures' mode of travel your worlds, and they can even affect it in different ways, eating organisms, given this, there is so much possibility.

Features

• Control Fate - Develop advanced civilizations and planets all from a drop of water. You also determine exticntion and evolution for your creatures, and lead them through time to become "modern".
  
• Maxis promises that other people can interact within any of your planets within the "Universe", you will get a report of them exploring your world, and how they have affected the local populations.
  
• The amount of customization is simply incredible. You can control anything about the animals, from appearance to abilities, food sources, because you can alter their DNA. Teach your favorite a new skill that will be passed down through evolution.
  
• Travel into space, underwater once your civilization is advanced enough, to see other planets that may be bumbling with life.

Editor's Note:

• The Spore Creature Creator was released prior to the main game itself, and reached number one on the NPD Group's PC software sales ranking chart for the week ending July 21st 2008.
• More than just a creator creator, gameplay in Spore is divided into phases including cellular evolution, creature interaction, tribe formation, and planetary and (eventually) galaxy colonization.
• Creatures inhabiting a given world can be the products of other players if you choose to utilize Spore's online networking. Different creatures will appear depending on their abilities in order to maintain "balance" in a planet's ecosystem.
• Maxis and Electronic Arts faced public outcry due to DRM (digital rights management) which limited not only the maximum number of times the game could be installed to PC, but also allowed only one player account to be created per copy of Spore. Maxis would eventually ease on the latter restriction, allowing up to five screen names supporting their own progress per player account.

Added on: June 16, 2005

International release dates:
Europe: Sep 5, 08
Japan: Sep 5, 08
Australia: Sep 1, 08

Official URL

Official Site