But more importantly, how will Takuma Nuva rate it?

Come, sentient meatbags, and join me for an in-depth review of one of the two hottest games of 2008 (the other being The Force Unleashed): Spore.

1. What is Spore?

Will Wright, co-founder of Maxis, is the video game designer who brought Spore to life. He is responsible in no small part for the numerous "Sims" games that many people enjoy (though I am not one of said people ). After he finished developing one of the Sims games/expansion packs (don't remember which one), somebody asked Will, "What will you make now?" to which he replied that he wanted to make a Sims "Everything Else".

He wasn't kidding.

Another quote of his that I shall attempt to paraphrase: "There seems to be this unwritten rule that you don't combine more than genre in a single video game and it's a rule I've always wanted to break." And many are glad he did. From real-time strategy to old arcade-style to several others in between, Spore has more flavors for the gamer than a can Dr. Pepper. Because of this, Spore doesn't fall into any specific game category and has been "nicknamed" a Multi-Genre Massively Single-player Online Game.

In Spore, you start with a single-cell organism along the path of "creatiolutionism". The word is meant to be a cross between "creation" and "evolution". This word actually describes the game quite well, because though the basic "plot" follows your creature transitioning (is that a word?) into a land creature which eventually gains sentience and becomes an intelligent that later on will form an entire civilization dominating the planet, (gasps for breath) you create just about everything along the way. What will the creature look like? Will it be a carnivore? Herbivore? Omnivore? Will you allie with other creatures or hunt them into extinction? Will camoflage parts or large jaws help you survive? What would a war ship look like in such a civilization? Will you unite the planet through the power of money, words, or cannon shot to the face? Flying saucer, rocket ship, or interglactic Wii-mote? YOU decide it all.

With a game such as this, it would be impossible to review the whole thing without splitting up each section of the game into different parts. So, let's start at the beginning...

3. Part One: The Cell Stage

The Cell Stage, the first part of the game, is more fun than I ever thought it would be. When you start the game you pick one of several available planets in the universe, choose whether you will start as a carnivore or an herbivore, and then are launched straight into the opening sequence. You see an asteroid zooming towards the planet you choose upon which it lands in the ocean and is dashed to pieces. But wait! What's this? A small single-celled organism with big eyes, a single flagellum, and a mouth emerges!

This stage is very much like a cross between Pac Man and Centipede (or Milipede or Snake or whatever the heck you call the game wear you eat the dots and your thing grows longer so that eventually you crash into yourself and lose). As you've only just started the game you will see one of two things floating around you. If you chose to be an herbivore, you will see tiny plant bits for you to gobble. If you're a carnivore, you'll see little bites of meat that remind me of a red half-eaten Gob Stopper.

Hold on a second! What happened to the omnivore!?

Shut up, I'm getting there.

Now, as you swim about the endless ocean in any direction, gobbling up whatever you lead your creature to, something is bound to happen. You're bound to get bigger. Eventually, you'll get big enough to move up to the next "level" and you'll see that you're very much not alone in the ocean. All around you'll see other cells, some bigger, some smaller, all of them hungry. Of course, if you chose to be a carnivore this means a new food source! You can lead your little guy right up to them and bite at them till they turn belly-up. If you're an herbivore, you'll have to keep searching for plants and avoiding predators. If you're lucky, you might find a whole string of plant bits connected to a single weed . . . thingy. As you move through the game, eating nets you DNA points. At a certain point early in the stage, you will be shown how to find your "mate". It's as simple as clicking a button and following the sound ripples a short distance until you find another cell that looks exactly like you.

Then comes the first annoying part of the game. MATING.

The two cells have a bunch of hearts dance around them and they make happy sounds as the twirl and spin. At this point, whichever cell YOU were controlling lays an egg. And I don't mean in a metaphorical sense either. However, this is where you get your first glimpse of the creativity feature that will stay with you through the whole game.

You will immediatley be taken to the "Cell Editor". Here, you can make your cell to look however you like! You get to choose the color, design, shape, and can move, remove, or add any body parts that you have found so far (unlocked either by destroying certain creatures or finding sparkly bits of the meteor you arrived on). Since you're only a single-cell organism at the moment, the number of parts available for unlocking is quite limited (there are only twelve parts, if memory serves me), but rightly so. What can you do with your cell in the editor is amazing. You can make any section along the length of the cell wider or narrower. Want it to look like a pear-shape? Done. How about a coke bottle? You can do that too. Then you get to pick the body parts, and this is where those precious DNA points come in. You use these points as the currency with which you buy new body parts. When you start out, you're automatically given six parts: Three different eye styles, flagella, an herbivore mouth, and a carnivore mouth. Which parts you choose will decide how your cell performs. You can also unlock weapons such as a spike to ram your opponents with, or a jet to make your cell move much faster. Or, if you prefer, you can place it on the back to be sure that anyone who tries to nip at you as you run away gets a nasty poke in the mouth. The editors allow you to make nearly anything you can imagine all why keeping it simple enough for anyone to use. when you place a part on either the left or right side, a matching part will be positioned in the exact same position on the other side. Or, you can place it right along the center line and a single instance of the part will show up in the middle. Very handy for creating three-eyed creatures. This part of the game is also the first chance you get to make yourself . . . an OMNIVORE. How? Think about it. You have a carnivorous mouth. You have an herbivorous mouth. Why not use BOTH? I mean, really, who wouldn't want a creature with three mouths?! Especially if make two of them the carnivorous jaws for biting! Later on, however, if you keep searching you will be able to the find awesomely cool OMNIVOROUS MOUTH. This mouth will allow you to eat plants and meat alike from a single straw-like mouth. Here, though, I must mention something. When I first tried my hand at using this mouth, I had no trouble shlucking up the plant bits. But no matter how many times I tried, I couldn't eat the meat floating around. Then I figured out why this was... You CAN'T eat meat that's just floating around! There's a reason why that mouth resmbles a needle so much. You can just waltz up to another creature and, quite literally, SUCK THE LIFE OUT OF THEM! Muahahahahaha!!!! Although, if you choose a creature that's covered in spikes it's not going to turn out so well...

Anyways, after you've going through the process of choosing what parts you want and where they go, you get to color your cell! Throughout the game, there will be up to four different ways to color your creations. The first, and easily simplist option, is the simple color scheme wear you're shown a pallate of instant color schemes to choose from. Second, there's the "layer" option where your creation will have three different layers available for coloring: a base layer and two detail layers (Example: A creature that is mostly red but with a layer of blue stripes and a layer of a green belly). There are many different designs available for the detail layers from stripes to spots to kneecaps to upper-limbs. The third coloring option is the "color like" option. Let's say you see another creature with an awesome color scheme and you think "Wow, that would be a cool color scheme for my creature!" Instead of going to the creator and trying to figure out exactly what color of which layers and what styles that creature was, you can click a button, look up the creature in your "Sporepedia" (more on that later), and whammo, the computer will automatically apply the colors and styles that were used on the creature you saw! Another name for this coloring option is the "lazy" or "rip-off scheme". Finally, the fourth and last option is only available for buildings and vehicles. It's very simple and really requires no description. It's the generic "paintbucket" style that you see in any image program.

Anyways, now that you've customized your cell to your liking, you may enter the ocean again! Since what you've essentially just done is design a whole new creature, this is considered the next "generation" of the creature and your brand-spanking new creature will hatch from the egg and allow you to continue munching your way up in the world. You may return to the editor to fine-tune your creatue any time you wish by hitting the "mating call" button and going through the whole ridiculous mating process again. Trust me, you're going to want to do this as sparingly as you can. As you go on, it's also more likely for you to see other creatures of the same species as you wandering the ocean!

Eventually, as you get bigger and bigger, you'll pass by those enemies who you once thought were so large and intimidating and eventually they won't even be large enough to make a decent snack for you. But remember the wise words of Qui-Gon Jinn: "There's always a bigger fish". At the end of the stage, when you've fought and eaten your way enough to fill your progress bar, you will no longer be just a single-cell organism. You will become a thriving creature and achieve the ultimate goal . . . you will get . . . . . . . a BRAIN! YES! YOU WILL HAVE WHAT MOST HAVE ONLY DREAMED OF! THE EVER-POWERFUL GREY (or "gray" if that's your preference) MATTER! At this point, you can continue wandering the ocean, maybe searching for those last parts you never unlocked, or just having fun bullying the little guys. Whenever you're ready though, you can click on the "advance to next stage" button. At this point, you're ready for the next big step of "creatiolutionism". You can evolve legs and make your transition to a walking, air-breathing, land lubber! Also, you get to view your "consequences". Depending on how you play each stage of the game, it will determine what abilities and strengths you will have in the stages yet to come. Regardless of what mouth(s) you have, if you eat mostly meat throughout the stage, you'll be considered a carnivore. If you eat mostly plants, you're an herbivore. But if you manage to maintain a decent balance between the two, you're an omnivore. What path you take will have ramifications in the future...

*looks back to check current length of review*

...And juding by the length of the review already, I think it would be best to do this all in seperate parts. So, the next few stages will have to wait until next time. Rest assured, I'll find a way to make them a bit less . . . . long-winded.

4. Cell Stage Final Notes

While, all-in-all, the Cell Stage sounds relatively simple (you go around and eat stuff to grow bigger while avoiding predators), it's actually great fun! It has the simplicity of an arcade-style game that would almost make this first stage a whole game in itself, if you look at it from a certain perspective. Unfortunately, this is not the case with all stages of the game. But we'll cover all that, including such subjects as price, normal vs. galactic edition, and other such 'cetera in the next part(s) of the review.

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