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Well it’s taken a while but finally Spore gets it’s release. Only now is it really being seen for ‘The Sims for boys’ but Spore also has a lot of hype and promises of depth behind it as you take your custom creature from single cell organism to a space adventuring community. Can Will Wright prove his genius again and make another classic for his portfolio?

You’ll open up Spore in the cell stage which is incredibly similar to the Playstation Network title fl0w. It’s here where you will set the president for rest of the game. Important decisions like herbivore or carnivore and you’ll lay down the initial groundwork on your creatures appearance. After a while you’ll start to gain certain upgrades to add to your cell that will help you devour more and more food. Once you’ve eaten enough food or even other cells you’ll hop on up to the next stage.

The creature stage is, premise wise, quite similar to the cell stage apart from the fact that your now on land with more limbs and parts. You’ll encounter loads of other creatures that are clustered around in different areas of the world. You can then go make friends or enemies with any of the locals and you’ll also learn to work as a unit instead of the lone creature route that you have previously been forced into. In this stage you’ll encounter the odd giant creature which is pretty much what it says on the tin and you should do well to avoid these.

Once you’ve devoured enough you can move on to the Tribal stage which plays a lot like your regular RTS. Here you get to segment your creatures in different categories and classes. You’ll come across five other surviving organisms and you can choose to befriend or destroy. Once you’ve gone down a route with each one you’ll be able to move on to the penultimate stage.

Civilization stage is a more advanced version of the Tribal stage but with a lot more city building, although it’s nothing like SimCity.  Your camps become cities and your creatures become modernized. Also the decisions you made earlier in the game really changes your overall goal for example if you picked a herbivore you’ll be more religious. Again once you’ve allied or invaded other civilizations you’ll move onto the fifth and final stage.

The Space stage is the only stage in the game that truly seems original but it provides no real end to the game. There are thousands upon thousands of planets to conquer and explore and although there is a secret final planet you can stumble upon this isn’t really an important aim. There are loads of clever ideas here and you’ll want to explore the whole galaxy just to see how far you can get as eventually it does end.

During the game you can look back at your timeline which will record every action and event throughout your whole journey. It’s really quite incredible looking at your original blob-like thing to the final result through to the final space stage. It provides you with a sense of achievement and showcases the whole game as an epic journey while at the same time being relevant.

During each stage you’ll also get access to more and more creative design tools. At first you only get to create your creatures look but soon you’ll get to design buildings, vehicles and space crafts. This is an incredible tool that also allows you to share your creations online through the sporepedia. You can then subscribe to people’s creations and put them into your game. If you don’t feel like going in depth with all that the game will, by default, randomly put user created content into your game. If you play through the game time after time you’ll always be facing different creatures created by other players. It might not have too much of an overall bearing on the game but it’s incredibly smart and interesting.

If Spore was kept a secret then it would be hard to critisize but because we all heard how advanced the game would be compared to the final result it’s hard not to be slightly disappointed. You get way too much control over your creatures look instead of it being a natural evolution. The game also seems slightly dumbed down for a wider audience instead of being this hardcore only experience it was being primed for.

Despite this if you take away the hype and just look at Spore for what it is, it’s hard not to be impressed. The game is constantly changing throughout all the stages and it’s tough nigh impossible to find another game like it. Spore might feel like a five average games in one but when they are pieced together with great online features, brilliant design editors and a mindblowingly extensive timeline view, then you’ve got a great experience. It might not be what it was made out to be but as a standalone title it is a brilliant game that should be tried by everyone.