(Guest post by Jaithas)

Many of us have been waiting over a year for Spore and at one point it seemed to be another Duke Nuk’em Forever (Never!) but it is here and this is the review. Spore is yet another product from the people who gave us “The Sims” but believe me when I say that Spore will not be a game that you just put down and never pick back up, and not even EA could screw this one up.

I never touched the “Creature Creator” but I had no problem playing this from the start, like “The Sims” the controls are simple and easy to use and they explain each evolutionary step as you take it. You can create any monstrosity you want and use it in the game and thanks to EA Online you can share them with friends, they could also be found inhabiting a planet on someone else’s game.

Don’t underestimate the enemy because the AI in Spore is nothing to laugh at. I won’t tell you how because it would be giving some of the gameplay away.

A lot of itemization has gone into this game, from building you empire to your various vehicles, if it’s yours then you can customize it how you please, that includes your creatures garments.

The combat system changes as you evolve, in early game it’s styled like the World of Warcraft battle system with different abilities that you can use, later on it becomes a “Command and Conquer/Starcraft” gameplay.

There are five stages to Spore and you will go through them all as you evolve from a single cell organism, growing legs and heading onto land, forming a tribe, civilization and the heading into space. Space exploration is where this game really opens up and takes a life of its own. Picking to be a carnivore or an herbivore and if you will be peaceful or a warlord will change the gameplay and what evolutionary parts you find.

Yes, there is an end to Spore…or is it a beginning? Well you need to find that out because I’m not telling. To discover the truth you need to head for the center of the Galaxy but that is no easy task considering the galaxy consist of over 500,000 planets.

The detail of each planet is amazing and no two are the same, but this does bring up a small issue of arriving to a planet and it still being wire mesh, this is really only a problem if you have a slow performing computer but this problem quickly fixes itself so it’s nothing to really worry about.

For the music lovers you are able to create some pieces of music for your city that you can loop, and with each city you can have a different tune.

This game truly has everything, yes that includes Pirates! I enjoyed every part of this game and I would give it a 10/10. This game isn’t short, I only completed it in a day because I speeded through it, but even a speed run will take well over ten hours to do.

Just a small warning, this game like many of EA’s games doesn’t include a autosave feature so save often you be like me and be set back two hours because of a crash.