After much anticipation by the gaming community, Spore has finally been released. It is the culmination of Will Wright's brain child and the metaphorical basket in which Maxis has placed nearly all their eggs. Once just an idea in Wright's mind, this concept has grown legs and is poised to sell millions of copies.

The player emerges into existence amid the primordial soup. Your only goal is to float around eating things smaller than you while avoiding bigger creatures. Eating increases your size and gives you points to put towards evolutionary changes. Along the way you'll discover new parts for your creature that help your speed, defense, or mobility. It really is that easy, and I found the game's controls to be incredibly simple.

I didn't find the RTS element compelling. It seems to be the most out of place, but it is at that point that the design aspect becomes hugely involved. By then you are designing ships, tanks, planes, buildings, and outfits. I think that the editor is going to make a big difference on people's game play experiences. The more you involve yourself with the design of the world, the more you're likely to get out of the experience.

I was excited to see what the creature creator could do early on. I enjoyed it during my first play-through. I got into looking at and designing my creatures world like I never did with a game like The Sims. The tools in the creator are simple: part selection and transformation, layered patterns, and color templates. You can use these simple tools to make a creature of almost any shape, size, color, or sexual orientation. I've already seen some real gay looking characters, but my idea of gay might just be someone else's idea of cute.

I was skeptical at first about how well the design component would be integrated with gameplay features. I thought it might throw me off if I saw something that didn't belong in the planet. I haven't seen a lot of badly designed creatures, which was my real worry. Despite the occasional lame or offensive user generated content, Maxis did give the users a real opportunity to create a unique experience by being creative. And no matter how absurd, the creatures still seem to belong in the world.

People without top shelf PCs like myself will probably be relieved at how well the game plays. Often the most frustrating thing about playing PC games for me is getting them playable in the first place. I had no such problems with Spore. In fact the game didn't stutter at all until I got to the space stage, which does have some irritating load times when traveling between planets.

The game, while being a little schizophrenic, still easily guides the player through with charming gameplay (characteristic of Maxis) and well paced stepping stones. Perhaps it is a bit of an amalgum of previous games, but I really like a lot of those games. I always thought that they should have made EVO for the SNES over again, and Spore is that and a lot more.

Admittedly Spore is not going to be for everyone. This game probably won't appeal to people who are more attuned to hardcore gaming and competitive play. Spore exercises a different gaming muscle. With the abundance of assholes and dooshebags trying to ruin every game known to man, playing a game designed without traditional multi-player interaction is at least a fascinating experiment.

The more I played it the more it made me remember why games like SimCity are so accessible and fun. With most games casting you as the biggest, baddest soldier/murderer of all time, playing a game as the galaxies creative force sticks to Maxis' traditional motif of create/wait/manipulate. Maxis has delivered what their audience expected; a unique environment with enough control to put your own signature on the experience.