Spore

An epic Pufferyip gets taken down by a pack of GnuLomls!

Sometimes a game comes along that just so rocks, you have no idea what to do about it! Lately, I've discovered two of these awesome games--Spore and Fallout 3. I'll have a review on Fallout 3 soon, but this article will be devoted to Spore.

Spore is easily one of the most creative games to come out in the past 5 years. It has all the hallmarks of originality and freeform play. The concept is so simple! You start as a small cell and evolve your way up the food chain until you reach civilization and eventually space!

The game progresses pretty slow up until the space stage, but the Creature phase is the most fun until then. In the creature phase you get to develop your creature with limb parts you find and make friends with little ones out there. The best part is that Spore downloads creations from everyone who's playing the game, which means you end up with a massive library of available content! My creature, the Kixxie, was a very sociable creature and didn't do any fighting the whole way up the food chain.

The space phase is where things get super awesome! You can travel to planets and colonize them and there's an overarching theme that every player's game discovers--the Grox! The Grox are kinda like the Borg of the galaxy, yet much cuter. I'm having so much fun in the space phase right now, just flying to planets, exploring wormholes and finding all sorts of neat civilizations. Between trading spice, discovering lost artifacts, exploring and balancing all your alliances, this game has everything!