Spore--hunh!--What Is It Good For?

Well, not absolutely nothing.

I downloaded it yesterday and fiddled around for a bit. I finished the underwater stage, built my land dude, and haven't really played since. I enjoyed the cellular section well enough; the customization wasn't very deep or open-ended, and there wasn't a whole lot to do, but the whole thing took a small enough amount of time that the repetition never got irritating.

Basically, as everyone knows, a meteor hits the planet and deposits cells, one of which you control and customize. You swim through the water using the mouse, gathering food items and either avoiding or attacking other cells. Eating gives you experience points, and as you "level" you move closer to the surface of the water, encountering bigger and nastier cells as you go along.

I gave my species an appropriately silly name and set about swimming around. After eating enough food, I earned enough DNA currency to enter the cuztomization tool. The options are limited to expanding and contracting each of your cell's 7 or so segments (it's an oval by default) and purchasing items from a small menu, which grows as you discover body parts. I bought a spike for attacking other cells and an extra flagellum for increased movement speed.

As you go along, you find more cell parts and get more money. If you die to a hostile cell, you resurrect automatically; I couldn't detect any particular penalty for dying. Some of the pre-created fellow cells are pretty well designed, and overall the water feels pleasantly populated. After eating a bunch of little green food icons, I was invited to grow a pair of legs and strike out on land.

I liked the main designing tool, the one for the land creature, quite a lot. I didn't spend hours or anything on it, but I did take some time to fool around, and the tool is very intelligently designed (ahem). It's easy to select a part to change and then change what you want--size, position, orientation. Even with the very limited toolset that you start out with, it's hard to imagine a creature you couldn't make, or approximate.

I sort of wish the design of your cell had more of an impact on what the final product looked like: as it is, the land creature retains all the cell's accessories, but they can be deleted for a full DNA point refund, so it really doesn't matter what you do as a cell. You can even add a new type of mouth to switch between herbivore and carnivore. But it's a minor point, and from a gameplay experience it's actually nice to have a blank slate.

I ended up making a four-legged sloth-like thing (my reference point for what a sloth looks like being more or less Sid from Ice Age). It had a triangular head, and its leg arrangement kind of made it look lazy or chilled out. Loath to gimp myself, I felt obligated to add stealth equipment and a pair of attack-boosting spikes, as well as a proboscis, which is the omnivorous mouth option.

I spawned next to a campfire, with a convivial crowd of my fellow sloths welcoming me. This is the RPG section; the controls are WASD, and the camera angle is what you'd find in any MMO. All was bright and charming. I poked around for a bit and then quitted out.

Overall I can't complain about much. It obviously needs and merits a lot more exploration. So far I'm impressed, though not blown away.