So you have likely been playing with the Spore Creature Creator for a few weeks now, either in its free version or the full $9.99 version. But how, you may ask, is the actual Spore game actually looking. Quite well, thank you. In fact it's a lot deeper experience than we first imagined.

At Electronic Arts' E3 meeting room we got to play with just one aspect of the full game of Spore, namely the beginning of the game where you evolve as a microscopic organism. As it turns out the game is more than just a series of mini-games linked by editors. It really looks and feels like you are controlling the evolution of one small creature into a massive space-faring civilization.
When you begin as a small microbe you have the choice of being a herbivore or a carnivore. Selecting one or the other influences how your character will evolve later in the game. Then you see a cut scene showing an asteroid hitting a planet. That asteroid has your microbe inside that manages to survive reentry and emerges in the alien ocean.

Playing as a herbivore, you swim around and eat the appropriate food to gain strength and level points (in this case, little green globs). You have to be careful to avoid being eaten by larger predators. As you eat more you get bigger and bigger and thus able to attack other smaller organisms. On occasion a body party might come unlocked while you are feeding.If you head over to that body part you can use it later in redesigning your microbe creature.

There's a mating call that you can use to attract other microbes of your kind so you can start mating. The mating results in bringing up the microbe editor where you can change the shape of your creature and put in any body parts that you may have collected while swimming. The more you evolve the bigger you grow and finally at the end of the microbe portion of the game you are about to emerge from the sea to begin the next stage.

You may be familiar with what comes next, you then evolve the land creature and then the move to civilization begins with building cites. Finally you get to go out into space in your own space ship to see how other creatures have evolved on their own planets. EA's Maxis studio plans to generate tons of their own content if you don't want to play online but if you do you can populate your fictional galaxy with a lot more creatures made by fans.

One of the more interesting things that EA Maxis just put into the game is a history chart /graph for each of your civilization's stages. For example you can see how your microbe creature became bigger, had its first kill of a smaller creature, what spare parts it picks up and more. Not only does it give you info on your choices but it's also a way to see if your creature will lean towards ultimately becoming a herbivore, a carnivore or an omnivore. Picking one of the three will allow you to have special abilities and stats that will not be available in the other two classes.

In fact if you don't want to really play the game portion of Spore, that's fine with Maxis. If you just want to use the various editors to make content for other players to use in Spore you can go to the Create selection where all of the editors will be unlocked (the editors in the game portion of Spore will unlock as you progress through the single player portion). The Spore Creature Creator editor is just one of five editors in the Creature editor sub-set. That's the Tribal creature editor, in fact. You can also play with the microbe editor and other editors including the space creatures maker. There are separate editors to make buildings, ground vehicles, air vehicles and spaceships as well.

Obviously playing the game for just a few minutes isn't enough to go through the entire single player experience but we finally get what makes Spore so addictive. The choices you get to make through both the editors and the decisions you make in the single player campaign are pretty much endless. Add the ability to download content from others and you have a title that almost limitless in its design. Look for Spore to finally emerge from the deep on September 7.