[Rod_Cloutier]

After a feeling of disappointment with 'peak oil', after supplies replenshied, demand relented, and prices fell. No longer able to follow the collapse of the oil dependant world on a daily basis, I felt the need for a replacement hobby.

I recently happened across a new video game called 'SPORE'. After playing this game for 3 months I now think this game ranks up there with classics like Pac-man, MULE, and space colony.

The Spore game begins with a micro organism hitching a ride on an interstellar comet to land on a enviroment ready planet ready to begin reproducing and evolving. The game player then has to guide the organism thru evolution from the single cell stage upward on the evolutionary ladder. The video game assumes that life does not evolve on it's own and as a consequence the game assumes the controversial notion of 'Integellent design'. The user earns points, and has to make choices; should the creature just eat plants, be an omnivore or a carnivore. As you progress thru the game you can add to and earn changes to advance the design and nature of your creature.

After you've reached a certain point your given the chance to evolve to being a land animal. Then the game proceeds on land. Eventually the creature becomes advanced enough to advance to a tribal stage. The tribal stage changes the way the game is played to something similar to the 'Civilization' games. The Tribal stage leads to the civilization stage, after the civilization stage the game proceeds to a space age stage.

The 'space stage' is where the fun starts. You embark on a series of choices, based partially on the course of evolution that you have directed at the lower evolutionary levels. Do you want to be a miltary conquerer, a religious zealot, or an economic baron?? Other choices exists as well such as being a collector of rare artifacts or just a wander randomly exploring the galaxy.

The space stage allows a player the real feeling of interstellar space travel. They have created literally thousands of possible star systems you can journey to; each star system with 0-12 planets makes for the feeling of the real vastness of interstellar space. Their is also a online feature where you can upload and download creations to the 'spore server', this allows the feeling of limitless possiblity and change. One person has created a creature that looks like 'Barack Obama' and its really odd because they all look the same.

The game is so vast there really is no way to win it. You can create, share and explore forever truly a masterpiece of conception and design. (Even if the real world doesn't really work that way!)

SPORE
ELECTRONIC ARTS 2008
WWW.SPORE.COM