
In fact, to get the most out of the game, you should be online whenever you play. In Spore, community and gameplay come together in a fresh and user-friendly manner. And you can do this from within the game proper using an online database called the Sporepedia. It's actually a lot of fun to sift through others' creations, if only to marvel at the remarkable amount of imagination on display. Even better, you can utilize Spore's extensive community tools, inserting other players' innovations into your own game in progress. You will need to put some creative energy into Spore, but if you aren't the artistic type or don't find the building- and vehicle-creation tools as interesting as those for your creature, you can use premade designs that ship with the game. Yet even if your onscreen buddy is a three-armed ogre with scales running up his belly, you'll be spending some time getting to know him in the first few hours of gameplay, and you'll probably develop some affection for him in spite of his hideousness. You don't need to be a budding Pablo Picasso to make an interesting creature, however just slapping a bunch of random parts together can result in a truly hysterical beast.

Each part of your creation can be turned, resized, and twisted, so whether you wish to re-create a favorite cartoon character or develop an original concept, you'll probably find what you need in here. The creatures are the true stars though, and you can mix and match legs, arms, mouths, wings, and lots of other parts into a beautiful work of art-or a hideous monstrosity. At various stages, you'll construct, for example, town halls, land vehicles sporting cannons, and aircraft that spout religious propaganda. If you've played the separate Creature Creator, released earlier this year, you're only seeing a small piece of the puzzle. Spore's greatest asset, by far, is its intuitive set of creation tools.

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