More Spore Goodness!

It's only a few days after EA officially announced the release date of Spore and the Internet has literally exploded with a tonne of new information about the most anticipated game of the year.

First-up Kotaku gives us a video of a new look at the creature editor. More is revealed about the parts that make up a creature, what they do, and what's needed to gain the parts. Creation extends to air, land, and sea vehicles as well as buildings, accessories and UFO's (although the fauna creation option seems to have gone). Also shown off is one of the community aspects of the game - the content browser - called the Sporepedia. Here you can share your creations and download more with other Spore players. You can also comment on creations, track how many times yours has been downloaded, and limit content being added to game to buddies. Of note is the ability to record your creations and instantly upload a video of them to YouTube.This section also shows off some incredible creations, which confirms the amazing flexibility of the editor.

Next-up is 1UP's new preview of Spore, where it's revealed that players will be able to play any phase (Creature, Tribal, Civilization, and Space phases) straight out of the box. This does defeat the traditional format of progression in a game but highlights Spore's sandbox nature in which you make the game for yourself (much like The Sims). There's also an interesting video interview with Will Wright, part two of which will be coming our way soon (if you'd rather read than watch then Newsweek has another interview up with Will Wright, in which he explains the reason for such a long delay. Here's an interesting quote from Will: "If I took a building from my city, the program can look at other content that thematically matches that City Hall, and suggest that to me.").


Moving away from the PC IGN has a look at the Nintendo DS version of Spore. The game will be called Spore Creatures and while it will still retain some aspects of the creature editor it's a much linear product than its bigger brother. It's more of a adventure game in which you form relationships with other creatures, attack hostile creatures (using the stylus to slash) and explore the world for new body parts. The sharing aspect comes in the form of DS to DS. There's also a look at the mobile phone version of Spore. This is just the cell stage of the game but does include community aspects as you can register you creation online to battle against other players creations.

More Spore info:

Joystiq - '...we got too preoccupied gathering some fish and didn't leave any tribe members at home. While deserted, a large feral creature -- he reminded me of a monster from Where the Wild Things Are -- lumbered in to snack on our food stocks.'
- 'Spice is still the game's resource, but different planets harvest different colors of Spice. You can take advantage of these varieties with trade routes through the galaxy.'
- Also includes an incredible 81 new screenshots.

CVG - EA will release the creature creation editor a few months before the arrival of Spore (much like the body shop was released before The Sims 2).

Wired - "For any city, for any colony I make, a [musical] theme will be generated for it," he said." the music generator allows users to jump in and create their own themes by clicking and dragging musical notes. "I could put in the Star Wars theme if I wanted to," Wright said.

DS Fanboy - Europe will get Spore two days before the US release date (which is great for me!)

Gamespot - 'We chose to use a flying-saucer-shaped vessel as a template, and from there we altered the proportions, applied different colours and patterns, and adorned our creation with various cannons and lasers. Although there was no way that an advanced civilisation would be caught dead in such a monstrosity, it's clear that the tools will let players create pretty much anything they can imagine.'

There's your lot!

For Such A Small Guy He Sure Gets Everywhere!

Those of you who are readers of the great and wise Gnome will know that he occasionally rises from his lair - filled to the brim with retro goodness - to bring his enlightenment to the rest of the web (do you think I'm plugging him enough here?). While we all know him for the lair he also runs Gnomes Gaming on the Go, The SEGA Master System Junkyard and Retro Treasures along with the occasional guest post here and there. You'd have thought he'd have covered all bases there but, no, on he moves to conquer the Internet.

Along with Chris (The Artful Gamer) and Gary (From the Gutter) Gnome is now writing over at the recently launched Game Cabaret which, in Gnome's own words, explores the 'the sexy, dark, humorous and at times serious side of video gaming'. After breathing in that new blog smell check out wonderful posts on 'Repressed Homoeroticism in R-Type' and realism in games through the film Cabaret.

With the excellent posts over at all three of these bloggers blogs I'm sure it won't be long before Game Cabaret is pumping out constant quality. Your owe it to yourself to check it out.

Spore Release Date Finally Announced!

The Gods have finally seen fit to grace us with a Spore release date, leaving their masses of worshipers moaning in ecstasy (I should so write erotica). One of the Gods, of course, is the legend himself, Will Wright. From EA and Will comes the official release date of September 7th for PC, Mac, Nintendo DS and mobile phones (I wonder if every single version can make the same day).

"We're in our final stages of testing and polish with Spore," game designer Will Wright explained. "And the team at Maxis can't wait to see the cosmos of content created by the community later this year." - Gamespy.

The biggest game of the year? It better damn well be!

Spore Release Date Announced. - Gamespy.

New GTAIV Site Now Live!

Just a quick heads-up that the upcoming Grand Theft Auto IV now has it's own fully fledged flash-based site.

Flash-based annoyance aside there's a tonne of new images and a few videos showing off the new environment and it's characters. There's also a map of Liberty City (where you can click on points of interest) which is likely the final design.

It's good to see some new stuff and it only gets me even more excited for the game. Roll on April!

Welcome to Liberty City. - Rockstar (Via Kotaku)