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!

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)