Finally got a chance to play around with Spore tonight. Someone I know used to joke saying, "Spore is going to be an awesome game, when it launches in 2012". Sometimes it even felt like this was the truth. Luckily for us this is not the case and we are a little closer with the Spore Creature Creator. While this is only the first piece of the massive simulator, it gives us a great feel for what the expect.
I created the below creature appropriately named "Heady". Check him out followed by some of my initial feedback.
Insanely intuitive: A common problem with 3D content creation is simply getting started. With Spore the entry bar is very low, the whole process smooth and easy. There is just enough "auto-snap" without losing any freedom for creativity.
Machinima: Capturing video content is incredibility easy. The software has a simple and great incorporation of YouTube. Capture your video and send it right up to YouTube, all from within the app.
A Wii Moment: Watch someone use a Nintendo Wii for the first time, this is the Wii moment. It's the very real smile someone gets from a virtual experience. Using Spore yields several of these moments as you tweak and customize your character. The music and sound effect composition will easily have you grinning back at your monitor.
Social Spore: There is a profile based community piece to the game as well. It's a little scarce now, hopefully it's due for expansion in the future. Virtual Worlds and MMOs have a poor history of integration between web and the medium itself. Let's hope they come up with something innovative here as well.
