Do you remember Playdoh, and Legos? Having the ability to create whatever you wanted with no consequence? Take that and throw it into an open ended editor, and you've got yourself the Spore Creature Creator.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves; the opening weeks of the Creator's launch sparked huge controversy and lead to the insane creation of Sporn- (when immature people are given a tool to make ANYTHING they want). And many of the creations lacked innovation, just a part here or there, throw on a pair of legs, and you were done.
Then came the sorting; how do you allow millions of users the ability to seamlessly tranisition gigantic lists of user generated content? The design team behind Spore solved this problem quite creatively, and in doing so, set forth an unprecedented level of storable content.
Each Spore creature is made via algorithms, rather than raw animation. So only kilobytes of data can make an entire creature animate realistically. Put a part here, and the creature moves this way because you put a screwdriver on its head. Constant tweaking leads to some truly beautiful concoctions, and only the best get the coveted "feature" spot on the main website.
And the Creature Creator doesn't just have a few things to meddle with, either; between hundreds of parts and nearly infinite customization options, you'll create a radically different beasty every time you start up the game.
EA's choice to release this before the actual game came out has turned out to be an overwhelmingly successful decision. After only several weeks, the Spore Creature count was higher than the amount of species on Earth, and is set to double soon.
Through my own trials with it, I find it a stimulating way to artistically express oneself, whilst still keeping it more fun than actual work. Let's just hope that the rest of Spore's editors are as well done as the Creature Creator.
Final score- 9.0/10
