Tobold's Blog Tuesday, September 09, 2008 Spore Review  Spore is
the best 4X space game (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and
eXterminate) since the original Master of Orion. It revives that
flagging genre by making it easily accessible, real-time, with
intuitive controls, removing the micromanagement, and making it
very, very personal. Instead of your various fleets battling the
AI's various fleets, your only control one space ship, followed
by a few allies. You still beat the AI's various fleets, because
your ship is more powerful, and just like a MMO avatar simply
resurrects when destroyed. In Spore your space ship is *you*,
whatever you do, wherever you want to do it, you first need to
fly your space ship there. Oh, and Spore also comes with 4 mini-
games for children before that space phase, covering the cell,
creature, tribe, and civilization stages. But those stages are
simplistic, easy, and short, and ultimately without
consequences.  The game starts with the cell stage, where you
steer an amoeba through an s