Spore, my impressions.

I wasn't all too sure what to think when I first heard of Spore, a Multi-Genre, Real Time Strategy / God-Game where I could control everything from my species looks and dietary habits to its behavior and fashion sense!
Would I decide to spread my view of Holy bliss and convert some heathens? Attempt to buy-out my neighbors using my economic might? Or simply crush all those who stand in my way as I rampage through the galaxy using Military force?

That's the first thing that hits you with Spore, there really is a hell of a lot of choice involved. I think I've spent more time creating creatures to see what my imagination can come up with than actually progressing through the game.
For those who don't know anything about Spore, I'll give you a brief rundown and chip in with my views throughout as I explore about Will Wright's latest creation.

The game basically boils down to your journey through evolution and the way in which you choose to do it, all the way from a squishy little organism in a tide pool up to galactic domination. Don't worry though; it won't really take you billions of years to complete!

As you've probably guessed, you start off as a lowly microbe, simply swimming about without a care in the world, after all, what's there to worry about when all you have to do is eat and mate?
Eventually with all that eating and mating you'll grow yourself some legs and your journey into the big bad world of dry land will begin; this is where the fun begins!
Now you can really start to customize your species past the basic microbe format of "blob with eye" and "blob with eye and pointy bit."

You can change the length and curvature of your spine, the size of your body.
Legs and arms will become available along with some various appendages and a few kinds of head depending on whether you're an omnivore, herbivore or carnivore.
Life is good, the sun is shining, you have your nest and fellow members of your species are happily wandering around doing their thing, but it falls to you to explore and introduce yourself to the aliens-next-door. Whilst you're exploring and discovering fellow species, you will be able to forage for extra evolutionary options such as different kinds of feet for faster running, or more powerful weapons in the form of natural spikes and horns.
This is the first real stage where your choices start to dictate your future; you can either win over the creatures you meet by interacting with them in a charismatic display of song and dance, on the other hand, you can start a fight and show them whose boss!
After a while, you will have made a number of friends / enemies depending on your play style and because you're species is so great, you will have migrated once or twice to larger nests. Not long after, you will become so clever and have evolved so much that you will set up your very own Tribe!

This stage in my view is a bit of a stop-gap, you've figured out the aim of the game and have probably decided how you want to play in order to achieve your goals, this stage really just continues what you've already been doing, just on a slightly bigger scale.
You now have a small tribe, of which you are the leader. You can assign your tribes people to do various things such as fish or forage for food, you can get them to learn musical instruments to impress other tribes with, or alternatively tell them to take up arms and grab a spear, march them over to the closest camp and start jabbing at them.
Customization wise, you can now select clothing for your race, you don't want to be walking around all nude… do you? It's a bit limited, but the basics are there for what a tribal society would likely wear. Hats and masks, pouches for carrying food, grass skirts and rudimentary armor.

In the same theme as the previous stage you have to find food, interact with other species and decide whether you want to befriend or conquer them.
I must say I did like the Gift Giving ceremonies; it's a nice little touch that makes you appreciate some of the details and thought put into the game.
After you have converted the surrounding villages through your chosen methods, you will once more evolve into the Civilization stage where you can now design and create your own buildings, land vehicles, boats and later air-craft; I loved this bit because there really is an almost limitless possibility to the things you can create.
It's very easy to get to grips with too, just a simple drag n drop interface, easy as pie!

So now you have a civilization, you have a town hall, houses, somewhere for your people to work and be entertained. You still have neighbors, but they're all your own species and you have to decide how best to go about dealing with their alternate views.
You have 3 options, befriend them using gifts and trade, then buy them out.
Show them the error of their ways and convert them through religious means, or, yep, you guessed it… go to war and wipe them off the face of your planet!
Anyway, once you've done that, you can move onto the final stage of the game, your journey into space and explore what the universe has to offer, and then conquer it!
Sound familiar?

Unfortunately, this is where Spore falls down; you end up getting a very similar feel from each stage of the game, everything just becomes very repetitive.
I can still have fun with it, but only to go back and mess around making some sort of creature or attempting to recreate things I've seen in other games / films, I'm struggling to create my very own Predator at the moment!

Maybe it's just me; I suppose I'm just not enough inclined to reap my world view over everybody who thinks differently. Yeah it was fun, but I struggle to find much re-playability.
Don't get me wrong, the creative aspect of Spore is great, there's a lot of potential with that, but the actual story line and progression through the game simply didn't do it for me.