... Or lack thereof.

So during Gamespots E3 stage demo for Spore it sounded like you basically use these creatures you download to populate your planet. But it doesn't sound like there's any way of co-operating or interacting with the creatures or civilizations of your friends other than downloading their creature, at which point they become AI controlled. That's cool and all, but what's the point when you can't be invited to explore a friends planet or play together at the same time?

Kind of surprised there's no real multiplayer mode, after they've gone through such huge lengths on focusing on the community. So it's basically just a single-player game with mods. If you can't share the experience - in the sense of invading friends with your epic space-age creatures, taking over people controlled or AI controlled planets together with friends, or maybe just hang back and build stuff together - then it just feels like such a waste after all this massive support from the community.

Starts of with some classic "history of sony". Not much sales talk, which is understandable.

Kicks of with Resistance 2. Amazing trailer. Controls look clunky. A PC would probably do that game more justice. The intense action sequence just looks wrong with such slow movement.

Enter the sales talk. With a twist! Enter: LittleBigPlanet. Great non-boring way of talking about numbers. Thanks, Sony.

Tons more games shown. Don't remember a single one they showed, but I do remember they said something about over 100 new titles comming for the PLAYSTATION 2 alone. Yes, indeed, PS2. Radness. No new Crash Bandicoot, although he was mentioned.

Crazy gran turismo video/TV addon shown. Some kind of TV chanel of sorts. No real GT5 announced.

Similar to Xbox Live, Playstation Network will feature buyable and rentable Movies - launching tonight (Hey, that's soon.).

Some Home stuff shown. The dude in purple mohawk looks kick ass and all, but Home looks pretty much the same. How will these areas work? Will we be able to take stuff from games and put into our Homes? How about some game themes for our houses? Stuff like being able to make your house look like some trashed building from Resistance 2. Need more information. I want a Sack-boy pet for my PS3 Home. Trophys mentioned, but no news about the 3D trophys and trophy hall.

Some PSP talk. More games I just don't remember.

DC MMO announced for PC and PS3. That's exciting. The Marvel one was cancelled right? Too bad. Would love to see some crazy amalgam combination action between your high-level Marvel and DC characters. That would be so sweet.

God of War 3 trailer. Seems cool.

InFamous. Want to hear more about it.

MAG announced. 256 players, 8 player squads. Madness.

And we are done.
Wow, that was uhh, intense. Great conference with a mad amount of games. Best conference of E3 hands down.

Started of with the normal, boring, sales talk to be expected. DS apparently selling heaps.

New Animal Crossing. Seemed OK, but to me that game has always looked like a dumbed down Sims. This view hasn't changed much after this conference. I'm still confused about the game in terms of what you can actually do or what you're supposed to do. Seems to be pretty interactive outdoors, but what about indoors? Will all this wood chopping bring me monies for a new doovdé player? I don't see the point in harvesting, taking care of a farm or whatever you're doing in the game as from what it sounds like it doesn't give you anything? There's no reward for doing these things? Like, you won't loot any new Rake (+4 against grain), get a sweet statue of your character in town, have the ability to sabotage neighbour farms for an upcomming "grow the biggest pumpkin"-competition or co-operate online or in-house with friends. Well, at least you could use your Mii so that's got to be worth something. But what do I know. Someone's probably reading this going: "Dude, farming is it's own reward"...

New Pokemon... Never been a fan.

Motion sensor upgrade. Don't know, looks like something that should have been part of and that I (as a non Wii owner) thought was already part of the system. You mean the controller as it is right now ISN'T that sensitive? Apparently games don't actually follow your hand gestures, you just make a random motion that's tied to something else in the game. With this new device it tracks your movements perfectly, or so it seems.

Balance board. Being used in other games, good news. First up: snowboarding. And also:

Wii Music. Miyamoto playing the sax with the wii-mote. No blowing into microphones though. 50 instruments announced. Game has potential, but it seems to be less of a simulator & learning game and more of a "hey look guys I'm standing around making random gestures/pressing random buttons and the game plays the right notes for me". Like having a guitar hero that would hit all the notes regardless of what button you actually pushed. If this game gets a free- s t y l e mode I'll be all over it. At least it has some kind of drum learning stuff, and the drumplay actually looked pretty cool.

New WiiSports. Looks rad, some sweet sword duelling. Has a frisbee mini-game. Throw frisbee to dog. No information about if this game is compatible with Nintendogs or not. Would be a shame if it wasn't.

New Guitar Hero for DS. Didn't see the point in the first one (wasn't even aware that there was one) and still don't see any point in the game. Stylus Hero - not for me. The whole point of the game is to rock out with a guitar. Whatever.

More DS stuff. GTA 4 sounded interesting. Will it be 2D like the old ones? Who knows.

And that's... Pretty much it. Overall pretty dissapointing. No Kid Icarus, no exclusive Wii-developed Zelda game. No nothing, really.

As of writing, there are well over 600 000 spore creatures uploaded to the sporepedia. And, looking past all the creatures made to resemble human reproductive organs, it contains a huge amount of unique and amazing creatures. However, there's also a good amount of sporified versions of well-known characters such as Sonic.

Remember toys? I do. When I was a kid I used to play with them - and I'm sure you did the same. While doing so, I was one of those kids who didn't care about being out of lore. If I wanted Batman to fight the Turtles, that's exactly what I did. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that Spore is a game that calls out to my long lost inner child.

Whether you're looking for the two-headed cow from Fallout, Blinky from The Simpsons, Gizmo and Mohawk from Gremlins or Pikachū from Pokémon - You can be sure to find all you're looking for in the sporepedia. Although I'm quite surprised there's no Nine-Tailed Demon Fox yet.

Kidding. Of course there is! Making skins or models by taking the character likeness of someone elses work isn't unheard of in the gaming and modding world - it is something that happens every time you make a game that allows for user generated content. And, I would assume most companys see it as nothing but free advertising. Sometimes people have demanded the creators of such mods to take it down from the internets, if the model is a pure rip from another game and someone elses work. Which makes me think about Spore.

In spore, all such content is made by the users. Which basically means you can't import stuff directly from a game like Super Mario, but with some work you can make a creature that resembles a Koopa Troopa. In a way it's like making fan-art, and the use of characters is purley for non-profit reasons. But what about the developers? If someone goes out and buys their game just because users have made tons and tons of pokémons for the game, doesn't that let said developers profit on other peoples intellectual property?

For the kids in the sandbox who scream that you can't have the The Joker fight Sonic, they have a Block Creature button in-game. Which is cool, because I can totally understand why some people DON'T want Naruto or the Gremlins in their game of Spore. I do, and from the looks of it, lots of us do. But what about the big companys? With all this freedom of creating spoofs and homages to pretty much everything you can think of, is someone bound to yell objection?



For some reason, I can just hear that law suit comming around the corner to trash our sandbox. And would they be wrong to do so? I honestly don't know. What do you think?

So that's pretty awesome. Because by default, tunes from the 80's make everything better. Personally though I would have gone for something other than Dominion / Mother Russia. But I guess it kind of fits.