Some lucky bastard over at Next-Gen.biz actually got their monkey hands on the playable bits of Spore, and lived to breathlessly relate the experience.

Early indications suggest that Spore's gameplay should live up to the hype - with the super-friendly yet powerful editors and the space phase offering particularly rich rewards.

The author had access to all the currently functional aspects of the game, such as the creature editor and life simulator, and the spacetravel endgame. He was not able to play the microorganism stage or the tribal stage, unfortunately.

Another interesting little tidbit:

It may not be there in the same form in the final game, but you could also hit a menu item and send your creature to Maxis' 3D printer, which automatically creates a model of it. It is likely that a model-making service (which will probably require payment) will be available when the game appears.

The information on this feature is limited to these few sentences, with no word on how big the models could be, or how detailed, or if color would be possible. But this sounds like the perfect geek addiction: verbatim models of your own in-game creations.

One thing that's been bugging me about all the screenshots I see is the ugly, chunky style of the creatures. I hope this is a user thing and not a gamewide, enforced aesthetic. Eliza gauger

Spore: Hands-On [NextGen, via Digg]

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