It was somewhere between ordering my army of blue-blooded Max Reebo soldiers to crush an enemy civilization, and conquering the galaxy from the comfort of a spaceship that resembled a four post bed, when I realized they had pulled it off. Spore is great.

My primary concern with the game was that there simply wouldn't be enough to do--that the goals or missions provided would be too boring or infrequent to offer much outside of the game's sandbox creation. Don't get me wrong, the missions are often simple--but they are not boring. While the civilization level of the game is not as fully featured as a real RTS, it is nevertheless fun to play, and comes alive when taken in the context of the game. The galactic stage is a combination of elements, all tied together with a few photon torpedoes and close encounters.

But rather than wax on for a few dozen paragraphs, I'll simply attempt to relate what I encountered while playing the latter half of Spore for a full Earth hour.

I only had a limited amount of time at the EA demo station, so I quickly bypassed my handlers' attempts to stick me with a developer who would walk me through the game. I figured, as a long-time PC gamer, that if the game was any good I could figure it out faster than someone could explain it. The handlers gave me a queer look, warned me that the galactic stage was difficult, but largely left me be.

I began the civilization stage by picking a pre-made creature from the Sporepedia--in this case the Max Reebo species, fashioned after the blue-colored piano player from Star Wars, recreated perfectly in the game by some anonymous creature artist. I then had a choice to make my Reebos into militaristic, religious or economic powerhouses. The thought of war-like Max Reebos was too much to resist.

You begin the civilization phase with a simple view of your circular city, a town hall marking the center of your empty metro area. From there you can place buildings on hard-point locations within the city walls. Houses increase the population, factories churn out money, entertainment centers keep the villagers happy, and turrets defend them--it's all fairly self explanatory.

Piecing together your own buildings is exceedingly easy, and more fun than I expected. The ease of use that Maxis has built into its creation tools can not be stressed enough; the fact that you can put together a structure that could pass for a professionally textured game asset, all in under ten seconds, is astounding. The control you have over the placement and size of each piece means that people will also be spending far longer tweaking their masterpieces.

And while assembling buildings is almost as fun as designing creatures, crafting RTS units is more fun than either. A full assortment of tank treads and mech legs were available for the land crawlers, with a huge list of laser blasters and miniguns to place and size. I quickly created a walker that looked like a Goliath from StarCraft, only rather than being driven by a Terran, a top hat-donning Max Reebo was behind the controls. Spore is great.

Units and buildings can be redesigned at any time, allowing you to instantly change the look of your forces. I produced a few Goliaths, using the cash-flow from my factories, and assembled them on the field of battle. After changing my structures to look a bit more Orwellian, I set myself to burning down the world.

The goal of the Civ stage is to dominate enemy civilizations, either by buying their cities, influencing them, or crushing them old-school. Territory is marked on a mini-map just as in an RTS, colored lines marking boundaries and units and cities denoted with dots. The more cities you get, the further the stage progresses, a meter at the bottom keeping track of your civilization's progress.

At certain points your forces will progress in technology, moving on from seaborne to airborne forces, the final achievement being the construction of a spaceship, signifying the start of the galactic phase. Apparently Will Wright believes that a planet must be brought under unified control before we can move out and conquer the galaxy. Works for me.

With your units at the enemy gates, you have a few options. You can communicate with them, perhaps offering to buy the city out from under their feet, or form a lucrative trade route. You can give them a gift, improving intercontinental relations. Or, you can eradicate their defenses and capture the city for yourself.

After choosing the last option, an air raid siren immediately sounded off from behind the city walls. My mechs began to pulverize the city's buildings with some kind of missile, while the city's turrets and units returned fire. The combat isn't exactly riveting to watch--weapon effects are fairly simplistic. However, this also lends itself to establishing a clear picture of a battle. You always understand who is shooting who, how much more damage your units can take, and when to bring in reinforcements.

And though the combat itself is certainly RTS-lite, there are enough things to keep you busy and interested outside of it. Keeping your economy rolling on, managing diplomacy and trade routes, designing sea and air units--all the basic trappings of an RTS game are on hand. I even noticed a message reading, "ICBM--Requires six cities." Oh, how I wanted six cities.

I never got there. Realizing I would need plenty of time to explore the stars, I cheated ahead to the galactic stage.

Read on for more on Spore's galactic phase.