As I was skipping ahead and starting a new civilization, I had the option of choosing a pre-set race and the design of its spaceship. I randomized both, which produced a harmless humanoid, and the wonderous Starship Four Poster, an interstellar four post bed. An EA rep who was watching nearby began to laugh, and proceeded to tell me that, while this rocket-bed was one of the better he's seen, the best was a flying school bus. I had to agree with that.

The galactic stage presents an interesting mish-mash of concepts and objectives. From the start, you simply take off in your civilization's new spaceship, rotating around the planet you recently conquered. That sense of slowly zooming out from the planetary microscope is definitely apparent--this game is about evolution, and the constant change in gameplay brilliantly drives this home. Once amongst the stars, the vast perspective is as awe-inspiring as Wright's first GDC demonstration.

Taking off from a planet or landing on one is as simple as zooming in or out with the mouse wheel. Flying the spaceship around is a lot of fun--the floaty momentum of it is reminiscent of a game like Asteroids. Just tooling around a planet and scanning plantlife is amusing. In space, traveling from one planet or system to another is as easy as zooming out and clicking on a destination.

My first mission lead me to a nearby planet. There I discovered some alien ruins, long abandoned. However, a few security drones were left behind from the ancient race, and I was forced to do combat. Shields up.

Immediately I noticed that the spaceship tools were incredibly extensive. Weapons, scanning, abduction--all of these tabs had dozens of empty ability slots just waiting to be unlocked. Gaining abilities is accomplished by abducting species and completing missions that are given out by the leader of your civilization.

Using a mix of a basic death ray and photon torpedoes, I managed to easily dispatch the antagonistic defenders. Combat in this phase seemed much more fun than I expected--burning down alien lifeforms with the death ray, like frying ants with a magnifying glass, was more fun than it should have been. Like the ICBMs in the civilization phase, the Death Star-like planet destroying weapon should serve as a fantastic incentive to complete missions for evil deviants such as myself.

More missions involved scanning the plant life on one planet, or making contact with an alien civilization. Missions are easily tracked with a World of Warcraft-style window in the upper left corner, check marks appearing on the quests you have recently completed. Each completed mission moved me slowly outward from my home planet, my warp drive being upgraded occasionally. The ultimate goal of the galactic stage is to reach the center of the universe, though what happens at that point is a mystery.

At one point I had to make contact with my first alien civilization. A dialogue window in the tradition of Civilization powers first contact situations. Usually you'll have one or two options, most of them clear cut.

A simple race of slugs, I took a heavy-handed approach, insulting them from the get-go. The slugs didn't take my stabs well, so in the tradition of Spock, I did the only logical thing and opened fire, zapping and abducting the citizens of their capitol city.

Guns blazing, Spaceship Four Poster put up a good fight, but I began taking heavy damage from the city's defenses. When enemy spaceships showed up, I knew I was about to find out what happens when you die. As it happens, you simply respawn on your home planet, ready to strike back out into the cosmos. But that was where my demo ended--it was time to move on and play other, less ambitious games.

I wanted to keep playing and unlock more weapons. I wanted to terraform planets, and discover more alien artifacts, and play around in the beautiful starscape that Maxis has created. The designers have put in just enough rules to hook you into playing more, while still leaving the game open enough to not feel like a linear experience.

Though I've always felt the game would turn out well, after years of hype, I certainly saw the potential for Black & White levels of disappointment. Any apprehension I once had is now gone, however. While I don't know yet if Spore will keep me interested for 20 hours or 200 hours, it is certainly shaping up to be something I'll want to devour come September.

And if you've read this far, you're clearly interested in the game as well. Leave a comment below, and you'll be entered in a mini-contest for a free copy of the full Spore Creature Creator. You too will have the power to create fully-featured phallic monstrosities in advance of the game's release.

Spore will be released September 7 on PC and Mac.