Evolution Revolution

Spore (PC & Mac $39-49, Nintendo DS version $35) has widely entered an evolution based game to the mainstream. In Spore, you start the game and watch as an asteroid flies through space and eventually crashes into a planet. This asteroid then breaks up and out pops an cell organism that is your character. Your goal then is to eat and not to be eaten. You choose to be an omnivore, carnivore or herbivore, and then what your cell looks like with each stage. Eventually you obtain enough points to move to land and begin the evolution cycle. On land the main goals remain, but added to them are befriending other creatures or destroying their species. As you move from nest to nest you meet many creatures along the way, some will be friendly to you from the beginning and some not. However, every choice you make has an effect later on. This also allows you to find new parts to use in the creator to make your creature look different, creepy, cute or funny. The end of the creature phase brings up your creature's movement into tribal stage as it has finally become sentient. In tribal stage you either have to make friends with other tribes or destroy them, while maintaining food supplies and giving clothes to your creation. There are five other tribes and what you do with them further develops your species. After you have dealt with the tribes, you get to move to civilization, which breaks the split to militaristic, religious, or economic abilities to overcome your rival cities. You get to create your city hall, houses, entertainment buildings and workshops, as well as the vehicles from land, water and air. After you have taken the planet, you move to space stage and expand ever on with more civilizations and space-faring species in a never ending quest to become the larges power in the galaxy.

Spore is one of the ultimate games in creativity as you can decide every aspect of your species from the way it looks to where it lives and the vehicles it uses. In another part of the game, there are creators that allow you to create the buildings, creatures or vehicles without playing the game to do so. Plus the connection with other gamers through the sporepedia and the Internet interaction allows you to share your creations with others and even use creations you liked from other people.
For more information here is Spore's website.