E3 2005 didn't start well for the thousands of media present, including me. A power cut lead to huge registration delays which lead to serious frustration. I finally got in about midday and headed straight for the Nintendo stand – but the Zelda queue was massive by that point so I postponed my visit to Hyrule until tomorrow. Thankfully the day was saved by two great games, both totally different – Call of Duty 2 and Spore. COD2 on Xbox 360 doesn't offer much more than the original did - i.e. visceral and atmospheric WW2 combat – but it looks so lovely that you can forgive it. Forget all the videos and hype – here is a next-gen game played in real-time that looks fantastic. But the real pleasure of the day was listening to Sims creator Will Wright demonstrating his new game Spore.
The geek genius was a delight to listen too as he took us through a game that if it fulfils half its potential will be a classic. Players create a single cell animal and grow them into fully fledged creatures. These can then be trained and nurtured into tribes and cities. I assumed this would be it – a Black & White style creature game with Sim City overtones. And this would have been enough for most designers – but not this one.
If your creation gains enough intelligence they can enter space and colonise different planets, all of which have their own inhabitants. These are designed by other players and incorporated into your game – Wright described it as a single player multiplayer game. From planets you can move to solar systems and galaxies, creating alliances or enemies. The six of us in the demo actually applauded at the end, such was the passion and ambition shown. In a gaming era dominated by shooting, scoring and steering, it's great to see something different. Whether the finished article matches up to the hype – and parts of the demo did remind me of Black & White era Molyneux – remains to be seen, but at a noisy E3 a quiet game of animal creation stole the day.
