The creature creator turns now into a more complex building and vehicle creator, while still offering the option to import one of the building designs from Sporepedia. There's even a flag and anthem creator available (which reminds me of a midi composer from a mobile phone).

Once you conquer another city, you will be offered the possibility to leave it with the same structure you found it: military, economic, or religious. This way, you can use all possible means to control the planet.

There are shortcuts, in the form of special abilities. For example, after conquering a certain number of cities by force, I was offered the ultimate bomb which obliterated the entire planet - thus offering me instant victory.

Spore in space

The final (and most exciting stage) in the evolution of your species is when you first inter-stellar travel begins. Having achieved world domination, it's finally time for those alien bastards to know your name! The final frontier is both fun and dangerous place, as the "eternal" randomness rules over the universe as well. There is absolutely no rule or reason why some species are just mean and evil and others are at your service no matter what you do. Playing on easy will lower the number of hostiles a bit however.

Maxis visibly paid more attention to this stage of gameplay, and for good reason: it's the most time you'll spend playing in Spore. Space is vast, but filled with events that add salt and pepper and almost give the game a background story. Almost. Would have been nice to have more of these in the other stages as well...

You get to explore planets, find long lost alien artifacts, fight inter-galactic wars, form alliances, abduct people in cool-looking self-designed UFOs, scan planets, and colonize or terraform new worlds.

And, of course, the twist: if you liked the game so much, you can always go back and play the other path: be diplomatic if you've won by force; or vice-versa.