Spore, The Year's Most Anticipated PC Game

Once you're up and winging around the galaxy, you'll discover that things never settle into the redundant rhythms that held the other stages back. Each time you seem to get a handle on an activity such as carting different colored spices between planets for cash or terraforming inhospitable planets (transforming them to make them capable of sustaining life) prior to launching colony pods, the game throws something new and unexpected at you.

Destroy creatures "infected" by an alien race, but don't kill anything else accidentally or you might start a war. Abduct specimens for research by tractor-beaming them into your cargo hold, but don't drop them! Lob cosmic paintballs into a planet's atmosphere to change its color. Search for randomly scattered artifacts that you can pawn for megabucks. Transplant entire planetary ecologies one plant or animal at a time to create an ideal civilization.

Though the game's level of complexity rises dramatically here, at no time does it feel cumbersome or clunky. The elegance of Spore's vast and multifarious Space Stage is visually and mechanically breathtaking.