THE SPORE, EAT THE SPORE

How is a galactic penis monster like a tricked-out Centurion fighter? On second thought, don't answer that question... or even think about it. Nevertheless, 1Up has a review of Spore which suggests just that comparison:

This era-spanning scope allows for Spore to feel like a different game at any particular moment, depending on what stage you're in. To use the language of other games, the Cell stage resembles flOw (but with more purpose); the Creature stage feels like a mashup of World of WarCraft, The Sims, and, er, Simon Says; the Tribal stage plays like an elementary real-time strategy game; the Civilization stage is sort of like a real-time version of, well, Civilization; and finally, the Space stage makes me feel like I'm in a hybrid of Master of Orion and Wing Commander: Privateer...

...Heck, the previous four stages almost feel like extended tutorials for the Space segment; I breezed through the pre-Space stuff in about four hours, but the Space portion easily takes up 10 hours on its own. The "story" becomes more pronounced (you zip out into space to investigate some big, bad aliens), and you suddenly find yourself dealing with a lot of stuff, such as terraforming planets, establishing colonies, maintaining diplomatic relations with multiple empires, and setting up a steady economy. Even though you only pilot a single ship (you can create a fleet via alliances with other alien empires), at any moment, you might be zapping at pirates, transplanting flora and fauna from one planet to another, selling and trading materials like some sort of space haberdasher, or (literally) painting the sky blue. Then again, perhaps it's some sort of meta-commentary that sustaining a species in space is much, much more complicated than making sure a tribe of yokels has food for the night.