Your reaction to Spore is probably relative to your expectations going in. This is the year’s biggest release for the PC, and is probably the most important original game design to come along in a decade. The hype machine was fueled by fan wishlists as much as by EA’s crack marketing team, and if you were one of those gamers chucking more coal into the furnace, the letdown you’ll have when you finally crack open your first Sporeling egg is sadly inevitable.

Even if you are immune to the hype, there is a clear disconnect in the game. Divided into five distinct stages with minimal carryover, it’s almost a series of minigames until you hit the space stage. Then you are plunged into a bunch of MMO style missions, galactic defense plans and colonization plans that is as close as Spore ever gets to a fleshed out game. For a game that is about Everything, from evolution to religion to terraforming, a lot of it seems paper thin. Spore is a casual game that pretends to be serious, and a serious game that can’t help being casual.

But then there is the ineffable. For your first few tours through the life cycle, there is clear and unavoidable joy, the joy of what composer Stephen Schwartz called the “Spark of Creation” – having your little tribesmen learn new skills or discovering new tactics in the elimination of an enemy. And especially the giddy feeling when you stumble across a beautiful new creature that you know was made by a gamer who is more talented than you.

Because, for all the pointless discussion over whether Spore is friendlier to evolution or intelligent design, the fact is you are one of many gods and many creators plucking other people’s foreign species out of the ether to populate your world; the final stage makes you an active participant in a universal alien abduction program.

It is this painless interaction with a wider world paired with an easy to learn interface that guarantees the enduring popularity of the creature creator and the early stages of the game. Yes, the cell, creature and tribe modes are shallow as games; even the civilization stage is weaker than a dozen browser games. But the interaction and exploration, all the while knowing that someone else is encountering your animals and sentient life forms, adds a golly-gee-whiz factor that is unmatched in any other strategy game on the market.