«Spore: Cell Stage»

So I've been playing Spore, and pretty much neglecting everything else I usually do on a computer (you knew this would happen). I'll go over the game stage by stage, because of how the game is structured.

First is the cell stage. You chose your approximate location in the galaxy from the main menu, and select start new game. It's right here that you choose if you're going to be a carnivore or herbivore. Choose wisely, it has a large impact on everything to follow, right on up through the space phase. You also name your planet. You're treated to a little intro cut-scene that shows an asteroid whiz by your sun and crash into your planet. The asteroid breaks open in the water and you swim out, not much more than an amoeba with a flagella and mouth.

Your immediate mission is to eat 5 food particles, sort-of a tutorial on how to eat. After that, it's more of a hunt to find parts than it is a hunt for food. That's right... You don't evolve your own unique parts, you have to steal them from other cells or find them in asteroid bits, then you can add them to yourself. The creature phase is like that, too. It's like you're an extremely unimaginative intelligent designer, and you can't just think up new parts for your creatures; you have to copy ones that you find elsewhere.

So anyway, in my over-zealous quest for parts, I often take on cells larger than myself and surprisingly, I die the most in the cell stage. It's not even all that tough to get all the parts either, I just want them as soon as I can get them.

Also, you have a type of currency: DNA. You get more of this by eating food bits. However, food is so abundant in both plant and random meat chunks, that you never have to look far. You don't even need to kill anything as a carnivore because there's so many chunks already floating around.

You continue through the stage, calling for a mate any time you want to make a change to your creature. The mate is never very far, you call for one and they're right off screen; you just swim in their direction.

When you eat enough, you'll fill a little progress bar at the bottom and you'll be able to move on to the creature stage.