According to Ars Technica, EA will be releasing two expansions for Spore. The first one, currently labeled as Creepy & Cute Parts Pack will provide over 100 new parts to the Creature Creator. Said expansion will be available to both people with the full game and those who only have the creature creator.

The second, still unnamed, will expand upon the Space stage of Spore. The expansion will allow you to beam yourself down to alien planets to interact with and explore the planet to complete missions. The second expansion will also include the Adventure Creator which allows users to create and share custom missions with other players. Current, the space stage in Spore is often criticized for being repetitive and boring, hopefully this should mix it up amongst players.

Today, Electronic Arts released it’s very first patch for Spore. The patch includes several bug fixes as well as performance increases and tweaking to the difficulty settings. It also includes several new cheats plus a few new visual filters.

You can download the patch directly here. If you have the EA download manager you should be able to get it through that as well.

Features

* New Cheat: “evoadvantage”. Enter this cheat when are starting a new Creature game to choose any creature from the Sporepedia. Start a new game with one of your more evolved creatures!
* Display part statistics when you are in Build mode. Rollover any part and hold down the ‘i’ key.
* New Cheat: “blocksmode”. Turns creatures into their blocky representations.
* More style filters. Open the cheat window and type: “stylefilter -microscope” or “stylefilter -norainbows” or “stylefilter -nextgen” to see the new styles
* Added 70 new planet scripts with a low terraform score, especially of the “hot and high atmosphere” type

Graphics/Aesthetics

* Animation improvements
* Improved the planets fogging, blooming and lighting
* Fixed animation issues with tool handling, hand walking and some of the more oddly shaped creatures

Tuning

* Creature phase: Improved the pacing towards the end of the game, and increased the challenge in Normal and Hard modes.
* Tribe phase: Increased the challenge in Normal and Hard difficulty modes.
* Civilization phase: Increased the challenge in Normal and Hard difficulty modes.
* Space phase: Made Empires in Easy and Normal modes demand reasonable amounts of money in exchange for peace and adjust the level of punishment if the player doesn’t pay
* Space phase: Made disasters less likely to occur in Easy and Normal modes and increased the time between each attack from the enemy empire when the player is at war.

Miscellaneous

* Creature phase: Improved the way posse members behave during threatening situations and fights.
* Space phase: Made finding your home world and colonies easier in the Galactic view.
* Tribe phase: Made it so that tribe members can travel on steep hills if they need to do so now, but their speed will be reduced a lot.
* Fixed an issue with attacks not working on some bigger animals and larger animals not dying correctly
* Fixed collect mission not completing correctly when all parts have been collected
* Fixed problems with the “Rolling Thunder” and “Déjà Vu” achievements not being awarded as they should
* Fixed floating parts not being deducted from the budget when loaded into creator
* Fixed an issue with the rotation rings not resizing correctly when a part was resized and improved their look
* Fixed an issue where the terraforming score of planet could differ when revisiting a solar system
* Fixed the keyboard controls for zoom & pitch in the Colony Planner not working properly
* Fixed a crash that could occur when watching an epic creature attack a city
* Fixed some issues where the game would freeze when using the Creature Tweaker tool or when capturing a planet in solar view
* Fixed an issue where not all tribe members would obey the raid order when a large group was ordered to raid
* Fixed an issue where banning a creation from one of your other saved games would black out the main menu

For the last couple of days we’ve seen thousands of users back lashing against EA on Amazon for their restrictive DRM which limits the game to only 3 installs. Today, Amazon deleted the most viewed negative review against Spore.

It had 3000 out of 3300 helpful votes, was the overall most helpful review on the Spore product page, and was quoted on several news articles reporting this anti-DRM protest.

And just a few minutes ago, for some weird reason, Amazon decided to remove my review.

Here’s the original review by the user:

1.0 out of 5 stars Dumbed down experience and draconian DRM, September 7, 2008
By Erich Maria Remarque (Magnolia, Arkansas USA) - See all my reviews
Fun:1.0 out of 5 stars
See these older 5-star reviews from 2006 (two years before the game was released)? Well, they had a reason to be excited. Spore was supposed to be a revolutionary experience, combining multiple genres while concentrating on evolution and genetics.

Fast forward two years and here we have the finished product, ready to be installed on our hard drives.

First of all, the game incorporates a draconian DRM system that requires you to activate over the internet, and limits you to a grand total of 3 activations. If you reach that limit, then you’ll have to call EA in order to add one extra activation. That’s not as simple as it sounds, since when you reach that point EA will assume that you, the paying customer, are a filthy pirating thief. You will need to provide proof of purchase, reasons why the limit was reached, etc, etc (it has all happened before with another recent EA product, Mass Effect). EA, of course, is not obligated to grant you that extra activation or even provide that service. In a couple of years they might very well even shut down the general activation servers, because “it’s not financially feasible” to keep them running. What you will be left with is a nice, colorful $50 coaster. And you will be required to pay for another copy/license if you want to continue playing.

This basically means that you are actually RENTING the game, instead of owning it. The game WILL stop to function in the future. That’s inevitable, because even if EA keeps the activation servers going, there IS going to be a time when EA will simply cease to exist because of financial issues or federal laws (like most business eventually do).

Second, the game was dumbed down to oblivion. Evolution doesn’t even matter anymore. You can add as many legs to a creature as you want, but it won’t be any faster than a one legged creature with higher leg stats. “Creating” your creatures is pointless (cosmetic only, because everything is based on stats), and brings you about the same excitement as dressing up a plastic doll.

Whether this is damage control by Amazon or EA, this is completely unacceptable. Like they say, the customer is always right.

UPDATE: It seems Amazon has restored the review after all of the complaints. Amazon has not released a statement yet, however. Spore is still has a 1 out of 5 stars rating on Amazon.

Is evolution too slow for your liking? Want to catch up to those Aussies who’ve had the game for almost 5 days? If so, here are some cheat codes and hints for you to accelerate your progress in Spore:

You need to press the following buttons on your keyboard to open the Spore console screen while playing the game: press Ctrl + Shift + C at the same time. Once you’ve done that, the console screen allows you to type the below cheat codes, after which you hit the Enter or Esc button or the red X to close the console. — This video will show you: how to enter cheats into Spore.

The code is followed by its effect on the game.

* Type: capturePlanetGIF — To capture a spinning GIF picture of the planet you are on, which is then saved to the AnimatedAvatars directory on your computer.

* Type: setConsequenceTrait (trait) — Where you see the text “(trait)” instead you type out one of the following traits that you want… cell carnivore, cell_herbivore, cell_omnivore, creature_aggressive, creature_social, creature_mixed, tribe_aggressive, tribe_social, tribe_mixed, civ_military, civ_economic, civ_religious, space_bard, space_ecologist, space_zealot, space_diplomat, space_scientist, space_trader, space_shaman, space_warrior, space_wanderer, or space_knight

* Type: help (command) — This explains the actions and usages of a command. Where you see the text “(command)” instead you type the cheat code you want explained.

* Type: addDNA — To increase how much DNA you have to spend by 150 points.

* Type: moreMoney — This increases your money in the Civilization or Space stages.

* Type: help — This lists all cheats and debug commands.

* Type: killallhints — To remove all hints from the game.

* Type: refillMotives — Where needed, this replenishes your health and other motives.

* Type: SetTime (hour, minute) — This sets the time of day at the Avatar’s position, and optionally can give you a speed multiplier. Where you see the text “(hour, minute)” instead you type the time of day you want.

* Type: freeCam — To toggle free camera mode.

* Type: unlockSuperWeapons — This unlocks all superweapons for your Civilization type.

Easter Egg: A secret in the game is finding the head of Spore creator Will Wright. To do this you must go to the main menu and click on the center of the galaxy to get a full view. Once there, you hold down the left mouse button to then move it left or right so you can give the galaxy a spin. If you spin it fast enough Will Wright’s head will pop up like so…

Today, Game On Nintendo reported that the Wii Speak peripheral for the Wii will be bundled with Animal Crossing: City Folk. The news comes from an supposed insider at the GameStop Manager Conference in Las Vegas. The pack will be available for a limited time starting in November. The bundle will set you back approximately $69.99 according to this source.

While this rumor is sudden, it could be legitimate. It may be the first games in Nintendo’s line-up to fend off Microsoft’s increased interest in the casual gaming market. Expect the Holiday 2008 Season to be one of the fiercest battles so far in this console generation. Microsoft will be attempting to take Nintendo down a notch, while Sony is gaining momentum, slowly creeping up on Microsoft. No one will be safe.

Update: This is no longer a rumor, other sources, including Destructoid have also affirmed this claim.

Spore iPhone preview

Watch Earth get annihilated in Spore:

After news of Spore breaking the street date in Australia, we hear that Spore has already been cracked by a group called “RELOADED” despite it’s use of SecuROM, the anti-pirating software. (the same one used in BioShock) There are currently over 10,000 people downloading the game on just one public torrent tracker. All this 4 days before the game even comes out in North America.

If you want to download Spore legally, Direct2Drive is allowing pre-orders of the game.

Apparently, the Mac version of EA’s Spore will require both OS X Leopard, and an Intel chip. While that isn’t that bad, if it were Microsoft doing the same with Vista all hell would break loose. Fortunately, Spore is available for both XP and Vista on the Windows platform. Spore is coming out on September 7 on both platforms in the US.