Insidegamer.nl: If Darwin had been a game developer, he would develop Spore Creatures .. In this game you explore with your homemade Spore being the wonderful world and try to evolve.
"Now it has become apparent that for all EA's reputation destroying efforts to ensure punters bought Spore, they may have actually acted to entice gamers to pirate the game. Forced between a choice of downloading the game for free, or effectively renting it from EA, punters voted with their clicking finger." - gameplayer reports
About writes: "A spin-off from Will Wright's massive world-builder, Spore Creatures for the DS keeps the creature creating but loses all the awe of Spore. With a seemingly random storyline and a dull fighting mechanic, this is a weak interpretation of one of the biggest games of the year."
Pros
* Spore Creatures has a lovely, comic book-like aesthetic that plays with 2D and 3D.
* Adding wacky body parts to your creature is fun -- for a time.
* The DS's WiFi connection lets you show off particularly crazy creatures.
Cons
* Boiling down a huge, open game like Spore into a tiny adventure just doesn't work.
* Storyline feels random and tacked on.
* The fighting mechanic (i.e. scribbling on the screen with your stylus) is boringly simple.
EA was the market leader in third party publishers for many many years, because they had no real competition they only released average games as people would buy them regardless. Activision then challenged EA, with Call of Duty to answer to Medal of Honour, EA released Rock band to counter Guitar Hero. Both company's are trying to one up each other, creating new franchises and vastly improving old ones...
I have to hand it to EA they have really been increasing quality recently, especially with games like dead space and mirrors edge, and I know there only published by EA but still its a vast improvement on what they used to offer.
We'll see EA fanboys vs Activision fanboys....
Let's hope that doesn't happen...