After having seen The Sims 3 Late Night and The Sims Medieval presentations at the EA Community Lounge at Gamescom, we went out with a group of fansites to have something to eat. I don't think anyone had anything to eat though. We were too busy deciding who was going to see Darkspore behind closed doors. No one really seemed that interested in this game. Which was such a pity on one hand, but on the other hand, it did give us some more time to see the game! ChEeTaH from The Sims Zone/The Spore Zone and Xelles from Sims 3 Nieuws were interested to see the game. So along with SimGuruNita we went to EA's Business Lounge. We came across Lucy Bradshaw. She still knew who I was, wow! And then we continued to Darkspore. After drinking a coke and waiting a little more, we were invited inside! There we met with Thomas Vu (producer) and Paul Sottosanti (systems designer).

Thomas told us all about Darkspore. He's so excited though! I had a hard time keeping up! Here are some basic things you need to know about Darkspore. Darkspore is a completely, standalone, new game. It's not an expansion for the Spore game or anything. You can't use these two games together. Darkspore is a dark version of Spore. It's an online RPG. You can't play this game unless you have a connection to the Internet. You can play Darkspore with a group of friends. 4 People max, otherwise it gets too crowded and chaotic. But you can also play it without friends, though you would still need to go online to be able to do so.

Darkspore has creatures like Spore. They look pretty mean though! There's still a creature creator, but adjusted to suit Darkspore. Different look, different parts. You can earn parts by going into battle with your friends. You have to defeat certain monsters. And you have special powers to defeat the monsters. You can swap between creatures you control any time you want to. But you can't control more than one at the same time. Each creature has its own perks. So one may be able to heal, while the other has a better shot at defeating the monster you're fighting. Obviously, your creatures can die. So you have to take care of your creatures even when in the middle of a battle. When defeating monsters, you'll get special bonuses you can pick up, as well as levers you can pull to unlock bonuses. Be sure to keep the health bars high.

Important in Darkspore are your creature's stats. These are scores in the areas of health power, strength, dexterity and mind. They determine what your creature is best at, especially in the middle of battle. You can improve your creature by adding or replacing parts to it, although you are limited to six stat parts per creature.

Darkspore is all about forming squads. A squad is a group with several (up to three) creatures you create, that all have special abilities. Your friends then have their squads. And those squads combined should be strong enough to go into battle. After a battle, you can choose a reward (a creature part), or keep playing for an even higher reward - with the risk of losing it all. You can also trade your rewards with friends. This way you can choose to play just a single game (which will take roughly 10-15 minutes), or keep on playing for hours to get the best parts for your creatures. Rare and epic items that come as a reward will give you some extra stats - basically they are some more powerful parts.

The controls in this game are pretty similar to Spore. I was a bit nervous while playing, but it felt pretty comfortable right after I started, because I had the experience from Spore already. And if you're not a Spore player but are still eager to try Darkspore, don't worry, you'll get those controls under control pretty quickly. You just left click the mouse to walk somewhere and right click to shoot an enemy! Switching between creatures and weapons isn't hard either. There are special shortcut keys on the keyboard you can use. That makes swapping creatures very easy, even in the heat of the battle.

Some fun facts about Darkspore; when in the creature creator, you can use flair parts. Instead of trading in old parts for parts with better stats, you can remove the abilities from the old part and just keep it on your creature. This means you can use these parts for the looks rather than the abilities. This gives you the opportunity to use more parts to build your creature!

When you play the game you will also get your own profile page at Darkspore.com. This is where you will be able to show off all the awards you got when playing the game. As you play the game you will gain experience, with which you can unlock new heroes to start playing with. Your experience is tracked per player, so getting a new hero doesn't mean you have to start from scratch again to make him stronger. It also doesn't matter where you play: as soon as you log in to the game, it will load your creatures, even if it is a completely different PC.

As much as I loved seeing and playing Darkspore, it was kind of difficult to concentrate on what (the very fast talking) Thomas was telling us, concentrating on the screen and making notes at the same time. So I hope you enjoyed my preview! Darkspore was quite overwhelming though. Maybe because I'm such a fan already? I experienced the same thing back in 2006 when I got my hands on Spore for the first time. I was so nervous I forgot everything! I was less nervous this time but it's still a completely new game. There's only so much time to see and play it. I think you should definitely give Darkspore a try, especially if you also loved and played Spore. It's not at all the same game but I think it may appeal to many of our members! It's due in early 2011!

Keep an eye on the official websites Spore.com and DarkSpore.com, as EA will be organizing hero designing contests on the forums! Your hero might end up in the game. So be sure to check it out!