Spore

"At this point, the goal of the game is to further evolve your character into an intelligent being. One way is by interacting with other creatures and either instigating a social or aggressive stance. Since you are, after all, only slightly more impressive than a little pool of goo, you don’t have a lot of other options. As you successfully complete these interactions, you acquire new parts, which you can use to evolve further. You can also score the precious parts from skeletal remains strewn throughout the landscape, though these seemed far less common than living creatures."

"After moving up a grassy hill, we saw a craggy, rocky area, dominated by huge curved spires. Before we could admire the scenery too long, we met up with an Orcy—or more accurately, we were charged by an Orcy. The thing was full of teeth and not afraid to use them. We tried to placate them by dancing, which seemed to work. At least, it did until Orcy number 2 showed up and wanted to continue the chomping. After a few unsuccessful attempts at getting both of them to shake their thangs, we decided it might be best to run away to relative safety."

"Once again, the aggressive approach is always an option. Here, you can convert rivals by destroying their tent. Once it’s gone, their now-homeless tribesmen can be assimilated by your tribe. Of course, creatures don’t take that kind of stuff sitting down, so you can expect a fight. After a short fight—did I mention those upgraded weapons?—we converted the tribe to our side. Our wounded went back to the village to heal themselves at the nursing stations automatically. Meanwhile, that big stack of meat attracted some creatures to the village—creatures that were quickly converted into meat"

"You start off by building your town hall or selecting one from a bank of previously created samples. Some of the more outlandish developer designs were shown in the demo, including a building that looked like a pair of enormous Lego blocks. We picked Gandalf Hall, which was appropriately shaped like a towering version of the famous wizard. The next step is designing or selecting a harvester, which is used to gather spices. A similarly crazy selection of developer creations was present, including a Tron-like Light Cycle, skull or gigantic red stapler. (Lawyer-types, take notice—the samples were just examples of what players could themselves create. These are not likely to be in the game’s official release.)"