Spore isn’t due for release until September 7th 2008. After several delays EA threw anxious gamers a bone today by releasing Spore Creature Creator. Horny Melon opted to download it off of EAs site instead of running out to the store to pick up a copy. As easy as EA’s store was, compared to direct to drive, nothing match’s steams simplicity.

Creature Creator is exactly what the title implies. It is the engine that allows you to create creatures that you can use to populate your world or share with the rest of the spore community. The creature construction is actually very intuitive. The only times the directions were used was to learn some of the more advanced options. After you’ve created your creature you can then name it, write a description, and add tags for others to find them in the sporepedia. You can change the color of your creature at 4 different levels or you can have him painted like another creature you found on the internet.

How they implemented the procedural animation while innovative is not without it’s flaws and limits. Certain parts of the body animate based off of what that part is and may not animate properly if put in a unique place. For instance if you place the eyes in place of hands the creature doesn’t move it’s arms about to get a better view. How the animation is done is different than your typical character. If your not careful you could end up with a creature that clips through itself a lot.

Spore Creature Creator also gives you a taste of the Spore Social Networking element. You take pictures of your creatures, turn them into avatars, or make videos that can then be posted directly to youtube. There seems to be a texture bug in Spore Creature Creator as we kept getting a very dark pattern on all our creatures that we could not get to go away.

Playing Frankenstein will keep everyone entertained for a while, but if EA pushes back Spore after releasing the creature creator there will be blood in the streets. Here are some of the Creatures thought up by our staff, all are safe for work.