As you may have guessed, the emphasis on jumping platforms and collecting stuff is supposed to give the game a strong Nintendo-like feel – there’s even a loose nod to Zelda and Metroid, in that you’ll need to develop new skills and powers in order to reach new parts of the game world. From what’s been shown so far it seems as if quests will have a rather gentle tone, avoiding the darker socio-political elements that Spore featured in its later stages. That means widespread genocide is out, and helping little creatures to get along is in. Still, it looks as though Spore Hero will retain its predecessor’s tendency towards lovable oddness. There were plenty of strange-looking creatures roaming about the level shown off at EA’s expo event last month (hell, there were quite a few roaming the expo itself), and hopefully the quests will be carried off with the series’ typical humour. One mission I was shown involved a little procompsognathid-thing (you know, the little green dinosaurs from The Lost World) eating so many apples that he got stuck in a burrow. Aww. If I wasn’t such a heartless, cynical hack, I might even describe it as cute.