Aidan, one of our readers was lucky enough to stop by the Maxis booth at the Penny Arcade Expo and to spend some hands-on time with DarkSpore!  As much as it’s good to hear from the big publication sites on the game, I find it very satisfying to hear from the average joe and get their opinion.  This is what Aidan had to say in our comments section – thank you for letting us know about the game!

I just got back from the PAX! DARKSPORE is even better than I thought previously! I got to meet Executive producer Mike Perry and other Maxoids! You could only play Cryos and Zelem’s Nexus, and they had only one of the two levels on each computer. Each computer had only three randomly chosen heroes to make your squad. You couldn’t swap them out. You couldn’t edit your heroes either. But even so, I still had a great time. Moving around was the right mouse key, and using your basic attack was the left mouse key. The other attacks and abilities were used by using the number keys. Hack and slash actually worked really well for me (well, only on Cryos). I beat both Zelem’s Nexus and Cryos. Mike Perry also let me in on some valuable info, the Darkspore team will be allowing people to sign up for Beta-testing in either a few weeks, or sometime in the winter (sorry I can’t remember :-D )!!!!! This is not a hoax! BTW: The Darkspore site has been updated in case you didn’t notice (Check Cryos and Zelem’s Nexus :) (I played against all six of them :D )).