Spore - Potential, but at what cost?

I'm sure most of the crowd here has heard of Spore, the next big thing to come out of the mind of Will Wright at Maxis, best known for the plague on this earth known as The Sims.  Spore is being touted as a massive single player online game, where you play God in the development of creatures from the cellular level all the way up to full blown space-faring civilizations.  Being a biologist by education, the thought of a game with evolution, genetics, and whatnot at the core sounds very appealing.  I'm sure it will be basic enough to be grasped by the masses.  The game is played in 5 separate and distinct phases, which Wright associated the various phases are:

1. Pac-Man for the cell phase
2. Diablo for the creature phase
3. Populous for the tribal phase
4. Simple versions of SimCity, Risk, and Civilization for the civilization phase
5. SimEarth, Destroy All Humans!, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Trek and 2001: A Space Odyssey for the space phase, with elements of sandbox gameplay. DICE 2007 referred to it as similar to Master of Orion.

Sounds pretty cool to me honestly.  However...and here's the catch...leave evolution up to the timmies of the world and I'm afraid my world could eventually be invaded by an armada of walking penises.  Either way...might need to keep an eye on this one as it develops further.  They are releasing the creature editor shortly, either a gimped version for free, or the full blown version for $10.  The game itself is listed to release September 7th here in the states.