Spore Galactic Adventures, by Electronic Arts, is now available for pre-order on US shopping site Amazon.com. No official announcement has been made by EA itself, despite the 31 March release date given by Amazon. The only expansion for Spore since September so far has been the Spore Creepy And Cute Parts Pack, so we're expecting a more substantial retail release soon.

The fourth Total PC Gaming podcast is now available for download here. Download and listen to us grill Kelly Wand on Wrath Of The Lich King, talk a bit about Spore and rip into Russ at every given opportunity. Well, he does wear pink far too much. You can also get download here, here, here or here. And if you're having trouble getting it here, you can always get it there. Enjoy! ...

This month the Total PC Gaming crew talk Wrath of the Lich King, Spore and Empire Total War. Click here to listen to the podcast Click here to subscribe to the podcast

Included in this issue Previewed All the biggest PC games covered including; - World Of Warcraft exclusive preview! - EAs C&C Red Alert 3 - More Blizzard with Starcraft II - Battleforge’s trading cards meets RTS Reviewed In-depth reviews and analysis including; - The definitive BIA Hell’s Highway review - Mercenaries 2: believe the hype? - Is Spore the evolution revolutionary? - Old school TBS Colonization returns! Bonus Content - Feature: Playing With Your Health - High-End Coolers group-tested - Howard Marks interview: Mr nice guy?

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past year, Spore needs no introduction. Will Wright’s evolutionary blockbuster isn’t cited for release until early September, but publisher EA has released the Creature Creator segment of the game early to garner some not-really-needed interest. A free trial is now available from www.spore.com/trial . The question is, will Spore live up to the hype? Not long to wait now...

A beast of rare quality… the Greater-headed TPCG, as seen with the aid of EA's Spore Creature Editor demo, available for download as of 17 June. Oddly fascinating this… relatively speaking, I'm not enjoying it that much, but I can't stop making freaky creatures with it.

Both Mass Effect PC and Spore are to use SecuROM as copy protection for the retail versions. The controversial anti-piracy software requires an internet connection to connect to an EA server and verify every ten days. Derek French, technical producer at Bioware clarified the news, "An internet connection is not required to install, just to activate the first time, and every ten days after. You can be completely connectionless for nine days and encounter no problems playing Mass Effect. And you don't need ...

Simple: wait until it comes out on PC. With all the ‘secret’ midnight retail launches and stupid numbers of PS3 and 360 pre-orders going on in the last couple of weeks, if you hadn't pre-ordered prior to April, it seems that you're not likely to have got your copy today. You're not guaranteed to have one reserved even if you did pre-order. I can't even get my hands on a promo copy – and I'm a games journalist, they should be ...