It's been far too long since you've played god with the genetic makeup of poor, defenseless cryptozoological monsters -- why not dip your toes into Maxis' dark, action-RPG followup to Spore, obviously titled Darkspore? The game recently entered open beta, allowing players to dungeon delve through the first few levels until the beta client goes kaput on April 22. The retail release is scheduled to follow on April 26.

You can download the beta client on our sister site Big Download, but you might want to check out the minimum system requirements posted after the jump before you spend all of that precious bandwidth. It's the currency of the future, you know? Like dirt and paper in Waterworld.