Darkspore kicks off a 5-week beta ahead of its March 29 release date @ Gaming Target

Written by Matt Swider on February 16, 2011

News: Are you ready to give the Spore universe another chance? EA and Maxis hope so and they're hoping you want in on the beta, too.

Are you ready to give the Spore universe another chance on March 29? Darkspore, the spin-off to Will Wright's 2008 god game, is headed to public beta, so you might want to think about giving the online action-RPG a chance this week, not five weeks ahead of its scheduled release date. The Darkspore beta event kicks off on Friday, February 18 at 6 PM Pacific time. Here's the full schedule:

Friday, Feb. 18th from 6pm PT until 11:59pm PT Saturday, Feb 19th

Friday, Feb. 25th from 6pm PT until 11:59pm PT Sunday, Feb 27th

Friday, March 4th from 6pm PT until 11:59pm PT Sunday, March 6th

Friday, March 11th from 6pm PT until 11:59pm PT Sunday, March 13th

Of course, it's not too late to sign up for the Darkspore public beta. EA is still encouraging everyone to sign up for a beta key so that you can enjoy perfecting their customizable Hero and partake is intense PvP action.

As with any announcement these days, this news about Darkspore's public beta kick-off is accompanied with its own trailer. If you haven't seen any video of the game in action since the Comic Con 2010 debut trailer, then be sure to catch a glimpse of actual gameplay in this latest montage of combat.

The beta for Dark Spore ends on March 13, two weeks ahead of the game's March 29 release date.