Spore Galactic Adventures Review

BY Nicholas Rego | POSTED: 28 July 2009

Boldly go where no Spore has gone before.



When Spore first came out on the PC a while back, I didn’t know quite what to think of it. Was it some space-age spin-off of the Sims? Or some genetic game gone awry? Safe to say, after playing the game I found that it offered a deep and satisfying chain of character evolution, both in genetics and in personality. While EA did churn out an add-on for the game a few months later, it only added more elements to the creature creator, while keeping the gameplay intact. Spore Galactic Adventures is the first add-on for Spore which not only adds even more creatures and buildings to play around with, but also drops in a brand new module to play around with.



Spore Galactic Adventures allows you to create a Space Captain and then take them on a series of adventures on different planets. Creating your Captain is again a simple process, thanks to the intuitive Spore Creature Creator. However this time around you’re given the option to add lasers, weapons, missiles, and all manner of gadgetry to your little minion. Once kitted out, you can load one of the pre-designed Adventures and jump into the action - the sample adventures vary from rescuing stranded team mates to a gladiator-style arena showdown. While the adventures that come bundled with this expansion are few, the real joy lies in the Adventure Creator. This mammoth module allows you to create and experience your very own adventure, and then share it with other Spore gamers.

EA have certainly put in a lot of effort into the Adventure Creator, and while it seems rather simple  to use, there are a ton of features and tweaks you can apply to each adventure, so it’s well worth going through the initial 12-step checklist tutorial to get familiar with the tools available. You start off by selecting a planet to create your adventure on, with each planet offering different types of terrain to explore. You then drag and drop your Captain onto the planet, and then populate the planet with other creatures and buildings of your choosing. The expansion pack gives you around 2,500 pre-designed creatures to choose from, as well as a huge assortment of buildings, but as always you can create either one from scratch to give your planet a truly unique look and feel. Once you’ve got your surroundings and population under control, its time to add behaviours and objectives – you can employ a trusty sidekick to defend you on your missions, or have a tribe of pink one-legged furballs go postal on your Captain. Each adventure can span a maximum of eight acts, so there is a limit to how creative you can be. On top of that, there is a complexity meter for each level, which fills up as you add elements to your level – if your meter gets maxed out, you can’t add anything new to the level.

Though there is plenty of fun to be had designing and playing the various adventures, there are some blatant issues that come into play. For one thing, its very common for creatures to get completely lost as they wander around the planet, and this includes your trusty team mates. You’ll often find them walking into each other until you issue a new command, which is often frustrating when you have to back-track across a level to find out where your posse went. There are also some texture issues in certain levels, with large boulders and creatures suddenly appearing as large spiked blobs before correcting themselves. Thankfully the upbeat soundtracks and perky visuals will keep your frustrations to the minimum.



As you begin to share your creations and experience other players’ adventures, you truly do begin to fathom just how deep this game goes. With an almost infinite amount of creative possibilities, there is so much that can be done and enjoyed with this expansion pack – that is until the next pack comes out.