Review: Spore Galactic Adventures

The last lump of content for Spore (The Creepy & Cute Parts Pack) was a big disappointment for me but I kept an open mind for Galactic Adventures. Did it cause me to blast off into space or sink back into the primordial ooze?

First off let me tell you that it needs Spore installed on your PC. The reason I say this is because you could be forgiven for thinking it was a standalone pack with its not inconsequential price tag of 20 notes. But this is more than merely an add-on. Galactic Adventures is an adventure creator of stunning simplicity and diversity that you have to wonder what amazing ideas will spring forth onto Sporepedia (an online catalogue of everything created on Spore) the more people get a grasp of how to use it to tell their tales.

GA adds an extra menu option to Spore, essentially splitting the game in two. If you choose the GA option you are give three choices. Play an adventure, either from Maxis or anybody else who has shared their new creation on Sporepedia, create an adventure with the creator, or edit an adventure already out there.

Choose your own adventure

Jumping straight into a ready-made adventure is a double edged sword. Not all of the online content is of a high standard as far as tasks, storytelling and design are concerned but there are some very imaginative creations that show a lot of promise. Telling a tale well is not an easy task and it may take a while before the best work begins to emerge. Of course, if concocting a compelling story of hilarity, sadness or even love isn’t amongst your list of things to do then you can easily create an action game of world-wide proportions.

Yes, whole planets are given over for the making of your game but DON’T PANIC – the planets in Spore are not huge affairs. They are however big and varied enough to have plenty of fun with.

When creating an adventure you begin by choosing a Captain with which to play the lead role. Following on from that is the choice of a planet to base your game on. There are a good variety of planets, each topographically very different. (There is also a detailed Terraforming tool that allows you to mould the planet to your taste and seed it with a variety of plants. Even the climate can be changed in case you want a hostile desert, jungle planet or an ice world.) Once this task is complete you are whisked down to your planet and can follow the step by step training menu that pops down from above. It’s very simple to follow, enabling you to get your hands dirty immediately with the ability to play what you have finished so far instantly.

Construction of fun

This is where it gets interesting. Countless characters, flora and fauna, buildings, vehicles, special effects and sound effects are at your disposal. You can create a Ye Olde English village populated with bloodthirsty fluffy rabbits and using the tools at your disposal, have them send you on a quest to find the Golden Carrot or some such or have the task at hand ridding the world of said cute mammals with a soundtrack of metal, rave or soothing classical.

It’s all done via Sporepedia, where a huge amount of user or Maxis created content is at your disposal. Choose a building or plant (or create your own in the Creature Creator), place it anywhere you like, rinse and repeat. Build your world up piece by piece until you have a detailed game world and then add special effects, music and sound effects, all in the same simple way.

To get some interaction going between your Captain and the world’s cast just click on the cast member. Lo and behold, up pops another menu, this time with options to have speech or descriptions. This is where a bit of inventive writing makes all the difference.

Talking (via speech bubbles) isn’t all the cast can do though. You can also control movement and task giving. If you want them to patrol it’s a simple task of setting waypoints one after another. You can have them stay in one spot too or wander aimlessly if you so desire. You can set three tasks for your Captain to complete and these can be anything you like. Want to collect an object surrounded by vicious creatures? Easily done. You can even control how perceptive they are, how fast, how strong and what sort of behavioural trait they will have. Will you make them clueless plebs, content with traipsing about aimlessly or will they roar after you with a singular, murderous purpose?

The evolution of Spore

The ease with which sound is incorporated into your creation is wonderful. Place a sound effect or song at the point on the planet you think it will suit your game and you can change the volume, tone and area it can be heard in, all using the same simple methods seen in the creature creator. A circle surrounds the centre point and turning it changes the tone. An arrow pointing up affects the volume and one to the side affects the size of the area the sound is audible in.

Your adventures can also be split into more than one act, allowing episodic content and the ability to flesh out any ideas you may have for your worlds.

Galactic Adventures uses Spore and its Creature Creator tools to create such an easy way for millions of people to have fun and stretch their mental artistic muscles that for any Spore fan it is a must have. In fact, even if you bought Spore and were disappointed you owe it to yourself to get GA and squeeze your money’s worth from what is now a way of playing through hundreds of games and stories as well as adding your own to the ever growing list.

At last Maxis has tapped the right vein and found pure gold and how long it lasts depends on how much people can tap their imaginations.