Given the rather flame-esque responses in the previous journal, I'll likely remove it. Hard to discuss any topic seriously with some folks...*sigh*

ANYWAY. Since I recently purchased Galactic Adventures, I figured I'd do a little impromptu review of the expansion, for those who own Spore, but are still unsure of whether Galactic Adventures is worth the 30 bucks.

To start, in order to get GA, you need a copy of Spore installed, that's a no brainer. When you install GA, the first thing you'll notice, is that it'll likely put it's own shortcut icon on your Desktop, and a startup icon in the EA Folder you have in your start menu. What is the purpose of this? Well, apparently you are now the proud owner of two different versions of Spore. One is the vanilla copy, which you've been playing up until you may or may not have purchased GA. The other, is the same game, only with the Galactic Adventure option, which gives you access to Quickplay, and the Creators.

So, how do I rate GA? Well first, we'll go over the various upsides to using GA:

The generation of Adventures in the Space Stage is similar to the generation of creatures, vehicles, objects, etc. It's the 'procedural generation' that Spore is famous for. Indiviudal Adventure missions are .png files whose sizes range from 2KB to 5KB total, incredibly small. I honestly think the mechanic of procedural generation is incredible because it takes something so small to generate something huge.

GA adds a new mission type that Empires in the Space Stage will offer you, which is a welcome break from the rather routine and predictable missions offered in the vanilla version of Spore. Also, the fact your Captain gets his own seperate rank, gives you a sense of individual accomplishment.

The Adventures themselves are epic in scope. Some of them range in depth from simple, to complex, with any number of objectives and goals, in a wide range of choices. This also leads me to inevitably mention the biggest chunk of GA: the Creator programs. Anyone who's played Spore can likely tell you that huge chunks of time are spent in the Creators, making whatever freaks and masterpieces your heart desires. The Adventure Creator/Editor allows you to use these objects to design your own epic quest, akin to game design on a simplified scale. What you can design, is limited only by your own ability and imagination.


Unfortunately, this is where the problems for Spore begin. Because Spore itself cannot randomly design Adventures for you to perform, the quantity and quality of Adventures is ENTIRELY dependent upon player-created content. This said, there are a number of missions whose design and execution are subpar at best, lacking proper dialogue, introductions (the most easily missed component), or even proper difficulty scaling. What do I mean by difficulty scaling? Some missions are actually MUCH harder (or easier) than the rating given in Sporepedia would have you believe.

As an example, I ran into a mission that, in theory, would've been easy to complete. Sabotage an enemy facility by blowing up parts of it with grenades that the game gave to me to use, then destroy the non-violent ships which showed up. Simple enough. Until I discovered that the rather impressive throwing distance my captain possessed was not enough to get the grenade to make contact with the enemy ships. I tried numerous times, each ending in failure. Now, my problem would've been easily solved...if I possessed a piece of equipment that allowed for me to either fly up and attack the ship, or a ranged attack I could use instead. As a result, the mission was rendered unbeatable, which meant the mission the Empire wanted me to complete was put on indefinite hold.

Also, the game tends to put a preference for sending you on adventure missions, as opposed to the missions you received during a vanilla Space Stage. So, to make sure you get quality adventures, you need to manually go through all of the ones Sporepedia downloads, and decide whether they're worth keeping or not. This may also require you to go to https://www.spore.com and go through Sporepedia for missions you want to have as well. Luckily, they're easy to put in your game, but the process of finding them is tedious.

Also the same equipment that makes your Captain a badass? It's essentially superior to any of the abilities your Captain may or may not already possess. Which, for the combat abilities, makes sense. But, why bother giving your species wings, when there's a jetpack down the line which lets you get as high as the planet's atmosphere. Not to mention having a jetpack AND wings at the same time looks ridiculous. So, if you want a captain who looks aesthetically pleasing to you, you would need to know ahead of time what the equipment is, what it does, and where you equip it. Which even I don't know at this moment.

So, overall, Galactic Adventures adds some interesting twists on a part of the game that a lot of people complained about (The micromanagement whore of a Space Stage), and IMO, makes that part of the game much more interesting. There are some bad points you have to slug through. And if you're not the patient type who can sit for hours designing an awesomely epic Adventure, then the Creators aren't for you either. But, this feels like a true expansion, unlike Cute and Creepy.

My final verdict: Definitely worth the $29.95