Spore Galactic Adventures

I’m something of a Spore Whore (as I like to call it.) Although Spore is  admittedly not the game I hoped it would be, that being a next-gen Sim Earth with at least some science and more variety behind it, I still enjoy it quite a bit.

The first full expansion pack (Creepy and Cute was more of an item pack) is well… interesting.

In keeping with the customization, web 2.0, “let the players make our content” tradition Galactic Adventures focuses on expanding the final sandbox Space portion of the Spore gameplay by allowing players to create their own levels/mission.

You can use creatures, buildings, a number of props, actual game elements (teleporters, jump pads, power ups etc.) as well as special effects and a large selection of music and sounds to create multi-part missions. You can trigger events, set a number of actions and goals to characters, creatures and objects, and even program some rudimentry AI into the NPCs and creatures on your Adventure planet.

Then other players can download these and they will pop up in normal gameplay. You can tell the old style of missions from the new because the keyword “Adventure” will always pop up. I removed my mods and began to play as a less developed space race I had made and so now when I run into a new empire I tend to dart from planet to planet until one of those bastards gives me an Adventure mission as opposed to one of the old “go here and get this” or “shoot anything glowing yellow” ones.

As I said before, the mission creation is actually pretty sophisticated, however it can be bloody frustrating. At least in something like The Sims everything is on a grid. Not so in Spore. Sure you can place things wherever you want, resize them, set how far off the ground they are, and have several options to sculpt the terrain, but I’ve yet to find a way to rotate the camera. Part of the Mad Morlax mission (first picture in this article) I created takes place inside a makeshift building (you can’t actually enter a single building, you need to create one using buildings that look like individual walls and rooftops) and it was really difficult to see what the hell I was doing when I was trying to place the walls.

However, as part of gameplay these missions are great. Completing them gets you weapon and gear upgrades to help you survive in future Adventures. Of course since they’re made by other players they’re going to be a little hit or miss, but you can rate them when you’re through. Still, I’m amazed at how creative some people get with Galatic Adventures, especially the ones that design buildings to look like other objects (with the resize ability you can make a building look like a chair, a bowl of food, a computer, whatever prop you need and just shrink it down.) I really do want to learn more of the little details of what you can do with it and have already been working on a new, much bigger Adeventure myself.

And although I said the missions are a little hit or miss you can also get around running into crappy missions by subscribing to reputable Adventure sporecasts.

All and all, though it strays from the whole evolution part of the game Galactic Adventures is a good offering, especially for 30 bucks.

You can see me on Spore under MPSai.

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