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SPORE:  Galactic Adventures is an expansion that will kill a few hours at a time, whenever you feel like it. I think that’s an important distinction to make – the difference between your immersion in a truly epic game that you have to really pull yourself away from, and a game that is easy to break away from, but is still fun to play for hours at a time.  Through it’s simple interface for play and very in-depth character(creature) creation process, it can be a pleasant diversion whether you’re more into the gaming itself, or (like me) you enjoy playing around with how bizarre a creature you can make, or how human you can evolve it.

The game begins at the level of a single-celled organism, and you evolve your creature (I named my creature Lepreclops, after my two favourite mythological beasts) from an amoeba-like blob to a sentient, spacefaring species.  The funny thing is that even at the point of civilization I found that my creature still seemed animalistic to me, which bothered me a bit.  The progression of the stages goes from simple and fleeting (like the amoeba-stages) to the more engaging and complex (like spacefaring eras).

The creature creation system features some new parts not featured in the original SPORE, so maybe a million more combination of parts.  I’m not kidding, it’s that diverse. So if you’re like me, and just want a diversion for a few hours here and there, then you may want to take your time evolving your creature.

Spore in action.

Spore in action.

One interesting feature of the Galactic Adventures expansion is that users can design their own missions.  Which means that any given planet your species lands on, may or may not have a maze of certain death awaiting them – like an intergalactic IKEA.  Of course, it could also be a happy funland rescue-the-kitten mission.  It depends on how sadistic the player is.  So,most likely a death-maze.

All in all, I found this game to be somewhat engaging but at the same time, I found it a little lackluster in almost every aspect but the creature creator.  Lucky for SPORE, the creature creator alone is pretty much worth the buy.  It’s although worth a few hours of your time, here and there.

Cheers.

Graphics: 4/5

Interface: 3/5

Gameplay: 3/5

Replay value: 5/5

andPOP rating - 3 stars






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