Customer Reviews

Spore Galactic Adventures

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(20)

 

 

Galactic Adventures is a good expansion, it jolts another spark of life into Spore, which, though fun, can get old. Thanks to Galactic Adventures, I'm playing Spore for the first time in months. But it doesn't feel like it. And that's the problem.

When I play, I don't think, "Oh, I feel like playing Spore," I think, "Oh, I feel like playing GA." They feel like two different entities, tied together by a loose connection: creativity. Galactic adventures is very creative, and gives you as much, if not more, creative freedom as Spore. But, this expansion not only covers only the space stage, but it doesn't even do much for the space stage. When you play adventures in space stage, it feels like you switched from playing Spore to playing GA, which you have. Once you finish, Space stage is no different.

There were many other expansions that would've been more immersed in the core game. Fans have for a long time waited for water creatures and water civilizations to be added back into the game. Allowing creatures to choose to stay underwater would affect most of the game, no?

Or just more scientific accuracy. So often the game feels shallow and oversimplified, adding just a few more scientific elements could change that.

Galactic Adventures is worth buying, yes. But it certainly isn't the best that EA/Maxis could've done and is hopefully not the direction they're headed with further expansions.

That sums it up for you.

Ill get it out of the way and say YES this does, no surprise, have DRM but i bought this to support maxis, not EA.

If your not happy with working to get your game to work then stop reading and remove this from your cart. First it updates to v1.04, which i couldn't start because of a run time error. That was fixed when i found a fix on the forums though. Then it wanted my DVD or it would not start, I have no idea why though. I put it in ther,e fiddled with some stuff and finally by the grace of God it started.

On to the game itself. The mission creating is fairly powerful, and yes you can make some really neat stuff. Then again all of spores user created content has great editors. Getting a basic mission working is easy. However making it actually good takes time. Settings unit paths, placing trees and objects is all done one at a time.

Should you wish to play some maxis created levels, most require you to use one of their characters and nothing else. Now it does suck but they want the match to be fair and challenging.

If you want to play a Community created level (which so far they suck, but a good one will take time) dont get used to the luxury of dragging them from the website to your folder (if you do that). You MUST go through GA to do this.

One last thing i must mention is this uses a different file to start with. If you start from your basic spore.exe and dont see anything, there is another icon you should use.

Overall Good expansion with DRM and terrible problems.

The space stage is huge but feels a little empty in the original. After dozens of interspecies wars and genocides, a galactic dictator can get kind of bored. With GA, there's a whole new set of actions to do, including designing levels yourself which feels even more satisfying than making your own ships (though some of the gameplay limitations are frustrating, there are work arounds online). Now, you can alternate between managing and improving your empire, expanding through wars and trade, missions for random allies, and doing these adventures. It adds a needed bit of diversity to the space stage and makes it a lot more interesting.

While the maxis made levels are excellent, some of the user created ones suck. There are exceptions to the latter, however, and the quick play function lets you dive right into adventures sorted by rating to find the diamonds in the rough. Now, if only your captain could drive vehicles...

My kids play this a lot and like it quite a bit, but I cannot get the game registered on the EA website, and when I wrote to describe and ask for help with this problem, I never heard back. What trolls!

I'll start with the technical subjects. Firstly, installing this game took a very long time. My dad and I had to re-install the original game, install Galactic Adventures, then get 4 updates, each of which loaded slowly, but things went in general smoothly after that. Although occasionally the game crashes, erasing all progress I haven't yet saved.

Not uncommonly, while playing an adventure, I'll accidently walk my avatar into a something, like a wall, and get stuck. Once you get stuck it's nearly impossible to get out. This glitch is very annoying, because it means the player has got to start the adventure all over again. However, there are lots of good things about this game, too. Making your very own adventures is lots of fun. You can make adventures based on real events! And, of course, you get to play adventures, too! Sometimes adventure's can be quite complicated. Some adventures are super fun. Maxis should make more adventures, though. Since Maxis adventures give your captain 100 points, while non-Maxis one usually give much less. Your captain needs these points to gain new accessories (weapons etc.)

I really like all the great new accessories. You get a wide variety of cool weapons for your captain and some of the friendly accessories are quite fun. Also Galactic Adventures lets you put exo-skeleton limbs on your creatures.

All in all Spore Galactic Adventures is an awesome expansion pack to the original game.

Let me start with singling out the most useful feature of "Galactic Adventures". The rate of eco-disasters drops from approx 1/min (with 5 disasters occurring simultaneously at a time) to 1/4 hours. This is truly a great tweak that allows you to explore the galaxy without having to worry about your empire dying out as soon as you leave your home world. However, this should be is a tiny patch, not an expansion pack. I doubt it was intended, but you need to buy this product to make Spore vanilla playable.

Now, let's look at the main shtick of "Galactic Adventures" - the RPG missions in the Spore universe. The idea is good, may be even great: your creature from the "Creature" stage beams down to the planet and interacts (woos/kills) other creatures. Completed adventures give you experience points, and when you level up, you get a choice to buy a new accessory (death ray/special pretty pose) for your avatar. When I first saw this I was stunned - that was exactly what had been needed to bring Spore to life.

Then, the disappointment set in. Maxis created just over a dozen of adventures; the rest was left to users. The reasoning was: users create great creatures/vehicles/buildings, let's rely on them creating adventures themselves too. Here's why this doesn't work: when you design a new critter or a spaceship, you only choose its looks since the stats system is rudimentary in creatures and nonexistent in ships. With adventure design, on the other hand, you create gameplay. And, as Maxis should have known, users are bad level designers. Little Big Planet had a few gems in oceans of garbage; "Galactic Adventures" seems to follow the same tendencies. Users just don't contribute enough effort into creating good levels; that's what Maxis employees are supposed to be doing.
To make it worse, Maxis adventures award you with 100xp each; while user generated ones only give you 10xp. So, to get that new death ray, you will be stuck doing one mess of an adventure after another, after another (it may go into the hundreds for higher levels).

Maxis planned to work on creating more adventures after the release, but their Sporepedia page is virtually empty, save for one imposter who figured out that he can get his adventures into it by calling himself "the Maxis".

To sum it up - "Galactic Adventure" doesn't have many worthwhile adventures in it. The only reason to buy it is to get some tweaks for the Spore vanilla game, but this can, probably, be done just by messing with the config files.

Useless

Upon installing Spore Galactic Adventures I received numerous error messages and was unable to load it due to some corrupted file on the installation disc(tried several times). My system meets all of the requirements so I have no idea how to fix this. I read the manual's troubleshooting section with no luck. When I tried to call the tech support referenced in the manual, I found out that it is in United Kingdom... hence I would have to pay for an international call (I live in the US). My next step is to email tech support as they don't offer chat support. Very frustrating as I don't have the extra time in my life to hassle with this (this is a game for my 8 year old).

Every single feature of this game is monstrously unreliable and glitchy. Missions will crash at least half of the time. Any idea that might strike one as a common sense good thing will not be found in this game. Worst waster of money I have ever experienced in gaming.

Was reticent to purchase a game with complaints from Mac users, but my son insisted on spending his own money to get this game. It installed on the first try and we've had no problems. The game has been in almost constant use since it arrived in the mail. It's fun going down to the planets for adventures.

DO YOURSELF A FAVOR: Do not buy this game!

Spend your money on another, non-EA product that you like, instead.

I regret that I can't rate this game lower. In a nutshell, the "protections" on this game render it unplayable. In an effort to rectify my problems, I stumbled on forum, after forum, after forum of hundreds of people who, like me, purchased the game legitimately only to not be able to install it!

First, the installation didn't work--because it needed to be patched. Surely, that's no coincidence. EA releases a buggy game, knowing users will need patches to continue. Then, they restrict access by forcing you to register to receive them. Also, I don't even think you can play the game without being online and logged into their demeaning tracking servers.

After jumping through 50 million hoops during installation and registration (including customer support, I had to register no less than 4 times!!!!!), the nightmare finally ends with them refusing to let me continue:

"The registration code used for this game cannot be validated"

Not only did I PURCHASE THE GAME... I BOUGHT IT FROM EA, DIRECTLY.

To make matters worse, this is for my son. He "earned" the game with great behavior and improved grades. For all that hard work, he still hasn't been able to play ONCE and it's been WEEKS since I bought the game. I HAVE A DEGREE IN COMPUTER SCIENCE AND I CAN'T GET THE WRETCHED THING WORKING!!!

Had I downloaded the torrent, instead, my son would have been playing within an hour.

Electronic Arts' approach to piracy is backward and punishes the wrong people. Pirates still pirate. Legitimate users get screwed. Problem "amplified" not "solved."

At this point, not only do I not want to use this game, I will forever shy away from EA products, entirely.

I don't care how good EAs future games are: I will purchase the next best thing from the next-best company. Either way, my son will still have fun ...and THAT's all that matters.

It's a shame that EA has lost sight of this.