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Mac|Life has published a new review of Spore Galactic Adventures. The expansion for Will Wright's evolution sim offers players the ability to beam down to planets, an equipment editor, and an Adventure Creator that gives gamers the chance to create their own missions and share them with others. Mac|Life gave Galactic Adventures a score of 3 out of 5.

From the review:

Still, you can personally craft nearly everything in the game: individual creatures, planetary environments, background music, ambient structures, building interiors, and more. If you have the time and creativity, Galactic Adventures can generate astonishing, unique results.

But at what cost? As a player in other people’s sandboxes, you’ll encounter many more first-draft worlds than masterpieces. Theoretically, a ranking system should help you find crowd-approved favorites, but weak organization somehow doesn’t bring the best to the top.

Spore’s developers built in a few dozen adventures, but even those include some duds, such as the high-concept retelling of The Metamorphosis that mostly leaves you scurrying between characters to read their dialogue. An adventure by the creators of the off-kilter TV show Robot Chicken mixes a funny story with terrible design: You pick from several doors to progress, but we spent a half-hour wandering around without knowing we’d lost. Worse, we regularly had problems moving in many adventures, getting stuck behind objects, walls, and ambient characters.

Mac|Life: Spore Galactic Adventures

Electronic Arts (add to watch list)

Spore Galactic Adventures (add to watch list)

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