Common Sense Media Review
By Marc Saltzman
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Decent but expensive expansion pack to fun sim game.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 10+?
Any Positive Content?
Where to Play
Videos and Photos
Spore Galactic Adventures
What's It About?
The first expansion pack to Electronic Arts' popular evolution simulation, Spore, is now available. SPORE GALACTIC ADVENTURES adds a lot of content to the Space portion of the original game (which is required to play this add-on), including many story-based adventures and the ability to create and share your own playable missions (including collecting, combat, and exploring objectives). Players turn their advanced creature into Space Captains (and decorate them with more than 30 new items), battle intergalactic monsters in arenas, and show off their rank on a global Creature Card that shows their accomplishments and medals to the online world.
Is It Any Good?
If you've been playing Spore for months and feel like it needs a shot in the arm, then you'll find Spore Galactic Adventures successfully blends in mission-based game-play (complementing the open-ended sandbox play in the original game) as you beam down to the planet surface to tackle these goals. Along with more combat, puzzles and racing elements, it's fun to create and share custom-made goals on Spore.com. New creature accessories also add to the appeal, especially for those who like to tweak the look of their space captains. But the $30 price tag seems high for an expansion pack, particularly when the full Spore game is just $10 more. While a good add-on pack, its value seems for appropriate at $20 (if not less). That said, this add-on disc proves to be a clever addendum for fans of the franchise.
Online interaction: You can create and then share your own playable missions. Plus your accomplishments can be shared with the rest of the world through your global Creature Card.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about EA's practice of selling a main PC game and then many expansion packs, or optional add-ons, that require the original disc. Do you think this is milking customers for more money or is the smaller cost appropriate given the amount of new content?
Spore is a game about designing your own animal species. Why did you make the design decisions that you did? Does your species become your alter ego the way an avatar does?
Game Details
- Platform : Windows
- Pricing structure :
- Available online? : Available online
- Publisher : Electronic Arts
- Release date : June 23, 2009
- Genre : Action/Adventure
- ESRB rating :
- Last updated : November 11, 2020
Did we miss something on diversity?
Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by
Suggest an Update
Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.
See how we rate