Mercury News: Spore Galactic Adventures preview

On 01.24.09, In News, by Ball Lightning

Set to be released this spring, Galactic Adventure gives players the opportunity to get their hands on the creatures they’ve made in Spore. This expansion pack, which requires the first game, lets players design their own quests using a robust level editor.

It’s a smart move that taps into the collective creativity of the Spore community. You’ll be able to make your own planets, decide on whether they want they want to make it fiery or snowy via templates. Players can even modify its landscape and add a wide range of structures like castles and towers.

But that just scratches the surface, players can also manipulate characters, choosing from millions of spore creatures and use them as nonplayable characters in their level.

They all come with a plethora of modifiable traits. For instance, fans can adjust their range of awareness, roaming area or even their aggressiveness. They can even be scripted to pick up certain objects so they drop them when defeated.

As far as quests go, Maxis has managed to create a wide variety within the game. There’s the simple fetch quest where players have to find an object like a flask and return it to a certain character. There are also races through mazes and defense missions, where players have to protect a certain character.

These missions all end up in a story that can run up to five acts.

But while I watched the creation process, I could clearly see the influence ofLittleBigPlanet in the design. The expansion pack has a lot of the traits similar to Sony’s platformer.

On top of that, Maxis will also have its own quests built into the game and while exploring the galaxy, players may run into an alien race that needs their help. Coming to their aid, gives rewards to fans such as new equipment or moves for their creatures.

Warrior races provides new armaments for creatures. Diplomatic races offer moves that help you get along with others. Bard-type aliens offer dance moves like a weird disco celebration.

This is all fine and dandy but where Galactic Adventures one-upsLittleBigPlanet is in its search category. Players can tag their levels with credible labels and the system even categorizes them in helpful groups such as adventures through mazes, etc. Such a flexible system will inevitably help players find an adventure from a plethora of possibilities.