Spore attempts to rein all this back into the main game by having the intergalactic creatures in the game, who routinely dispatch you on missions, now occasionally invite you planetside to complete Galactic Adventures. So because these strange adventure scenarios tie into the main game on a content level, it is possible to consider GA a proper expansion pack — like buying hats or holiday stuff in The Sims. But at its weird little alien heart, this “expansion” is another expression of Spore‘s core idea — that user-created content driven by a massive procedural system under the hood and shared online can create endless types of entertainment. Under the microscope, Galactic Adventures is just more strange, Spore fun. From the cosmic view, this is another piece of the ever-expanding imaginative insanity the original game only ever hinted at.

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