Advent Rising

The graphics are a fair 4/10 with lower quality than one would expect for the time period and many noticable visual glitches and artifacts. If all you care about is how pretty the game is, you'll be disappointed by Advent Rising. The shooter mechanics are a solid 7/10. They're remeniscient of Halo 1 or 2 and fairly fun. With a large assortment of weapons each with unlockable firing modes and dual weapon firing, using them is fun and you won't get bored of shooting things. That is until... The super power mechanic is a fantastic 8/10. (oops, spoilers. If you didn't already know this game has magic, go watch the trailers.) Powers follow the same skill mechanic with unlockable modes as weapons do, which adds variety and allows you to develop your character and play the game in a unique way. It also adds some replayability as you may want to try playing with a focus on using different powers to see what cool abilities you gain. Overall, I love this game. But not for its mechanics. I love it for the story, and that's also where I'm the most disappointed. Pushed by the publisher, the game was rushed through development to meet a way too aggressive release date, which left the game missing nearly 50% of its content upon release. And it shows. As you play it's easy to see places where levels were cut off and additional story arcs were removed to save time. The opening cutscene is perfectly polished and smoothly integrated into gameplay and by itself it will leave you in awe of what the game promises. But due to the time constraints, the rest of the cutscenes are hastily pasted in without that same polish and many are jarring in how they interrupt gameplay. Advent Rising is a beautiful epic masterpiece that was clearly left unfinished. If you enjoy rich, imaginative story and world-building, you'll love Advent Rising as much for what it could have been as for what it is.

This is a piece of shit. It's ugly, buggy and is stylistically pretty much the sick fantasy of a Halo nerd. But then again, the story does try, and comes up with an interesting and fresh premise, carried out in the cheesiest comic book style possible. And this is tasty cheese. Although it stops making any sense near the end, even to the point of not even coherently transitioning from one scene to the next. There's a poor attempt at multiple choices, but you generally don't feel it save for a supporting character being swapped out. While the controls are lackluster on the PC they get the job done. Though you may need to manually configure a few .ini's to get your gamepad working right. The soundtrack is wonderful. Beautiful to the bone, rivalling the most epic film scores. The sound mix however is terrible, it even contains a level whose entire sound consists pretty much solely of a single all overpowering white noise drowning out everything else. I think it's supposed to be wind but it doesn't really come through that way. Generally the music doesn't fit the situation thanks to the simplistic and unbalanced mix. The soundtrack is a much better way to enjoy this aspect. Most of the time either you can't hear the music or it drowns out everything else. The prerendered cutscenes are stunning visually, though some that seem to be rendered in the game engine with FRAPS or something like that are ugly and stuttering, with no fix as the stuttering is encoded in the video. The graphics are decent enough, but they are aging and could be better even then. Animations are good as well, the aforementioned nosie level may be unbearable to hear, it is visually captivating with a very impressive animation of the level being torn apart. Though the gameplay suffers from the numerous sometimes gamebreaking sometimes just confusing bugs. If, however you can stand the crashing, the mission critical allies dissapearing or teleporting outside the level or wherever they now went, the glitchy vehicles etc. You're in for a real treat. There's a good selection of powers with a good system for switching between them and a ton of fun and diverse weapons and the movement is impressive and engaging. Most of the time it plain doesn't work. But when it does, Advent Rising represents the epitome of straight up badass arcade action. Sail through the air in slowmotion as you headshot multiple enemies simultaneously before switching to your "force push" power to deflect missiles right back in the face of the sender and landing with an impressive and deadly melee strike. Dance around your enemies with melee, send them flying and blast them into oblivion in the greatest, most epic, and sadly shittiest and buggiest action game of all time. If only they'd done it good so we could have the other two games to finish the halfway decent story. Despite the numerous and unbearable flaws, it does what it does well, well enough to impress me, and the story is epic and engaging even though it only represents the first act of a trilogy and dissasembles into mad incoherency near the end. It's great. If only it'd been good too it would have gotten a five.

The story of this game is great. If you like mass effect then this game is for you. The music and cinematics really draw you into the game. Where it fails is the control scheme. The characters are unnecessarily hard to control. You will hate every vehicle mission. If you can live with bad controls and by all means give this game a try. I think it's worth it.

At first you may think the plot is shallow and dry, while true, on the surface, it has a sort of subtext that you don't need to reach far to pick up on. Orson Scott Card is a eugenicist and genocide apologist. Knowing that, replay the game, the plot takes on a whole new meaning. The first contact with the alien species who would sacrifice every one of themselves to see humanity survive, despite having far superior technology and a seemingly enlightened society represent those who would throw themselves down before the superior race knowing that only the human ubermenschen are fit to lead, and that they need to attain their 'true potential'. There are a couple other things which you can pick up in the first hour of the game, try to find the instance of "good intentions make the law irrelevant." The plot to this game was written well after the author's descent into right wing political fantasies and probably a little before his infamous 2004 editorial on marriage equality. If I'm just over-analyzing it, sorry, but it's still made of trope and the gameplay is forgettable action platofrmer status, just without the platforming. Don't let the "games with good writing" category fool you.

Advent Rising is a highly enjoyable third-person action game with remarcable gameplay elements and story. The soundtrack will definitely make an impression on you. Story --> Good sci-fi story even if a bit predictable at times. Nevertheless it's clear that the writers had thought of a whole original universe that they intended to continue to present in sequels of the game. It's sad that they didn't get that chance. 5/5 Gameplay --> The main selling point of the game, the first part half of the game will consist of dual-wielding gun battles where a similar feature to the Max Payne bullet time will be mainly used. In the second part of the game your character will receive powers that bring the Jedi force powers to mind, guns can still be used but your powers will clearly be the more fun choice. 5/5 Soundtrack --> Superb orchestral score in tune with pivotal story moments. 5/5 Controls --> Far from perfect controls, will require sensitivity tuning and a little getting used to. 3/5 Bugs --> Some rare crashes, some bugs resulting in the character getting stuck in the environment, played on Windows 10 X64. 4/5 Final score 4.25/5 A game clearly worth playing.