Advent Rising

"Great ideas meet sloppy execution"

Good trilogies of games are getting harder and harder to find now a day, especially with so many great ones ending, such as Prince of Persia and Ratchet and Clank, so when a new game trilogy comes around, I am one of the first to try it. Advent Rising is one of the games that I always meant to play, but never got to. That was until I found it cheap in a store one day, and finally got the chance to try it out. Well, I am happy to say that I have found a great new trilogy of games, and I couldn't be happier.

Advent Rising starts out on a space station above Earth, you a Gideon Wyeth, Brother of Ethan Wyeth, who is the biggest war hero of Edumea's time, and Fiancee to a woman named Olivia. You are a highly ranked Captain in the military, and one of the best pilots around. Now after the war you are helping areas rebuild. But you are one of the few lucky ones to get to board an alien space craft, and meet an alien species unknown to everyone.

But not everything is as great as you thought it was, the reason for the alien species, The Aurelians, to come find you is to warn you that another alien race, called Seekers, are coming to kill all of humanity, and destroy the planet, and you only have a few days to warn everyone and prepare for war. But tragedy strikes and the Seekers show up way before anyone expected them to. Now you must save humanity, and don't die. It's a pretty interesting story, cliqued, but interesting, and is a great start to a trilogy, and sets up the next game perfectly.

While the story itself is pretty good, where this game deprives the most is its game play. It felt like something that was so great, and yet it just wasn't done right. The camera and frame rate issues were probably one of the most agonizing things in Advent Rising. The always horrible camera views really were a problem while trying to perform jumps and dodges, one level especially while trying to escape from a breaking ship, and not being able to plan the jumps right and dieing. Frame rate was pretty bad, especially some of the cut scenes.

Fighting probably one of Advent Risings strong points though, because it gives you so much ways to fight your enemy. There are a total of 12 different weapons in the game, while I was disappointed in the quality and the number of weapons, they were original and fun, and the ability to dual wield and carry multiple weapons was awesome. You also have a set of powers in you, your Advent powers, which there are 8 of in the game, and all will be used, and all are pretty cool.

Plus, all the weapons and all of the powers are upgradeable, and the only way to upgrade them is using and mastering them. Or, in some cases you will have to get in a vehicle and drive, fly and battle the Seekers. The combat is never short in deliverance, even if the never ending wave of enemy's and tired gun controls way it down.

The one thing Advent Rising didn't come up short in was voice acting and music. The characters all had great voices and seemed like a really cinematic and real experience while playing, because the characters seemed so lifelike. The music has a very unique and cool feel to it through out the game, and was probably had to be one of the best parts of the game, and sound effects fit in really well and sounded pretty good. Just some of the audio and sound levels were out of whack and really brought down some of the better parts of the game. Like before minor technical errors killed the great parts of the game.

But no technical error is to blame for the graphics of Advent Rising. While I do understand that they were trying to give it a unique and cinematic feel, what they did was horrible wrong. Sure the colors were beautiful, but character models lacked seriously, guns and cloths were generic, the NPC in some of the cut scenes were the same two people running around in the same motions doing the same things, and that just wasn't cool with me. For something coming out this late on the X-Box, I expected something a lot more polished than what I got.

Advent Rising is a decent start of a great trilogy. While it may seemed like all I did was talk about negative in this review, there is a lot of good that comes with Advent Rising, the story is very compelling, and takes many twist and turns, the voice acting was great, and the ideas that they have going for the game like powers and weapons and the climax ending, are all great, its just so many little things made this from being great.

Even through all of the errors and glitches, I would still say it's a good buy, and you won't be bored with it, although you probably will be annoyed. I can't wait for the sequel to this game, and I know it will be even better than this. Advent Rising was probably one of the last X-Box titles I will play, but its still a very good game and doesn't let up from being anything short than that.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 05/31/06