Advent Rising

"Quite Interesting"

Well I have to start off saying how surprised I was when I played this game. I figured it would be a third person Halo and I was pretty much right.
GRAPHICS 9/10
Halo like in quality on the aliens, they look as though they are based on real ones. I was astounded when I saw this high of quality in the game. The people are also done very well, but its the scenery that lowers the score. It's not like the scenery is bad it's just where ever you are the whole thing is the same.

SOUND 10/10
Great voice overs for all the characters and the few times an alien does talk it's incredible as well. I also liked the background music it reflected the danger or tension or the tranquility of the cut scene or whilst you were playing the game.

CONTROLS 6/10
I'm going to brake down the controls into two parts, driving/ flying and shooting.

SHOOTING 8/10
The controls work well when you are walking around which most of the time you will be shooting at the aliens trying to wipe you out. They (the controls) fit very well into the scheme of shooting using L to fire left weapon and R to fire right weapon.

DRIVING/ FLYING 5/10
Major downside, while flying is the hardest and most confusing part to me because you have to steer up, down, left, right, back, and forth it doesn't matter too much I've only arrived at one flying mission used to start the game and it was very brief. But driving is almost as bad and used to transport yourself from place to place throughout the areas. you have to use R for boost (a.k.a. nitrous) and the left joystick to accelerate and brake (up to accelerate and down to brake.) But you also have to use the right stick to steer around which requires coordination of both hands but even if you have that (which I do) it is still quite puzzling to navigate throughout the area with out a map.

GAME PLAY 8/10
Mostly the driving/ flying brings this down. I have a ton of fun playing this game except when you come to a driving mission. But any ways while going through the game trying to stay alive and fight off the aliens trying to exterminate the human race you reach check points which will reload your progress from their but won't help you if you turn the power off then you are reloaded at the last save point you reached. The one worst feature is that you are in so much open space but no map provided for you so navigating yourself throughout the area get confusing.

OVERALL 7/10
I have fun playing personally but the driving needs some tweaking to it. If you like halo and the third person shooter style then you should like this game a lot.

BUY RENT OR DON'T BOTHER
Rent this game because the driving gets to become very frustrating but the moving and shooting and basically the entire storyline are all very well thought out.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 03/20/06