December 23, 2005

A review of the new Xbox Game Advent Rising

Hype. A single word that in itself defines the gaming world. Good hype, bad hype, it’s really all relative. Hype can make a game or destroy a game. The lack of it can force a game to slip under the shadows while too much will lead to widespread disappointment and eternal shame. Advent Rising, an extremely ambitious new Sci-Fi Third Person Action game from GlyphX and Majesco has had plenty of hype built up around its name. It promises superpowers, a unique targeting system, and solid third person mechanics, as well as a storyline contributed to by the famed Orson Scott Card. The question is: Can Advent Rising overcome its hype?

Thanks to some good delays (good delays is almost an oxymoron considering 99% of games have bad delays), Advent Rising emerged from being an extremely shoddy demo a year ago to have finally started turning into the package it was meant to be. The extra development time really helped to make Advent Rising a solid, presentable package. However, there are still a few things that keep Advent Rising from being what it could have been. Read on for more details.

The story is simple yet very satisfying thanks to the assistance of Orson Scott Card. In a dreary future, humans have colonized other planets and in the meantime have come across two alien races, one friendly and one not so friendly. In fact, the not so friendly one has a death warrant out for any and all humans in the universe. Enter Gideon, the hero of the story. It is now his job to save his world and the human race from utter destruction from an alien race known as the Seekers. The storyline is definitely well presented and is one of the strong points of the game. It also sets the game up for sequels, considering as how the game box itself advertises the game as part of the “Advent Trilogy.”

To aid you in your quest, Gideon has been empowered with some good gameplay techniques. The game features some slow motion elements which lend their hand in Gideon being able to successfully dodge enemy attacks and then set up to attack the enemy at their weak point. But what makes moves like this work is the games intuitive and very innovative targeting system called “Flick Targeting.” Simply flick the right analog stick in any direction to have the targeting reticule target the nearest enemy in that direction and stay on that enemy no matter what. This system lends its hand when there are enemies flying around that would normally be difficult to track but now with one flick the reticule will stick on to them, allowing you to focus your attention on instead dodging the enemies attacks to avoid being damaged.

There are many, many weapons and powers that Gideon obtains throughout the game. Together, they form quite a powerful arsenal. The weapons a wide range of blasters and lasers and launchers of which the smaller weapons can be dual wielded (Halo baby!) for maximum potential. While these weapons are destructive themselves, the superpowers are the true powerhouses. These powers are mainly psychic in nature allowing you to pick up enemies and fill them with bullets or use a kind of psychic push to knock all your enemies back and phase them to allow yourself some breathing room.

Then come the aspects of the game the begin to wear it done. While there are many great parts to the gameplay, there are also some glaring issues that should have been worked out. The camera can be tricky at times, the controls can be absolutely frustrating, especially in battle, and the enemy AI is quite ridiculous. Overall, the game is much too easy and the enemy is just programmed to shoot on sight, really nothing beyond that. The whole game is basically a lack of enemy AI.

The game does look pretty good, but even the graphics come in a mixed bag. Everything about the game is styled well with plenty of personality and detail. The environments are beautiful, the characters are well modeled and animated, and the special effects are brilliant and sparkly. However, all of a sudden things don’t look so good when the frame rate gets clunky. And Advent Rising has a big, continuous problem with its frame rate. The game slows down and gets choppy very frequently, which quickly turns a very pretty game into a not so pretty game, even a downright ugly one at times.

Audio can be best described just as how the visuals were. The game had the potential to be one of the best sounding games of the year. The music is epic and matches the game greatly, the audio effects go hand in hand with the visual special effects and really enhance to look of the game and helps to draw the gamer in, and the voice acting and dialogue is absolutely superb and only contributes onto an already engaging storyline. Yet when the music frequently cuts off and when sound effects start to sound distorted all of sudden thanks to the game’s many bugs, Advent Rising begins to not sound as good as it could have either. It’s a pity, really.

Once you finish the game, you are pretty much done. And on that note, you will be finished rather quickly. The game is like Beyond Good and Evil, pretty fun while you play it (although BG&E wasn’t played by the terrible bugs of Advent Rising), but the total gameplay hours are disappointingly short indeed. The game only offers 8-10 hours of gameplay time max and gives little incentive to play through again.

Advent Rising is the story of the game that could have been. Its hype will tear it down in the long run, leaving gamers disappointed by a game that promised so much and came so close but ended up delivering so little. Just some more bug fixes and enhancements could have made the game 10x as good. Games have to get the fundamentals right first and Advent Rising just couldn’t rise to the occasion. In the end, all that can be said is, “Better luck next time!”