Reviewed by CL on 1/19/2007
I beat Advent Rising yesterday and I must say, I was really disappointed with this game. This has to be the lowest scoring game that I've actually stuck with long enough to beat. Advent Rising starts off looking like a very promising game. I think that the reason it looks so promising is because the first two levels basically rip off Halo exactly. The first level involves escaping a doomed space station (aka the Pillar of Autumn) and the second level has you driving around an open ground level in a vehicle that looks suspiciously like a Warthog. Oh well, if you're going to rip something off, you might as well rip off one of the best Xbox games out there.
From there, Advent Rising just goes downhill. At first, the combat was kind of fun as you could target multiple foes at one and dual wield weapons. But as the game goes on, the combat is actually surprisingly hollow. It is simply way too easy to wipe out enemies without even thinking due to the automatic targeting system. There is no location specific damage, all the weapons are effectively the same, and you can't really tell any enemies apart since they all seem to do the same thing and you defeat all of them in pretty much the same way (just shoot them a bunch).
Another problem is that the game's story seems to make no sense and you never know what you're suppose to be doing or why you're doing it. One minute, you're escaping a crumbling city and next, you're in space with a bunch of weird aliens who are showing you how to levitate things. The cut scenes don't help to explain the story either as many times, they seem to just be a bunch of mismatched images all jumbled together.
Speaking of not knowing what to do, the boss fights in this game are about the most retarded things in the world. You have absolutely no clue how to defeat a boss. There are no hints given and the actual solution involves some convoluted sequence of events that you have to trigger. Save yourself the frustration and just look up what you're suppose to do instead of trying to figure it out yourself. Truly horrible game design.
The place where Advent Rising really breaks down is in the technical issues. There are so many bugs in this game that it makes you wonder if the game was ever tested. The frame rate is horrendous (dipping into the single digits in some places). Also, the game has frozen up on me several times during play forcing me to reset the Xbox. Sometimes the game locks onto an invisible object and won't release the lock. There are countless glitches where doors won't open, people won't follow you, elevators won't move, etc. The list of what's wrong with this game goes on and on.
The only good thing about this game is the soundtrack which is really great. The only problem is the audio glitches so many times that you never get to hear it completely.
Advent Rising is supposed to be the first of a trilogy of games. However, Advent Rising didn't sell well at all so I imagine the next two games are cancelled. I for one am glad that they're cancelled. I can't imagine sitting through two more games filled with incompetent coding, incomprehensible storylines, bland characters, technical glitches, and hollow gameplay. Advent Rising is a great example of a horrible game. Two thumbs down.
