Advent Rising

Now the first time I saw this game, I could clearly see that they used Halo as a reference. Throughout the game you’ll see something that resembles Halo. From aliens wanting to kill humans all through the universe, to the s***ty cliffhanger ending.

The story is about this guy who goes with the Amb*ssador of Earth to talk to the first alien’s to have contact with humans. You go on their ship and they said there is another race of aliens called "The Seekers" that wants all humans dead, and just about all of you will perish. So the Seekers come, you go to earth, fight aliens, escape in a space ship, then the one major thing that differs Halo to AR. EARTH BLOWS UP! Yes, you get to see your "little rock which you call a home" blown up and everyone on it. Making you, the girl who owns the ship, and either your brother or your girl friend. Then it goes from there.

At the beginning of the game, you have to control a space ship and get it into a dock. One of the major pointless gameplay in the game. Now it’s a nice add on, but it’s pointless. Then there’s the fighting. Unless you change target setting to the lowest setting, this game will be the biggest pain in the *ss. If not, then your target will be moving around all over the place, lock on targets that you don’t want to, or target the enemy that isn’t attacking you instead of the one killing you. Invisible walls are a big problem in this game to. I would think you would be able to get on top of a 5 ft. box, but there are invisible walls on top of it so you can’t. Another problem is just the actual controls, the same button you use to pick up a gun for your left hand, is the dodge button. I’ll be running around gunfire, go try to pick up a gun, and instead I go flying over it and into an enemy! One thing that’s cool is shooting non-stop at a horde of enemies kicking all their *sses.



The psychic powers are somewhat cool. The only one I really liked was the time one, which sends you flying like 30 feet away in less than a second was. It’s also a good fighting tool to. I can kill just about everything using that power and not even use a gun once. The other psychic powers include a shield, ice crystals, lighting balls, a force pushing power thing, and others I forgot what they do. You won’t really use your powers much, until late in the game. By then you only have one level left though.

Graphics are of course outdated. It looks like a game from 2003, but it gets laggy when too many things are going on. There is a movie sequence where the voices don’t even go with the mouths. So you have 3 seconds of mouth movement with no voices. Other times you’ll be attacking a large group, then the frame rate will go down.

Another major thing I have to say is bad camera movement. There is a part in the game where your running through a ship while it is crashing to the ocean of an alien ship. It is falling apart, and you have to run like hell and watch for falling debree and the floor breaking apart from your feet. I was running and suddenly my camera goes through the wall and I couldn’t see a thing. Ten seconds later that part of the ship collapsed and I died.



Sound is really good in this game. The music is fantastic, sound effects are life like, and the voice acting is pretty decent. The music reminds me of the music from Halo. You have the opera singing, but it has like all ranges singing it. Eventually in the game you’ll notice how much they over use a song. Just about three songs are over used in the game. There’s the action music, sad music, and the basic walking around music. Since the music is like music from a movie, most of the sound tracks are basically the same. They are either sped up for action, or slowed down for sadness.

Now there is one more thing I have to complain about, and that’s the ending. After you beat the final boss (which will be either your old girl friend or your brother, depending who you saved), she/he sends you to an ice planet. Now at this point you walk around in the cold while your health depletes. When it’s just about gone, you get a movie sequence. This other alien dude comes up and says “Human, there is much to do.” Then there’s a zoom out and BAM you’re at the title screen. The last bit of game play in a fairly decent game is you walking around, doing nothing while your dying!

In the end it’s a good game, besides those problems. When they make the sequel, I hope they fix these problems. Go rent it.

4 star(s) out of 5

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