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Very fun, movie-like game, but starting to age (2008-12-24)
Advent Rising is a really cool game for adventure gamers and shooter gamers alike. There's plenty of action, and the story is well written. The only problem I encountered was that the game was super-accelerated on my modern machine. I have a 2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 3GB RAM, and an NVIDIA GeForce 8600m 256 MB graphics card. The game runs too fast with both processor cores enabled, but if you set the game process's affinity to one core through the task manager after starting the game, it runs just right. Lots of reviews complain about low frame rates, but that's 3 years ago. I've experienced no problems with the graphics set at maximum.

The action utilizes a rather unique combat system. Two weapons may be carried at any time and any combination of two weapons or super-powers may be equipped in a dual-wield setup. Targeting can be done manually or using the special "flick" system. It takes a short time to adjust one's style to become really comfortable with the gameplay, but the curve is not too steep. I jumped right in and started playing easily. I'm playing through with the difficulty set at normal and it's an enjoyable experience (completing the game on normal or hard unlocks an "ultra" mode).

A warning: Hard-core shooter fans should not expect too much of this game. Everyone's going to have their own opinion of the storyline and characters, but the voice acting and cut-scenes are well done. If you're into awesome, sweeping, movie-style scores, the music in this game will blow you away. At $2 it's an awesome deal for a quick and fun adventure that plays a little like a movie.

Side note: They don't make this game anymore so supply could run out, and there are no sequels as were initially planned.

Highly Recommend Advent Rising (2008-12-18)
Very suprising and good game for so little $$$. A 1st person and 3rd person shooter with great play and cinema and story. Interesting weaponry and powers to challenge and stimulate for many many hours. Buy it, play it, have fun.

A lot to it, but I was still bored. (2008-05-06)
Advent Rising tacks together a lot of different game ideas. It's a run and gun type of game, with the twist of adding magic powers to your arsenal as well. Kind of like Psi-Ops if you've ever played that. It also adds a little bit of action RPG in the mix, of beefing up your abilities when you use them more.

Putting it all together, game mechanics work out good, it's just that it feels like the game misses something..the fun. The guns are pretty ho-hum, so I gave those up pretty much as soon as I gained my first power and nearly never looked back. Melee is all but useless in most cases and even feels clunky. The problem is, the novelty and coolness of whatever power you just got, wears off very quickly, and leaves you just mashing buttons again. The story leaves me tired and the addition of vehicles feels tacked on. All in all, I really liked the mix of all the mechanics, it just can't save the game of a mediocre feel.

There's also the problem of a couple of boss fights where you are given NO clue how to beat them and will be impossible unless by some dumb luck you figure it out or check a walk through. I circled a room for 45 minutes shooting at one guy with everything before I gave up and found a walk through.

It's cheap, so try it out if you want something different, just don't expect a blockbuster.

Also, it's terribly easy to get lost and don't try to skip through the credits. The game isn't over yet and you find yourself in a room wondering 'what the hell?' and the ending after THAT doesn't clean up what you were just doing.

Very surprised, in a good way (2008-05-05)
I hadn't bothered with this game for quite some time due to all the negative reviews from critics. I bought the steam version like a year ago since it was priced so low, and just recently decided to play it. I was shocked. The game started out awesome and kept going from there. There are a few key issues with the game. The cutscenes being from the xbox are blurry as to be expected from an xbox port. However there are some clipping issues and screen tearing as well as an unstable framerate in the cutscenes. Nevertheless the cutscenes and the story as a whole, was at least to me awe inspiring.

The action is good and pretty much nonstop once it starts. The controls take some getting used to and could of been better, but nevertheless once you get used to it and gain some powers, you too can start blasting opponents and throwing them off cliffs. I don't want to spoil the story, so you will have to play it yourself for that, and it is definately worth it. Also the game gets a bit cheap by often having seemingly unlimited reinforcements to replace the enemies you kill thus forcing you to move quickly through some areas instead of hanging out to kill everything that moves like I normally would, however this does have the benefit of keeping the action fast and nonstop. Though to counter that I had to resort to easy mode for much of the game and of my own accord started abusing my newfound abilities and spamming them on my opponents to obliterate tons of them in a short time. I figure I should mention two other games, in a series no less that had comparably good stories as their aren't many around to compete with advent in story The Longest Journey and its sequel Dreamfall Game of the Year (both of which I reccomend). Advent rising might even go so far as to surpass the two mentioned game stories, if thats possible...

This game is also available on xbox, however the pc version fixes many of the issues the xbox version had. Also, though the game is no crysis, it looks very pretty, utilizing the limited hardware available at the time of release to make the environments look quite fantastic. Quite a few things in the environment can be thrown around or otherwise destroyed. This may be a minor spoiler for some of you, but stick around after the credits, the game continues on with an impressive and totally unexpected boss fight. After a bit the game finishes in a painful "to be continued" message. It was an awesome ending, but I say painful because it ended and I still want more, like now.

So get the game now and ignore the critics, though some of their criticisms are legit, they mark down the game far too much as a result. This game is not average like the critics would have you believe, but well above average, one could even say it rates as a masterpiece, with some marring.

This review has gone too long already so I need to close quickly. Anyways like I said the game is awesome, ignore the games faults, they aren't all that bad, and if you can do that, then you too should enjoy this game greatly.

Also I forgot to mention it before, though I feel it may be worth mentioning. I own the steam version so I can't guarantee the same for the box version, but I run vista 64, intel quad core, and an 8800gt and the game runs fine except for two crashes, so the game seems to handle new hardware fine without any apparent compatibility issues, no need to mess with any compatibility settings or anything. And with that I conclude this review. Have fun playing.

Advent Rising (2008-02-09)
Decent game, but didn't make the port very well. It has some weird graphical hiccups at times and is way too short for the price. I enjoy playing it, but not enough that I'm glad I bought it.