Advent Rising fails to reach its many lofty goals, but what a spectacular failure it is...
How painful.
This game had it all: a brilliant plot, great gameplay mechanics (at least on paper), a big budget, and a big name (Orson Scott Card, author of the Ender novels) behind it.
It is fun, frustrating, emotional, uninspired, beautiful, and ugly all in itself.
Advent Rising is about hope rising from desperation. You play Gideon Wyeth, co-pilot of the first ship from "Edumea" to make contact with extraterrestrial species. It turns out that the aliens, members of a race called Aurelians, have come to warn us of an imminent threat: the N'Kuls - also known as the Seekers. As is conveniently summed up everywhere but in the game, the Seekers are a great race who travel to planets all over the universe, bring gifts of resources and technology to the people they meet, and almost single-handedly created the Galactic Senate.
Fortunately, the game does tell us that the Seekers' true goal is to render humans extinct.
It appears that many civilizations believe in 'mythical' beings of great power known as humans. The Seekers seek us out to deny us the chance to recognize this power. Gideon makes it off the planet just in time. Aboard the Aurelian ship, he learns of his hidden powers and goes on to wipe out the Seeker presence on Aurelia.
Compelling plot, if you ask me. Especially when it is backed up by the best musical score in any game ever. IGN's review said that Advent Rising's soundtrack is the sort of thing which makes you go look for MP3s. I say it's the sort of soundtrack that draws you in for another run through the game just to hear it all again.
The first hour is great enough. While the graphics is definitely below par, the game does manage to evoke an atmosphere of desperation with other tools. It's truely haunting when you see Gideon, dragging his injured brother Ethan alongside, forced to walk away from a group of marines locked in an impossible battle against the Seekers.
Then it starts to break down. The action is overly simplistic. The AI is kind of like the one in Dynasty Warriors. The controls aren't quite handy. The camera goes mad sometimes. The art design is mind-numbingly derivative. The storytelling becomes shoddy.
Then you're swept up in another brilliant cutscene, raising your nape hairs and pushing you head first into another alien encounter.
I'm still recovering from the pain of hindsight, so I won't say much else here. Advent Rising is an enjoyable game, but it's nowhere near great. Its peaks are high enough to make you want another go at it, a sequel.
But now that Majesco's given up on big-budget titles, not to mention the game's disastrous sales, I guess it's the end for Gideon Wyeth.
Goodbye, Mr. Wyeth. I'll look forward to our next meeting, whenever that is.