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Great story, great game.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: June 24, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I just finnished Advent Rising and half to say I am impressed. I bought this over a year ago the first week it came out, played it for a week got bored and deleted it from my hard drive. Well, a few weeks ago I decided to finnish it and that I did. I really got into the story this time and I'm glad I finnished it because the ending is worth it. Advent Rising is not the best game I've played in the genre but it has a wonderful story that you will find in very few games and keeps the action in the game play.I gave it a 4 for the story it tells. Try it and just have fun!

Great Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: February 01, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I've read somewhere that this game has twice the story and twice the gameplay as Halo. Now I believe it. It's a great game with a great story by none other than Orson Scott Card.

Great Game, to short for me.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: February 02, 2007
Author: Amazon User

A love this game, the end was great, I usually don't wait to see the credits but I didn't except the game to continue after them. The soundtrack amazing. I give it a 4 starts overall because is to short it lets you wanting for more.

What was Orson Scott Card thinking?

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: January 21, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Make no mistake; this was a promising idea. The initial concept is interesting and the gameplay, especially when your character's powers reach a godlike magnitude, can be fun. However, none of that adds up to a game worth the value of the box it comes in.
First off, the game is not finished. Ever played KOTOR 2? Hated the fact that the ending seemed rushed and unfinished? Not only is this ending even less polished; it cuts off on purpose. Without the phantom sequels to fill in the plot holes, this is a terrifically weak story, something I'm frankly surprised an author like Card would be willing to put his name on. The characters are ill-defined and not particularly interesting or charming. The game makes vague references to Card's books, but neither attempts to explain the setting to non-fans nor explain what has happened between the books and Advent Rising (for instance, why does the destruction of Edumea bring the human race near extinction? What happened to all the other planets colonized by humanity?). The plot that does exist in the game is bare-bones. For example, at one point a bounty hunter is sent after main character Gideon Wyeth, and says that he'd been hoping to capture him alive. Why? Who wants him alive and what do they want him for? Perhaps these questions were meant to be answered in the sequels that will likely never come out. If so, it's a pretty flimsy excuse, and not a very good way to endear yourself to your audience... unless there is a large audience of people who like paying for a full story in a number of full-priced installments.
If you are one of those people, you will be disappointed because unless things change quite a bit, you aren't going to be able to get the rest of the series for love or money. And if you aren't, you'll be as bitterly disappointed as I was.

Advent Rising

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: February 09, 2008
Author: Amazon User

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.

Very surprised, in a good way

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: May 05, 2008
Author: Amazon User

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.

A lot to it, but I was still bored.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: May 06, 2008
Author: Amazon User

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.

This Game simply sucks

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 40
Date: July 26, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Never have I ever seen anything with this many glitches, it's almost impossible to even play. Besides that, there are also MANY other flaws, the names are inconsistent, for example, you have Gideon and Maryn, both fantasy names, and you have Ethan and Olivia, both modern names. The character models are EXTREMELY simple, and so is the dull storyline. The dialogue is also very strange, the characters are always making jokes with each other, despite their planet blowing up and all their loved ones dying. The framerate makes the whole game look like a slideshow. Bottom line, DO NOT BUY THIS GAME, DO NOT RENT THIS GAME, DO NOT WANT IT AS A PRESENT, SIMPLY IGNORE IT. I can't wait for majesto to totally bomb when the try to sell TWO sequels! HAAHAHA, like that's ever gonna happen...

Review by a lifelong PC Gamer

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: April 18, 2007
Author: Amazon User

The negative comments that have been made against this game are completely unfair. It is a great game, and all those for whom it just isn't good enough can go play World of Warcraft or some other game that meets there overrated expectations. If you want a good story and some good action then you should buy this game. It might be shorter than a lot of other games but it has a very engaging story, which despite a few flaws is still one of the best that I have ever seen. I personally hope that they come out with the sequel and soon. They just need to make sure that it is ready because there biggest mistake with the X-Box version of this game was that they came out with it before they had gotten all the glitches out.

Very disappointing game.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 7
Date: March 05, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I'm an Orson Scott Card fan so I really wanted to like it--but it's just a terrible game. The psychic powers are so overwhelming they feel like cheats. With several of the powers you can clear the entire screen of baddies once every two seconds or so for the entire game so the only way to have fun is to intentionally weaken yourself. The weapons are unsatisfying and a confusing chore to select.

The best thing about the "flick targeting system" is that you can ignore it. The baddies come in Serious Sam type waves to be mowed down by your double guns plus smart-bomb psychic powers, so precise targeting is pretty silly. Navigating your character is frustrating. You can stand next to a platform you're supposed to grab onto and jump many times before your hands latch on to the edge. I died from that and the buggy jump controls more than from fighting the bad guys.

About half the sound effects are flat out missing, so many actions have little impact. Overall the game feels very untested and buggy. The story is kinda cool but VERY lightweight next to Card's novels. The characters maintain their same flippant attitude no matter how many of their own people die around them. If you're used to playing quality FPS games like H-L2, FEAR, Call of Duty, etc you will be disappointed.

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