Decent, but flawed
Advent Rising was all about hype, espcially when it came out. I remember seeing the ads and such when it came out, advertising "epic sci fi action", but boasted mediocre reviews across the board. Thats understandable, as the game does have its fair share of issues, but there are some good things here as well.
The good stuff here mainly consist of the story(which carries you throughout, definitely helped me finish the game), and the visuals. The story is pretty exciting, and keeps you going up until the end, with a fair share of surprises dealt to the player. The game also looks surprisingly good as well, and ran without a hitch on my laptop. The leveling up system worked really well I thought, and it was pretty cool to level powers and weapons up just by using them, opposed to giving you xp points to spend.
Now, everything else with the game left much to be desired. The controls i felt were pretty imprecise, even with a gamepad. A lot of the guns dont pack that big of a punch, and also run out of ammo pretty quick, leading to the player just grabbing up whatever is around to shoot. The auto lock system cant be turned off, and works barely enough to be functional. I really wish you could turn it off, because there were a fair amount of times I just wanted to freely aim like any other third person shooter. The game did crash on me several times to the desktop as well, which was quite annoying, and really takes you out of the game. I did have some spawning problems as well, like dying and spawning under an elevator, causing me to replay the whole level up to that point. Not cool. The gameplay is very linear, directing you down one path, and having you shoot anything that moves. You only use two vehicles in the game, not including the space ship at the beginning. They control ok, like a loose version of Halo's on the PC. The shooting only felt satisfying in the later levels, due to more powerful weapons. The rest of the weapons feel like pea shooters most of the time, even in dual wield. The alternate fire mode does spice things up a little, but only a few weapons have alternate fire modes worth using.
So, Advent Rising is a good try by GlyphX games, but it isnt polished or varied enough to be wholly recommendable to anyone other than people who are a sucker for a good sci-fi story. Everything else in this game could of been better, if it was given the proper time and care.
A flawed, yet entertaining game for sci-fi enthusiants only
