Advent Rising is kind of an important game. It was supposed to be the first in a sci-fi trilogy, and garnered a lot of prerelease buzz, but flopped critically and commercially. It was developed by GlyphX Games and published by Majesco for the Xbox and PC in 2005. I played the Xbox version and came away mixed about it. I really enjoyed the narrative, but didn’t care for the combat until the final hours of the game. And overall, the game just lacked polish.

I thought Advent Rising began and ended well. The setup and conclusion of the narrative is particularly what drove my interest in these parts. The middle section of Advent Risingreally took a lot out of me. Perhaps it was because of the depression-like funk I was in during that section, but I just wanted the game to be over. A couple hours from the end however, I was absorbed back into the story and the gameplay.

Advent Risingbegan with little introduction, throwing me right into the shoes of Gideon Wyeth as he travelled to a human outpost in space. Soon after arriving he met up with his brother and fiancé. Gideon and his brother were there to escort a group of human ambassadors to a meeting with an alien race called the Aurelians. The Aurelians told them of the threat another alien race, the Seekers, pose to humanity. They want to destroy it.

Soon after, all hell breaks loose. After surviving the destruction of a planet, Gideon is told by the Aurelians that humans contain mystical powers and through the course of the game, Gideon unlocked many deadly powers.

The first power Gideon obtained was Lift. With it I could lift enemies and throw them around. This was quite easy to do, and rewarding to watch. I controlled Gideon from a third-person perspective and could lock on to targets by flicking the right analog stick their way. Once locked on, a bracket would display around the enemy, changing colors depending on their health.

Flicking worked for the most part. I enjoyed the immediacy of switching targets, but found it hard to target a specific enemy when I encountered them in groups. When firing a gun, Gideon would auto-target enemies (although the bracket didn’t appear around them) but to use his powers, I had to manually target an enemy. A lot of the time I would flick the right analog stick compulsively, checking for nearby enemies. I would’ve appreciated some sort of indicator that let me know there was an enemy in range.

Lift was the only power Gideon had for a while. The next he learned was Surge. Using Surge I could shift gravitational energy in a focused direction, or so says the manual. I only used Surge a few in the game but it was effective against large mechanical enemies, especially when I was out of ammo for my guns.

I believe the next power Gideon learned was Aeon Pulse. With it he shot energy pulses from his hands, very effective indeed. With Negate he threw up an energy shield, which I used once or twice. Time Shift was a favorite of mine. Gideon would instantly bolt into an enemy. This was very strong and allowed me to shoot from enemy to enemy very quickly. The last power Gideon learned was Shatter. Shatter was very similar to Aeon Pulse. With Shatter Gideon shot ice particles from his hands, which was also very effective.

By the end of the game, I had all these powers at my disposal, on top of whatever guns I found. The guns and powers each leveled up individually as I used them, unlocking alternate fire options and getting stronger with each level. At the beginning, guns and melee attacks were the only option for Gideon. Then it was Lift and guns, but towards the end, when I was unlocking powers and leveling them more rapidly, I dropped guns altogether. I had become lethal using powers alone.

I was satisfied with the final hours of Advent Rising. I was super powerful and was using my powers very effectively, making short work of groups of enemies. The narrative was coming to end in an interesting way too. In all honesty, it’s made me look back at Advent Risingliking it more than I really did. But honestly, I didn’t really find the combat that enjoyable, at least until the end.

I was very interested in the narrative from early on. I wanted to see how humanity would overcome, and how the Aurelians would assist in defeating the Seekers. I didn’t really care for any of the human characters however because I thought a lot of their dialogue was immature. The visuals weren’t terrible considering it’s a 2005 release, but much of the texturing was very bland and many of the indoor environments were similar. The majority of the cutscenes were poorly directed and by this I mean looked like bad machinima. It’s easy to tell the camera was controlled by human hands as it swooped through small scale battles and environments very poorly.

Advent Rising was a mixed bag for me. Once I had all the powers and had them decently leveled, I was lethal and enjoyed destroying scores of enemies with interesting powers. But the game was a chore for me for a large chunk of my playthrough and the game wasn’t that polished. The narrative is what kept me going and it’s kind of sad to think we’ll most likely never see how it was supposed to be continued. But then again, Advent Rising is a mediocre third-person action-adventure game at best and hardly recommendable.