First and third person shooters are my favorite genres. Although I’m not very good at them (read: Johnny’s always in last place when he plays Halo 2’s Slayer Mode), I still enjoy the gameplay, and they always seems to have the best and most involved storylines. Advent Rising is no exception. Although there are some obvious and detrimental flaws to a few of the aspects of the game, Rising still has plenty to offer in the action and violence departments, and a story that grows to become something quite enthralling.
Advent Rising is the story of Gideon Wyeth, a pilot and officer in the military of a human world not unlike Earth. His fighting and piloting skills are unrivaled, and we enter the story finding out that Gideon and his brother, Ethan, have been selected for the honor of making first contact with the first alien species that their planet has ever encountered. The alien race, known as the Aurelians, seems fascinated with the human race. They greet Gideon and Ethan with unprecedented respect, referring to them as “exalted ones” and constantly kneeling to the seemingly superior humans.
Like all great alien species that make contact with humans, they bring news of Edumea’s impending doom. They have beaten another alien race to the planet. The other aliens, known as Seekers, are coming to the planet to wipe out every human they can find, and yet nobody seems to know why. Gideon and Ethan leave the Aurelian ambassador’s ship only to find that the Seekers have already reached the planet and have begun the assault on the humans.
It seems the Seekers are very good at their job, as the lay waste to the human space station, as well as the entire planet in a matter of hours. Our hero quickly becomes an endangered species as he constantly avoids Seeker beatdowns time and time again. Eventually he becomes one of the last surviving humans, and it is up to him to discover why the Seekers have destroyed his race, as well as discover the new powers he is given by the Aurelians.
Advent Rising is a third person shooter, much in the fashion of Halo and Halo 2. Gideon has the innate ability of dual wielding weapons, and he is quite efficient as using some of them. The ones he’s not so good at, he can learn to use more efficiently. This introduces one of the game’s more enticing elements, weapon leveling. When Gideon picks up a new weapon, he has no idea how to use it, other than its basic firing. As he uses the weapon more, he gains mastery levels. As the levels progress, he can gain increased accuracy and damage, as well as unlock alternate firing modes for almost every weapon. He also has these mastery levels for his melee, dodging and his newly acquired kinetic powers.
As he increases his levels, his abilities grow, allowing him to make more complicated combinations and dodges, and eventually execute a bullet time-like dodge, where game-time slows down, but Gideon is able to change targets and fire his weapons midair. This provides to be quite a helpful tool as you face large groups of enemies. You can have some time to assess the situation, as well as pull off four headshots in the middle of a cartwheel.
The action shoot-em-up is the most enticing and fun part of this game. Gideon’s dual wielding in third person mode allows him to target an opponent, and while unleashing a barrage of bullets, allows him to automatically target another enemy with his other gun. This gives the game a very Matrix-like feel, where Gideon can constantly change targets, and target multiple enemies at once.
A unique aspect that this game implements is a new type of flick targeting system. When in third person mode, it would be impossible to try to target the weapons manually. The flick targeting allows you to change targets quickly using the analog stick. This is especially important when dodging in slow motion. It allows you to change targets to hit after you take out one target.
As much fun as this game is to play, it is as painful to watch. The FMV and cutscenes are some of the poorest dialogue I have ever seen in a game. I walk into a room while I’m dual wielding rocket launchers, the cutscene hits and I’ve got one pistol. I enter a cutscene in a space suit; I’ve got normal clothes in the cutscene. Some of the FMV’s are completely useless, barging in right in the middle of some good action to show me that the Seekers are still kicking our asses. The exact same clip is used every time I gain a new power, and it always seems that Gideon screams “NOOOOOOO’ right beforehand. Instead of loading one long FMV, it’s broken up into 2 or 3, with loading breaks in between. These made it very difficult to get a flow going to the game, as I felt jerked around when trying to escape from the space station.
As difficult to watch as the cutscenes are to watch, the story pans out to be something quite amazing, as well as it should. Having a writer like Orson Scott Card (the author of Ender’s Game) at the helm, the story should be the game’s most appealing aspect. Looking back in my mind to what has happened, I can see a cohesive story coming together, one that might have been better told in a novel or an actual movie.
One of my biggest gripes about this game is the learning curve. You can never spend enough time with any single weapon to really master its use. As soon as you get good at any on the human weapons, they are all blown up with the planet. Then you have to start all over again with the Seeker weapons. Once you get the kinetic powers, the game becomes almost a joke to play. It keeps getting easier as you can lift objects and take out entire groups of enemies with a flick of the wrist. All of the sudden the game takes a complete 180 and drops one of the most annoying and difficult bosses I’ve ever played since Ninja Gaiden: an intergalactic fighter with a shield against any weapon you might be carrying, as well as a ship that unleashes a barrage of carnage on the tiny platform you’re fighting on. If you’re lucky enough to not fall off the edge yourself, you end up just close enough for her to pick you up, smack you around, and throw you off anyway. The difficulty of this game is like night and day, and the hard parts come at the worst times.
All in all, the gameplay is pretty good, even amazing at parts. I loved the dual wielding and the multi targeting. Flick Targeting made the game much more pleasurable to play. The bullet-time wannabe dodging was amusing, but surprisingly fun to do. However, I still got the feeling that I was playing a Happy Meal version of Halo. Some of the cutscenes made playing with a boa constrictor more appealing, and the difficulty spikes made me shut if off more than once. That’s not going stop me from playing through again and look for those hidden icons, hidden paths, and hard-to-find secrets.
