Обзор Advent Rising

Советую

от Gorfest

EDIT: Wanted to revisit this review and give it a bit more thought.
Kind of a passive-agressive review since I would recommend this game and not recommend it at the same time!

This was such an ambitious game back in the day: gunplay, psychic powers, epic story, huge universe. Set-up was there, delivery kinda failed.

Let's start with the story: Orson Scott-Card (Author of Ender's Game and other highly-reviewed sci-fi novels) was attached to the script. And it's a good story of survival against a terrifying alien armada that is hellbent on destroying everything human has touched. The characters were written wholesomely so some twists and turns were exciting to watch. Universe is set up great, alien races are distinct and distinguishable. But then again it's nothing that new (especially now). We've seen it already before so the ball was in the gameplay court. Aaaaand...

Gameplay is okay. You've got the basic gunplay (futuristic guns, pew-pew) but the focus is on the psychic abilities that the main hero possesses. And they are quite something: you've got teleports, telekinesis shennanigans, some aoe bombs. While they're all great, most of the time you utilize them only to kill another bunch of enemies. It's a bit repetitive. Which is why the gameplay is simply okay.

Music is great, it's no joke they hired an orchestra to deliver some epic tunes to accompany you during the whole story. The acting doesn't let up as well, there are some seasoned VAs that worked on this project.

So what went wrong? Well, it was the first game of the company that in the past made art covers for games. So the number of bugs, freezes, framedrops and crashes for Xbox release was overwhelming enough to generate some bad reviews and hype. Later when they released Windows version it became better and more manageable but the damage was done.

I have very warm memories of it but I won't play this game. It didn't age well and a bit of a cliffhanger ending doesn't make its case for replayability.

I think with more polish Advent Rising could have become Mass Effect, Halo or other game universe set in space with different races.

Unfortunately, it's a hidden cracked gem of old that most of people would likely skip.