This well-hyped game, Advent Rising met its fiery fall on the Xbox long before it reached the PC. Now that it has launched on a new platform, the question becomes: Is it any better? It is, but only slightly. The frame-rate problem that plagued many who played the Xbox version is has been fixed for the PC. Unfortunately, many of the other faults still remain. To be fair, Advent Rising is developer Glyphx's first title, and it is full of ambition and promise. However, these things alone don't necessarily translate into a good game.

Advent Rising is a sci-fi third person shooter that puts players into the role of Gideon Wyeth. Gideon is the younger brother or an ace pilot who is given the honor of making contact with the first alien race to visit their planet. Things go well during the diplomatic meeting, until they learn that a second alien race is coming, this one not so friendly, and intent on wiping out the human race. The story, written by Orson Scott Card (author of the well-known Ender series and a host of other titles), is actually much more intriguing than the game makes it out to be. Humans are god-like beings, and many aliens across the galaxy revere them. Somewhere along the way, they lost their amazing talents, and forgot about all those alien civilizations they influenced. The hostile aliens, called Seekers, rallied the different alien civilizations together (whether these other races fear or follow them is unclear) and travel under the guise of benevolence, when their agenda is really to destroy the humans and extinguish the powers they possess.

While this info can be obtained through reading online or perusing the manual, you certainly wouldn't get these details from playing the game. The method in which Advent Rising tells its story doesn't do the premise any justice. In fact, a lot of annoying things happen that make the story very confusing. Characters who seem important pop in for a few moments, then are never heard from again. A romance forms between Gideon and another woman... apparently from out of nowhere, leaving players scratching their heads, because all the romance and getting to know each other apparently happened when no one was looking. There are moments of extreme implausibility. Some aliens would rather avoid the wrath of the Seekers than side with you, a being of supposedly divine origin. You have to ask yourself, if you were an advanced alien species and you met a being that could surround himself with explosive golden light and kill armies of Seekers with only the power of his mind, who would you side with? If that wasn't enough, we experienced a bug in the game that totally screwed up how the game played out. Specifically, early in the game, there is a point in the game where the player needs to make a decision. While escaping a burning ship, Gideon can only bring his brother or his fiance to the escape pod. This is purely cosmetic in that it changes how the cut-scenes play out (don't expect any Deus Ex scale decisions here). So, we end up saving the fiance, leaving the brother to die in the burning wreck. Later on, we run into the brother and the rest of the game plays out as though we rescued him instead. Proof of this bug can be found in the mismatched cut-scenes that can be reviewed after chapters have been completed.

Ok, so that's not really a big deal, except that Advent Rising is full of bugs, design flaws, and sloppy oversights. There are a million places where Gideon can get stuck (sometimes mid-jump animation) and have no way out except to reload. There are times when the character can't step over a 2" pipe coming out of the ground, but other times he can climb up ledges with no problem.

The controls are acceptably ported over from the Xbox counterpart, and players even have the option to turn on flick-targeting, which is a system to automatically change targets by quickly tapping on a control stick. Seeing as how this is completely unnecessary when a keyboard and mouse are involved, it's nice that players have the option to turn it off. Powers or weapons are assigned to the two main mouse buttons, each representing each hand, making gameplay pretty simple. The down side is that not everything translated well, or perhaps wasn't programmed correctly to begin with. While running, Gideon doesn't always shoot at where the crosshairs are pointed, they way almost any other shooter would. Instead, he will shoot in the direction he's facing, which is often away from the enemy. So, if you wanted to run and gun, you have to stop running for a moment, aim at what you want, shoot, then continue moving. The dodging system can be changed according to two schemes. Players can either double-tap a movement key to activate a dodge or hold down SHIFT while moving. It seems like every great idea in Advent Rising has its downside, since the game cannot tell the difference between a double-tap and simply trying to nudge forward, even with a few seconds pass between taps (you wouldn't believe the number of cliffs we accidentally jumped off of). Holding down the shift key alleviates this problem, but makes the move slightly more difficult and much less reliable, since the game doesn't always recognize when the shift key is held down.

Gideon gains proficiency in skills through repeated use. That means, using a particular gun enough times will make it more powerful and unlock a secondary firing mode. Only a handful of guns are useful, since Seekers are remarkably resistant to bullets (even from their own guns), but rocket launchers are good. Eventually, Gideon will unlock special abilities which make all firearms obsolete, including levitation (Lift), a push power (Surge), shielding (Negate), and the ability to throw energy from his hands (Aeon Pulse). You can only equip two powers (or weapons) at a time, but they make for some fun combinations. Like firearms, the more you use these abilities, the more powerful they become, achieving up to five mastery levels. However, these abilities are so absurdly overpowered that the game become very easy after they are obtained. Even with just the first power, Lift, Gideon can plow through entire armies by tossing them off abundantly available cliffs. Players will achieve mastery levels of 4 and 5 in almost no time. With the exception of a few boss battles, players can easily get through the whole game using only one or two powers. This point is furthered by the fact that the enemy A.I. isn't very intelligent and rely more on overwhelming you with numbers than using tactics. The player is actually encouraged not to switch powers very often, since going to the power/weapon selection menu doesn't pause the game, but merely slows it down. Even the boss battles (which we admit are fun) become very easy once you figure out which powers to use. Then it becomes more a matter of patience than skill.

Some vestigial console elements are leftover in the gameplay, and they quickly become very annoying. Driving is an example of this. There are only a handful of vehicles in Advent Rising, one of which is a little buggy meant to travel quickly across the landscape and jump over obstacles. Let's forgive the obvious Halo warthog inspired design, even though the buggy is still pretty bland looking. The fact is, Glyphx didn't adapt the controls for this vehicle to use the WASD key control, and continues to use the "point-the-camera and move" method. The fact that this vehicle flips over every chance it gets is bad enough, or the fact that you literally have to run over things numerous times to kill them, but the control scheme is unappealing to almost anyone except those that appreciated it in the PC version of Halo. Driving this buggy has got to be one of the most frustrating things in the game, to the point where it becomes painful. It also doesn't make sense, since you acquire a hovercraft later on, and that DOES use the key scheme. These people over at Glyphx really need to start talking to each other.

There is a targeting system that can be controlled by the mouse wheel that will allow you to lock onto specific enemies or objects. Some powers like Lift require this lock in order to operate, and aside from being guaranteed a sure shot when enemies are behind cover, most players will probably find it easier to stick with free targeting. Especially since there is no way to "unlock" from a target except to run away for a certain distance. The mousewheel is unreliable when scrolling across different targets, and the locking significantly slows down the pace of the game. But, perhaps the most annoying thing of all is the fact that Advent Rising does not have a "save-anywhere" feature, and relies on using checkpoints. This makes us wonder why there are so many save slots to choose from, since all checkpoints are saved to the same slot anyway. It's a terrible and annoying oversight, especially if you one of those people who can't spare the time to play it straight through. Mind you, it's not impossible to play it straight through, since it is a pretty short game. When porting a game over to a new platform, at least take advantage of its basic functions! Both these things are unnecessary, even when taking into consideration that this is a port. It's not like the Xbox doesn't have a hard drive. We've seen psychic powers already, and done much better in games like Psi-Ops for Xbox, which didn't need a lock-on at all. The more you have to deal with these oversights, the more annoying they become.

That is not to say that everything about Advent Rising is bad. The graphics may not be the best around, but they are acceptable. The cut-scenes tend to be a little too pixilated, but they too are acceptable. There are some exceptional moments in this game that are accented by the explosive effects your powers have. There was one instance where using Surge destroyed a walkway with glass walls and caused it to collapse. This scene was immediately undermined by the fact that the Seeker standing in the hallway was completely unharmed. There are times, when you have to escape an unending horde of Seekers, forcing you to abandon certain battles and just run. This type of scenario is mostly found in the first chapter, where you have to escape a planetary attack with just a handful of guns and no powers. Above all, the soundtrack is wonderful, using 70 piece orchestra. Whatever you might think about Tommy Tallerico, his talents really shine here. Unfortunately, the soundtrack isn't implemented very well, as fast-paced music will start to play when nothing interesting is happening on screen.

In the end, it seems like Advent Rising tries too hard to be a Halo with psychic powers, and doesn't achieve any of the fun gameplay. This title is supposed to be the first in a trilogy, further emphasizing the ambition Glyphx had when approaching this project. Call it masochism, but we actually want to see a sequel to happen. Not because the ending is a cliff hanger (which it is) or that it throws in some last-minute characters that change the direction of the story in significant ways, but completely lack explanation (which it does). It's to see if Glyphx can learn from the mistakes they made with this title and make a better game next time around. Here's hoping!