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[Wario64]

5.7
http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/action/adventrising/review.html

"Though it's hard to blame anyone for aspiring to create something that goes beyond the usual sci-fi action adventure sameness we've all grown accustomed to, Advent Rising rarely feels like it legitimately has such aspirations. It just seems like it thinks it's a lot more original and interesting than it actually is, ultimately coming off as kind of pretentious and pastiche. The game doesn't really do anything mechanically that you haven't seen before; the story never finds a way to grab you; it's pretty short overall; and the lengthy laundry list of technical issues pretty much drives the final nail into the coffin. Though GlyphX and publisher Majesco are billing Advent Rising as the first episode in a trilogy, after playing through this game, it's unlikely you'll be interested enough to care about any possible sequels. Advent Rising is a severely disappointing effort on all fronts, and it just isn't worth playing."

 

[sprsk]

ooooooooooooooh snap!

 

[Tabris]

That's a shame.

I think an RPG would have been a better choice for Card to work with for a story.

 

[Fifty]

I'll play this game.....for one million dollars.

 

[sprsk]

i like the reader review blurb from "latin_boi"

"Advent Rising is a terrifically written, action-packed third person shooter I've ever seen. "

 

[GDGF]

Tommy Tallarico's Electric Playground score will be a 10 of course!

 

[Wario64]

Tommy Tallarico's Electric Playground score will be a 10 of course!

:lol

 

[IJoel]

I got it tonight. I will post some impressions later.

 

[BRVolition]

Tommy Tallarico's Electric Playground score will be a 10 of course!

:lol

True but, Gamespot did say the music in Advent Rising was some of the best-produced to ever be put into a game.

 

[.hacked]

shit I was pulling for this game, why do all the games that interest me turn into shit?

 

[fse]

Tommy Tallarico's Electric Playground score will be a 10 of course!

I doubt it, some of his reviews are spot on... (kirby GCN :lol )

 

[Littleberu]

shit I was pulling for this game, why do all the games that interest me turn into shit?

Bad taste.

 

[Cold-Steel]

Heh, I totally expected this game to be total shit when the people on this board started hyping it up.

 

[GDGF]

:lol

True but, Gamespot did say the music in Advent Rising was some of the best-produced to ever be put into a game.

Oh I don't doubt that. As much as I rag on the guy, I must admit that he is one hell of a composer.

 

[Mr_Furious]

I doubt it, some of his reviews are spot on... (kirby GCN :lol )

Question is, did Tommy Tallarico do the music for Kirby?

 

[Ford Prefect]

Shame

Spoiler

Still renting it

 

[PhatSaqs]

About 2 hours in and the game is nowhere near that bad so far. It's crashed on me twice already but the gameplay is decent enough. The soundtrack is awesome so far.

 

[Drakken]

Tallarico composed the soundtrack?

 

[SpeedingUptoStop]

Meh, I think it would've been a better movie. The gameplay just seemed too uninteresting and easy.

 

[sprsk]

About 2 hours in and the game is nowhere near that bad so far. It's crashed on me twice already but the gameplay is decent enough. The soundtrack is awesome so far.

uhhh

 

[Kumiko Nikaido]

I played through the beginning of it myself, and I agree with Gamespot. Advent Rising tries to be ambitious enough, but it's not too gripping nor really that compelling to motivate you.

The technical issues and lack of polish puts a detriment on it's presentation.....had GlyphX had more time to iron out all the sloppiness, then at least it would have been better. Yes, the framerate gets click-click choppy, and the game PAUSES during the actual cinema scenes (even causing the dialogue and music to stutter!) to load the content....WTH!? Now that's just sloppy coding.

Graphically, the textures are simple and the animations are funky. The art-style, however, is hit or miss depending on your tastes in the sci-fi genre.

Gameplay is put at ease with the lock-on targeting system. Using the right-analog stick to target your opponent is cool, and dual-wielding weapons is pretty sweet.

The music is high-class stuff....with orchestral and ambience that's befitting. This is the strong point of Advent Rising if anything else.

So far, I'd rate the game about a 6.5 to 7.0. Advent Rising is worth checking out to see the direction GlyphX tried to go with it.....too bad they didn't smooth out all it's shortcomings.

 

[AeroGod]

Ill wait for the PC version. Its cheaper and they might hopefully patch it.

 

[belgurdo]

Advent Hitting the Ground At Terminal Velocity

 

[Teddman]

Another Gamespot review scandal?

Alex did you complete the entire game prior to writing your review?


I have been posting in the Advent Rising forums, I know you've been looking, that I thought you did not play through the game prior to your review. So, I just decided to ask you. How much of Advent Rising did you play? And what is your opinion about how much time should a reviewer put in a game prior to writing about it? Second, did you really not know about how to disengage the targeting reticule?

Thanks.


Steveroger

I beat the entire game. Not like it was exceedingly tough to do, since it's only about eight or nine hours long. I even went back and played a little bit of the alternate storyline that happens when you *SPOILERS choose between your brother or your fiancee SPOILERS END* early on in the game. Long enough, anyway, to realize that it was the same storyline, but with different dialogue.

Generally speaking, I think if you can conceivably beat it, you ought to. There are obviously some games that can't be beaten, and there have been ones that were so ludicrously awful that I didn't get the entire way through to the very end, but in the case of Advent Rising, yes, I beat it.

And no, I didn't know about the right control stick clicking thing until someone mentioned it on here. I'm not exactly happy that I missed that, but when I realized the mistake, I went back into the review and corrected it. Again, I regret the error, but what else can I say other than I missed it the first time, and now I've fixed it.

 

[dark10x]

Another Gamespot review scandal?

I don't see how it's a scandal, though. He DID finish the game, didn't he? The camera system is still crap and that one point hardly changes a thing.

It is kinda offputting that someone would miss such an obvious feature, though. I mean, did he just avoid using that stick or what?

 

[PhatSaqs]

How could he have gone through the entire game and not use this? Hell I use it on accident sometimes.

Fuckin Gamespot :lol :lol

 

[IJoel]

I don't see how it's a scandal, though. He DID finish the game, didn't he? The camera system is still crap and that one point hardly changes a thing.

It is kinda offputting that someone would miss such an obvious feature, though. I mean, did he just avoid using that stick or what?

I wouldn't say it's a scandal, but for me, not being able to disengage the lock would've made the game very frustrating and certainly would've affected my enjoyment of it. This obviously can have a significant weight on the score. Of course, I doubt he'll backtrack, other than to make a correction to the text. But something that's key to the gameplay, such as this, can make a huge difference when evaluating a game.

 

[Razoric]

"omg you can jump in Halo 2?" :lol

 

[Teddman]

The scandal part was tongue-in-cheek, but I was wondering how much missing that sort of function would change your opinion of the game. I've not played Advent Rising... how integral is that disengage camera ability?

If it's a substantial gameplay component, I don't see why he would only eliminate his complaint from the text, and not also tack a little something onto the score. Otherwise Navarro is basically suggesting that it made no difference to the game.

 

[.hacked]

Wow, what a dope :lol

I think not being able to correctly target in the game would have a significant effect on my enjoyment of the game. Maybe that is why he scored it so low. Do review copies not have and instruction book, nor the segment of the game that taught you how to use the targeting system?

Maybe Gamespot should hire a few gamers to teach their reviewers how to play the games.

 

[IJoel]

The scandal part was tongue-in-cheek, but I was wondering how much missing that sort of function would change your opinion of the game. I've not played Advent Rising... how integral is that disengage camera ability?

If it's a substantial gameplay component, I don't see why he would only eliminate his complaint about it and not tack a little something onto the score. Otherwise Navarro is basically suggesting that it made no difference to the game.

There are many instances in the game where enemies simply swarm you and you need to backtrack to get cover (or position yourself properly to use a shield.) Not being able to unlock and find cover would make some scenes frustrating. The camera is also uncontrollable while using the lock, which makes it hard to navigate bridges and the like without falling.

The game is very action packed, so this can have a significant impact in the gameplay experience.

 

[PhatSaqs]

This is the quote where he added the right stick click part. Not only was he wrong about that, but I cant remember the targeting auto focusing on a new target once I've unlocked from one. He also fails to mention that there's an option to adjust the sensitivity of the flick targetting.

Essentially, as you move around, enemies and objects you can target will catch the attention of your reticle, so you'll immediately snap your focus to them. This is a big problem, mainly when you're trying to maneuver around a group of enemies to get to a health pack or a fresh ammo clip, as your speed is immediately reduced by about half when you're targeting something. You can click the right control stick to remove the reticle, but it will immediately snap to a new target the next time you get close to one.

Another error:

You do so by pressing a direction on the D pad to bring up a menu that lets you do the assigning; however, in a perplexing move, the developer opted not to stop the onscreen action while you're doing this. It slows down to a crawl, but if you're in the middle of a battle, you'll still get hit while you're making your selection.

This is optional.

 

[Kabuki Waq]

Honestly even if the game is crap i expect reviewer to ATLEAST know the controls for the game.

yeesh what an idiot.

 

[akascream]

But you should still rent it from gamefly.com.

 

[Drek]

Thats too bad, guess I'll pick it up when it drops to BOMBA Prices. CheapAssGamers, don't fail me now!

Sounds like its targetting system is similar to Mark of Kri, which I loved, so I'll definately check it out eventually, after whittling down some of the back catalog and getting ROTK10 out of my system (so like a year from now. ).

 

[Teddman]

The original version of the target reticule paragraph:

However, there's one big fundamental flaw with the whole system: namely, its irritating tendency to latch onto targets as you're walking along. Essentially, as you move around, enemies and objects you can target will catch the attention of your reticle, so you'll immediately snap your focus to them. This is a big problem, mainly when you're trying to maneuver around a group of enemies to get to a health pack or a fresh ammo clip, as your speed is immediately reduced by about half when you're targeting something. It might have been OK if you could quickly and easily get away from the target, but flicking the stick just sends the reticle to another one, and trying to get away from it altogether just takes way too much stick fiddling for its own good.

 

[Senretsu]

this game is advertised in every single fucking commercial break.

 

[CrimsonSkies]

GameSpot's scoring used to be the best. Now nobody online is worth a damn.

 

[Legal Step]

What did they do with all that time they had spent on development? Or was all their money spent on marketing and not development?

 

[teruterubozu]

From teamxbox-

EDITOR’S NOTE: Due to the severe framerate issues that plagued the 2-disc review debug version of Advent Rising, TeamXbox.com chose to base our review off of the final retail copy of the game. A few of the problems experienced in the debug version of the game were resolved or lessened in the retail version. We did not feel it would be fair to review a product that is not representative of the final retail version.


they gave it a 7.9

 

[AltogetherAndrews]

I don't know, I think the reviewer was a complete ass, and very unpleasant. I really don't get this need for open spite. So he doesn't like the game, fair enough. But the guy carries this spiteful, almost hateful tone throughout the video review, and I really, really do not get where that crap is coming from. Tell me what's wrong with the game, and stop there. I don't need lame attempts at humor that are as poorly thought out as they are executed (unpleasant and forced), and I sure as hell do not need a tone that would typically signal that the reviewer had at one point been personally violated by the title in question. To most of us and to this dolt, this is purely about entertainment. To the people working on the game, however, it's something a bit more profound. Bad games should be called bad games, but is there really a need to openly mock the effort?

Very immature.

 

[ManaByte]

I've had the game COMPLETELY lock up on me causing me to re-do over 30 minutes of bullshit just to get back to where it locked.

 

[raYne]

1- I don't think there's any part of the game where it takes you 30 mins to get to the next checkpoint.
2- My copy never locked up... w00t!

 

[GaimeGuy]

werid. a 5.7 seems too high on the gamespot scale for this game, especially after reasing the review.

 

[SiegfriedFM]

Most review copies are just plain discs. If you're lucky, they come with a sheet explaining the controls, or sometimes they have disc covers with a controller and key functions (which are obviously not enough for complex games).

Still, it doesn't seem like the game deserves a great score anyway, and if he took off another 1.0 from an average score for it, what does it matter? I'd buy and play a 6.7 game just as little as I'd buy a 5.7 game.

 

[.hacked]

I'd buy and play a 6.7 game just as little as I'd buy a 5.7 game.

Not for nothing but that is a pretty poor way to look at things.

 

[Dupy]

I agree with AA, the guy sounds totally bitter and spiteful in his review. This bit got to me:

Though it's hard to blame anyone for aspiring to create something that goes beyond the usual sci-fi action adventure sameness we've all grown accustomed to, Advent Rising rarely feels like it legitimately has such aspirations. It just seems like it thinks it's a lot more original and interesting than it actually is, ultimately coming off as kind of pretentious and pastiche.

Says the guy who uses pastiche in a game review. Now I haven't played the game, and I don't know if I ever will, but a game coming off as pretentious? That's a new one. I'm almost curious to rent it to see what he's talking about.

 

[ManaByte]

The video review came off as a bad audition tape for X-Play.

The game has problems but the story makes it worth putting up with them to play through it.

And yes, this is easily one of the best game sountracks ever.

 

[MC Safety]

I agree with AA, the guy sounds totally bitter and spiteful in his review. This bit got to me:



Says the guy who uses pastiche in a game review. Now I haven't played the game, and I don't know if I ever will, but a game coming off as pretentious? That's a new one. I'm almost curious to rent it to see what he's talking about.

The quote you posted seems neither spiteful nor bitter. One of Advent Rising's selling points was its ambitious storyline. From the beginning, the developers hailed the plot as something worthy of a big-budget film or novel, and this is something deserving of commentary, especially when the story is accompanied by gameplay that's out of sorts.

As for the use of "pastiche" in a review, I applaud (within reason) the use of varied vocabulary within game criticism. One of the best things a game review do is challenge me in some way. Too many writers cough up reviews that read blandly and have no internal coherence (let alone actual criticism) to them, and it's nice to see when a reviewer at least tries to do something -- anything -- with language or ideas.