Advent Rising! Play-By-Play Review! (#2)

Wow! Let me say it again. Wow! That's how i describe this game so far. I am loving it. This game is wicked fun and the story is great. But a warning. It's INTENSE! Well if you let it get intense. This is the type of game you can really get into. The story is well done and drags you in. You ARE Gideon Wyeth. You ARE the last of humanity. You ARE fighting off an entire species almost single handedly. You get into it if you want to. Some people have trouble with this i know. So if you have trouble getting too intense with your games let me just tell you now that this game gets intese. Which i like but causes problems for others i know. One thing i forgot to mention yesterday is that this game is non-stop action. And it doesn't start slow either. Once it's started, IT's STARTED! There's no slow points. And another thing i forgot to mention is that this game has yet another thing to make it unique. On it's own as a shooter it's magnificient. But it adds another thing. Powers. Physchic powers. Now i know some christian are very much anti-physchic so if you're like that then here's your warning. Your character will be using the "power of his mind" to effect the flow of time, lift and move objects, as well as attack enemies. Plus many other powers. I personally think that the addition of super human powers just makes things more interesting. I rather like it. And one final thing, about objective content, this game definitely has violence. And i'd add very mild blood. But despite the fact that the box says "mild language" so far the only thing close has been when in a cut seen you say "he looks like some shoved a icicle up his..." and then you get interrupted. So thats the game so far.

Here's whats been happening in the story. (*Spoiler Alert! If you don't want to know the story before you play don't read this! I will be giving storyline spoilers!*) Where'd i leave off...oh yes. Hightailed it to Earth. Or, as i have now learned, Edumea. The home planet of humans in Advent Rising is not called Earth. it's Edumea. I don't know if they're just trying to give Earth a new name or if this just isn't earth or what. I'm thinking maybe i might learn more later in the story. Or maybe i'm just thinking ahead too much. But anyway, after fighting desperately to save Edumea we find out we only have one option. Grab the fiancee, find a ship and run like heck! The jerks are gonna blow up Edumea! so after landing on Edumea and finding your way to the nearest city that's what you do. After much intense fighting and some tricky driving in a Scythe (a armored car type vehicle) as asteroids smash the city (it was mentioned earlier that Seekers throw rocks. I.E. asteroids) you reach a ship and meet the newest character. Marin Steel, spunky chick fighter pilot, you her and Olivia (your fiancee) jump into a ship and jet it into space. Only to watch as Edumea is blasted into oblivion. Crap! You are the only survivors. After searching all the Comm channels you decide to call the Aurelians. The peaceful aliens who revere you as Gods. So your buddies the Aurelians come and you spend a while on their ship and learn amazing things. You spend some time in melee training as well as learning that deep down you have amazing super human powers! Yippee! You start out with lift and learn more later.

So after fun on the Aurelian ship learning and resting you arrive at the Aurelian homeworld, and just as you think you can go in for a peaceful landing it happens. ATTACK! You were followed. These Aurelians seem to get followed a lot...we learn why later. So big huge Seeker warship opens fire on your small (in comparison) Aurelian ship and the Aurelians have one choice. Fight back! So you and a bunch of brave Aurelian warriors jump ver to the Seeker ship and board and fight your way to the control room from the outside. Just a quick hint(*Spoiler*). Now that you have your lift power you can lift and throw enemies off the side of the ship if you're outside. So after fighting your way all the way through the ship and in the process learning the surge power and fighting a boss (if you want to call it that) the ship starts to fall. Not because of you. Because of the seekers. Just as you finish exterminating the last of the Seekers in the control you get a call over the comm asking you to come to X location to be reinforcements and just as you walk in the room you see a Seeker step forward from the crowd of enemies and as he gets shot down he drops a rather large looking bomb. Which then rips a whole in the floor that grows. Then you have to outrun the rips in the ship as it falls apart and try not to get blown off. Then it cuts to movie scene and you see yourself get blown off high up in the air. And of course since you're falling from space you're right above an ocean. So somehow using your powers you fly (?) down and grab a piece of drift...well not wood, but something floaty, only to hear something bad (as in your fiancee's frantic screaming) coming from the wreckage of the now sinking Seeker ship.

Now of course being the hero you have no choice but to swim over and save her life. Or try. So after fighting through the few surviving seekers (and by few i do mean few) you find Marin, Olivia and your two Aurelian friends trapped behind some glass doors. Using your powers (in a cut scene) you open the door but can only hold it long enough to let out everyone *but* Olivia. Who you get to watch drown inches away from you just on the otherside of a glass door. So again you loose a loved one from behind a glass door. Oh, the feeling of helplessness and despair! Now all that's left of Edumea is you, Marin and your H.A.Z.E. blasters. So now that you've lost a brother and a fiancee you have a real big reson to hate those darn seekers! Thus the intensity i mentioned earlier. So then you swim to shore and after a quick talk and a herioc little line about how you're not the only person who suffered loss today you get attacked by Seekers. To bad they didn't know you woke up on the wrong side of the bed when they got your fiancee drowned. BOOM! You get the Negate power! Melee fight and if you're like me you kick their butt so hard. You then run to the nearest city while getting chased by seekers and then have a final standoff on a beach where some seeker ships "seek" (haha) to kill you, But get shot down by cannons in the city.

You then get transported to a council meeting in the city where you find out that the Seekers have been "benovolently" taking care of the Aurelians for the last thousand years, providing resources and technology to bring them to a point of advancement where they can join the galactic council. So that's why they've been able to follow the Aurelians so well...hmmm. Anyway, the Aurelians now decide they need to tell the galaxy about the evil of the Seekers (they blew up a planet! And tried to wipe out a species!) but just as they are argueing this some big seeker leader walks in and here is my paraphrase of this cut scene "This party's over, get 'em boys!" So now you get the Aeon Pulse power, which basicly turns your hand into a gun (OH YEAH!) and you then have to fight your way through a ton of tough enemies (this is kind of hard) and then you chase down the Seeker commander and just as you catch up with him it goes to a cut scene "you don't know i'm really on your side. there's powerful people who want to meet you who could give great power to someone like you..." says the Seeker. "What do you mean? What people? Ahh!" And down drops a boss. this boss gave me problems but i did beat him. Here's just a quick hint. Negate and Surge. So after beating that boss and some more cut scenes you start on your next mission. which i will play and write about later. Just one interesting note to add, your fiancee's dead and you and Marin seem to be getting close in these cut scenes...hmmm.

Anyway, that was long! I guess i did a lot of playing! I need to go now but i'll write more later. This game is great so far, i'll keep you posted.

Thanks for reading!
Chris

Advent Rising! My play-by-play review! (#1)

Hello and welcome to my Play-By-Play review of Advent Rising! what is as "Play-By-Play" review you ask? well it means after every time i have some fun as Captain Gideon Wyeth of Advent Rising i'll sit myself down and blog aout it. so this is only my first instalment. so far i've only played the beggining and the seen the storyline pretty well set up. let me give you an overview of this game at first glance. it's story was written by Osron Scott Card, an awesome Sci-Fi writer who gave us such great books as "Ender's Game" and "Ender's Shadow" and so the story should be absolutely amazing. and as a bonus it's been planned from the beggining as a trilogy. the website by the way is www.adventtrilogy.com so since it's a trilogy we can expect 2 more Orson S. Card written games in the future. now what makes thus game special besides the story? well it has a unique method of gameplay that makes it play like a first person shooter, like Halo, only in third person. which in my opinion makes things easier. and at times more fun. so not only does this game have a fun unique story by a cool author but it also is unique as a gaming experience. now looking at it as a christian parent or just a christian trying to see if this game is for you we must remember this game is rated T for teen. which mean 13+ for some content that may be offensive to younger people. what gives Advent Rising it's T rating is (according to the ESRB ratings council) "Blood, Mild Language, Violence" so far i have encoutered 2. blood yes, when you get shot at you bleed. not graphically or in a gross way. just a little blood flys when you get shot. and alien corpses lie in pools of purple blood. and of course if there's blood there's violence. gun violence mainly. but so far there has been no offensive language, mild or otherwise.

so anyway here is what i've done so far. game starts out flying through space you are ace pilot Gideon Wyeth, you fly over a huge alien ship to land on a earthling space station and meet up with your big brother. typical big brother picks on you but you two obviously care about each other. more characters are slowly introduced and you learn more about your world. your brother, Ethan, is a famous war hero and kind of cocky and puffed up about his greatness. which gets him in fights with marine grunts and all sorts of lowly military people who are jealous and just sick of mister bigshot. so as your training progresses you have a fun little brush up where a marine holds a gun to your brother's head and you save his life. and somewhere in here you meet your fiancee Olivia (the chick in the picture) who works as a physicist on the space station. then life gets interesting. an alien race, known as the Aurelians, have come to visit. they are peaceful but when they came they were followed by a not so peaceful race known simply as the seekers. it's not completely clear why the Aurelians sought out the human race and reveres us so highly, almost treating us as Gods. and it's not clear why the seekers seek us out and wipe us out where ever they find us. methinks more on that further in the story. but anyway from here on the after a peaceful meeting with the Aurelians the space station is attacked and you must escape from it with your darling Olivia as well as your brother Ethan. unfortunately only Olivia makes it and you get to watch Ethan killed right in front of you (we don't see that, we see Gideon's (our player's) reaction). so then you jump in an escape pod with your beauty and hightail it to earth.

and we'll see what happens next in my next installment. so far i love this game. keep reading for more!