After being brutally disappointed by Deus Ex: Invisible War and Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines, I swore that I would never get excited about a video game just by looking at the nicely edited trailers. And it worked, until I viewed the E3 2005 trailer for Advent Rising. Much to my surprise, I was truly impressed: above average voice acting, outstanding musical score, lots of action, psychic powers, bad-ass aliens and Orson Scott Card’s name attached to the storyline. Sure, we’ve already seen these things done before, but something whispered in my ear that his was a game to keep an eye on. Of course, when the Xbox reviews started to come in, I was a little disappointed, but since most of the complaints were on the technical side, I prayed and hoped that GlyphX would port the game to the PC just as good as Starbreeze Studios did last year with The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay.

     Except for the flick targeting system, Advent Rising isn’t crammed up with originality, and players will certainly recognize elements borrowed from other games (like Halo), but to the designers credit, all these elements come together to create on of the best action adventures of the year.

     The storyline was designed as a part of a trilogy, so this game can be considered an introduction to the universe invisioned by Orson Scott Card. You will take the role of Gideon Wyeth, younger brother of famed pilot and hero Ethan Wyeth. Thanks to your brother, you’ll get the chance to accompany a diplomatic mission sent to welcome the Aurelians, an alien species, whose legends speak of a race that will one day unite the Universe: the human race. Unfortunately, this first contact doesn’t last very long, because shortly afterwards another alien race, known as the Seekers, jumps in and all hell breaks loose. After this, the game becomes a rollercoaster ride, with Gideon running from the Seekers and trying to stay alive long enough to reach the Galactic Senate, with help from the Aurelians.

     Due to the fact that the game is pretty simplistic, the designers opted to use a lot of cut-scenes to move the game forward, some using the in-game engine, which turned out to be a very good idea, thanks to the cinematic quality of the movies. And although some might complain that the graphics are a little bit too colorful (de gustibus non est disputandum), Advent Rising looks great, especially if we consider that this is an Xbox port. True, the textures vary in quality from decent to very good, but some of the environments are simply gorgeous, while the character animations are very fluid and natural. The framerate problems from the Xbox version have been eradicated, and the game ran flawlessly on the test rig, in 1280x960 with everything maxed out (couldn’t get the AntiAliasing to work though).