Can't understand why this game was rated low.

[EmperorTuna]

I was going to buy Advent Rising when it originally came out, but decided not to when a few people directed me to reviews indicating the game was poor. I forgot about it until recently when I bought the game over steam, deciding I'd prefer to make my own opinion about it.

I cannot see why it was recieved so poorly, I found the game thoroughly enjoyable end to end. I can vaguely see why people found the targetting system annoying, but it's easy to overcome that single difficulty. I hate the people that reviewed it so poorly and probably caused it's lack of sales. The full trilogy, in my opinion, would've been fantastic. I'm saddened by the fact that it's ended up the way it has. I seriously think more people should try the game out and find that it actually deserves a higher rating than it has. Though that is my personal bias.

[sciss0rz]

I found it to be a good, solid game. Nothing more, nothing less. It was enjoyable the first time around but it didn't have that "wow" factor.

[EmperorTuna]

Ok sure it was no Baldur's Gate to me, but I certainly don't believe it deserved the low sales.

[sciss0rz]

Ok sure it was no Baldur's Gate to me, but I certainly don't believe it deserved the low sales.

The low sales are Majesco's fault, "okay" reviews didn't help much though (probably wouldn't matter). Same goes for Psychonauts across all platforms which was a critically acclaimed game but failed to sell.

Majesco failed with the marketing.

I don't know how many "Best game you didn't play" awards Psychonauts won.

[EmperorTuna]

I guess you're right there, actually. The site seems to sell the game pretty well, but I didn't actually see much outside of that. Nevermind, a time past. I just wanted to voice my disappointment.

True about psychonauts too, though somehow I felt that was an unfinished game. Probably because I'm useless with puzzle games, mind.

[Lamento]

Well, I purchased AR only recently (retail), and am a bit disappointed with the gameplay. Shooting waves and waves of aliens becomes repetitive quickly, while looking a mediocre graphics.
There have also been two vehivcle rides until now.
Are there space ship action sequences, or some adventuring coming up?

[Hoby]

I bought this game years ago, soon after it came out for the PC.

I've always LOVED the gameplay and the graphic styling. The writing (plot and dialog) extremely childish.. achingly so at times, but you can always skip the cut scenes.

But back to what I like about it: The super force powers are so much fun - it's like Jedi Academy x10 - especially when you play with the cheats on. The action is great, the moves you can pull off are wonderful. The music is of epic moodiness. The color palette is very beautiful at times, as is the art direction in general. The interface for switching between so many powers and weapons is top notch. And lastly, the aliens look really cool.

What could stand improvement if they ever finish the series: Like I said, the writing.. Then there's the saving mechanism (the horrible limited slots method found in old console games). Some glitches here and there. The process by which your powers level up (practice and more practice on waves of identical enemies). And it's a little weird that the two main female characters have the exact same body model with a different head style.

I recommend it highly.. very fun to play and replay.

[safari jim]

one of the problems, sales wise, is that it wasn't available retail outside the us.

scott-cards popular in other countries, and it would of shifted a lot more copies if it was broadly available

[Mangopork]

Doing slo-mo dives while whipping out laser blasts and pistols is amazing.

[unabacus]

Totally :) even though i've reached a bug in the game i was loving it... more than anything is that it's quite rare to come across a game that has such a fluidic control system.. sure some of the animation can be a little jittery but i way prefer my controls to override the animation any day. Far far too many games have the opposite as being true and i end up getting frustrated because my character is not getting to where i'm asking quick enough - or even *worse* my manovers are even being ignored due to controls being disabled until "core" parts of the animation has finished.

Oh yeah am totally with Hoby on the dialog... oh dear :S :) but the styling reminds me of Flashback in a way and the manouvering of Oni (although better) and those games were great.

Basically, if i can get past this crash i'll be happy :)

[phoenix5]

I loved the game and have played it twice. I'm kind of pissed that there will be no sequel.

[JackNiko]

I was going to buy Advent Rising when it originally came out, but decided not to when a few people directed me to reviews indicating the game was poor. I forgot about it until recently when I bought the game over steam, deciding I'd prefer to make my own opinion about it.

I cannot see why it was recieved so poorly, I found the game thoroughly enjoyable end to end. I can vaguely see why people found the targetting system annoying, but it's easy to overcome that single difficulty. I hate the people that reviewed it so poorly and probably caused it's lack of sales. The full trilogy, in my opinion, would've been fantastic. I'm saddened by the fact that it's ended up the way it has. I seriously think more people should try the game out and find that it actually deserves a higher rating than it has. Though that is my personal bias.



the reason it got bad reviews is a lot of magazines and review sites are populated by people with a singular mindset

oh new shiny blinki, rate high, ohhh graphics not as good, no fps, must rate low

another thing is more and more games are rated low for being challenging, or having a proper plot

[Seronx]

It got bad reviews because people only reviewed the Xbox version

[shreddface]

Just have to say....i rented the xbox version awhile back, played through it managing to get past the elevator bug (what the crap was that about anyway?!) but loved it. This is more of a cult game, meaning it strikes a chord with some people despite its flaws. I know i'll always remember it. Can't wait to finish the pc version for nostalgia's sake. I remember the music being fk'n amazing. And there's my two cents.

[TheMaxx]

I still have my original advent retail disk,
only thing was no patches to fix the camera rotate horizontally. cant remember now where but, somewhere in game your have to disable something in the video option. after that it ran smooth.

[GAC]

I was going down through the forums and I saw this... Advent rising is on steam? Going to download it now to play again. ^^ (Played it on xbox)
My bro played it on computer, he said for skipping issues there is just a number on one of the files you had to change, but this wasn't the steam version. xD
Who knows, with it being on steam maybe more people who are interested in a sequel will appear and they will make it.
Psychonauts dude said here recently with it being on steam they have enough of a fanbase now to make another one, if they can get a publisher or w/e.

[dlorT]

I was going down through the forums and I saw this... Advent rising is on steam? Going to download it now to play again. ^^ (Played it on xbox)
My bro played it on computer, he said for skipping issues there is just a number on one of the files you had to change, but this wasn't the steam version. xD
Who knows, with it being on steam maybe more people who are interested in a sequel will appear and they will make it.
Psychonauts dude said here recently with it being on steam they have enough of a fanbase now to make another one, if they can get a publisher or w/e.
Not true the original Devs started their own company called Chair entertainment which was aquired by EPIC Games a year or so back. Their website is down now, usually when EPIC aquires a company they pull a microsoft and disperse them across their entire company so the Mustard Brothers, WHO WERE THE ONES THAT WROTE THE STORY, Orson Scott Card only wrote the dialoug. Probably have no say in what projects they work on now, which is a shame because Chair released some awesome 360 Arcade titles prior to being bought out by Epic. But back to my point Majesco owns the Intellectual Property Right to the Series, not the Mustard brothers, so unless they're willing to request IP rights or take Majesco to court there will never be another Advent game. Also don't count on EPIC ever being interested in something that isn't Unreal or Gears of War, they're primarily out for selling the Unreal engine, not making games. The only way you'll ever get a finished story is if they release it as a book. Or someone with a lot of money buys IP rights to the game from Majesco.

That being said i considered starting a grassroots project to raise money to buy the rights to the IP and then have the community make the sequel, but that would be absolutely hopeless and a waste of time.

[talkingwires]

I played this on the Xbox, and loved it. Sure, it had some major flaws and more than a few bugs, but I loved it just the same. Too bad the planned trilogy fizzled out, because I would've been first in line for the next one.

[Trenchgun]

The overall story and directing style is excellent.
The acting could be better.

The PC version doesn't have any problems with bugs, performance, or controls, so that's probably why it scored higher.

I enjoyed it, but there was a lot of untapped potential here in terms of gameplay.
I think the main issue is that they didn't put enough time into testing and balancing the combat itself, to streamline the execution of all your abilities and better define the kind of tactics one should use.

It's been a long time since I played it, but I seem to remember most combat being somewhat trivial in execution, being too easy, especially once you start using certain powers.

I would often do things differently and try out unique tactics just for the fun of it, so in that sense the combat system was only as interesting as you made it. But I can see this being the one major flaw of the game, was that the gameplay wasn't refined enough, was too sloppy.

I still enjoyed it to the end, so I'd recommend getting it.

[shreddface]

Interesting wonder why they didn't just scrap that option. Still, love the game

[Sir_Brizz]

WTF? The Chair website is still up and they will remain a separate entity just owned by Epic Games. Chair has made two of simply the most awesome games to come out in the past few years, Shadow Complex and Infinity Blade. Now if only they would get those games on more platforms. Shadow Complex alone would be a supermassiveblackhole of money if they released it on Steam with Steamworks.

[dlorT]

WTF? The Chair website is still up and they will remain a separate entity just owned by Epic Games. Chair has made two of simply the most awesome games to come out in the past few years, Shadow Complex and Infinity Blade. Now if only they would get those games on more platforms. Shadow Complex alone would be a supermassiveblackhole of money if they released it on Steam with Steamworks.

As of the time when I posted that their website was down for over a week. It does seem to be back up now.