You may have noticed that I have also not mentioned any of the character names, plot devices nor a story outline. And unless my editor pressures me for it, I will not include it here. I hate it when someone who has already seen a movie fumbles their way through a bland description of characters and plot devices in order to give those listening some idea of what the movie is about without spoiling the movie as a whole. Unfortunately it usually ends up with too many of the wrong details and shallow opinions. The listener is now forced to fill in the missing pieces with their imaginations (or lack thereof) and judge the worthiness of a film based on that new, personal rendering. So let us just say that the development and use of special powers is integral to the plot of Advent Rising.

Powers, by and large, are equipped and used like any other weapon. This includes the use of “Flick-Targeting” and alternate modes. There are six powers available in Advent Rising and they are pretty typical of what we have come to expect from extraordinary a human might possess. Modified forms of telekinesis, molecular manipulation, quantum control and energy manipulation allow our hero to throw things across the room, freeze his enemy, knock them backward, shield himself and of course turn his opponent into a bucket of extra crispy. The Time Shift power is a good example. The base power, once developed, will allow our hero to push through local time and space with such force that objects (including people and vehicles) are pushed side. When enough skill has been achieved, you can use the alternate mode which theoretically increases the speed of the hero to the point where everything else is everything else appears to be in slow motion. This is essentially equivalent to the “Bullet Time” sequences of the Matrix series.

And what would a great adventure movie be without equally outstanding musical accompaniment? Advent Rising puts the icing on an already sumptuous desert with a score that is truly worthy of the finest cinematic masterpieces. Then again, when you have Tommy Tallarico and Tallarico Studios handling your audio, you are bound to attract talent like conductor Mark Watters, composers Michael Richard Plowman and Emmanuel Fratianni, engineer Armin Steiner, and artists such as Charlotte Martin . Mike Tallarico took on the chores for the dialog and brought on an impressive line up of veteran talent such as Michael Bell, Vanessa Marchall, David Sobolov, Will Friedle, and Dwight Schultz. Seriously, we’re talking multiple Grammy Award and Emmy Award winners and experience that spans more than one hundred video games and feature films.

While I am more than willing to sing the praises of all the Advent Rising is and what it may portend for the future of games, and specifically action-adventure games, I am also more than willing to point out what I see as it’s flaws. The severity of these issues is really dependant on the player and can rank from “I wouldn’t waste the cash” to “like I care”.

Chief peeve? Ridiculous objectives that break up long cinematic sequences. While I don’t remember them by verse, the annoyance generally works like this: after a nice, long animated sequence your next objective will have you run down two flights of stairs and get on an elevator. No combat, no vehicles, nothing but a short run that is completed in under a minute. It feels like the director said, “that sequence is too long, let’s put some kind of action block in there”. In all there may have been five or six such instances of this, but it it’s still annoying.

It’s a short play. A decent gamer can rip through Advent Rising in a maybe twelve hours.

The only other thing I have to knock the game on is it’s replayability. Basically, there is no replayability. The story is the same every time. The characters, sequences and dialog are always the same. The only thing a player can make different is to adjust the difficulty level. Let’s be honest though.

Advent Rising is a really special title. It is both fun and engaging with a magnificent story, great dialog and a score that is not to be missed. It’s an experience that is well worth the money.