This is a departure for me as I usually write about something a little more charged in my other Blogs. However, I made an exception this time as I felt it almost a civic duty.

Advent Rising for XBox, much hyped due to Unreal game engine and story by an award winning sci-fi author Orson Scott Card, has been very disappointing.

First are the technical problems. Game developers have become much better at debugging before releasing XBox games in the higher end category. It almost seems on this one they may have only spent a week or two debugging. In the first 15 minutes of gameplay I experienced frame jitters and sound skips at least 4 times. It continues as the game progresses. But... I can actually deal with that so far as it has not happened at a critical moment of gameplay.

The bigger issue for me is this seems more designed to be  a marketing platform Card's Sci-Fi story than a game. I may be a little exagerrated, but it almost seems it is 50-50 movie and game. Every few minutes the game stops for multiple minutes of movie sequence that can not be skipped. I buy games to play games and buy movies to watch movies. I do enjoy a certain amount of story driven movie content (Area-51 was good this way), but not half the game.

Ironically enough I stumbled on a Political blog the day before this released severly questioning the integrity and motives of writer Card. I won't bother repeating the details as who knows what are legitimate questions to ask or sour grapes over some Sci Fi Writer Assn. in-fighting. But it was enough, after now playing the game, to question whether this was just some elaborate scheme to make Card money off a different venue. This is supposed to be the first in a trilogy.

Overall, I give the game a 2 1/2 stars out of 5 because it spends too much time showcasing Card's story and not enough time letting me play the game. Couple that with the technical flaws and Glypyxx will have to win me back with changes to their approach on this series before any sequels end up in my collection.