Game Design

The Space Between

Advent Rising for the Xbox is an excellent example of how a fantastic concept can utterly fail. The story was co-authored by Orson Scott Card, one of the more respected names in science fiction today. The basic story of the game was interesting and compelling, though fitting it into a video game may have dumbed it down a bit. The graphics, while not groundbreaking, were good, with a handful of interesting aliens, their spacecraft, weapons and architecture. Additionally, the player does learn some fascinating abilities in the course of the game. Despite these good points, the game was a barely-playable abomination.

There were some minor problems in level design; occasionally players wander around uncertain what to do next, a difficulty exacerbated by event triggers that occasionally did not occur. Similarly, sometimes the audio cues were not appropriate to what was occurring in the gameduring one vehicle stage, for example, the navigator instructs the driver to, for example, turn right, though following the directions will lead the driver off a cliff and to reloading the game. Another common issue was the mind-numbing number of opponents. Though the character is able to defeat them, the sheer numbers became tedious rather than interesting, exciting or in any way meaningful.

The single most frustrating aspect of the game was the user interface, most dramatically evidenced in the combat targeting system. The game boasts that the targeting system is revolutionary, and it may beno successful game used that system prior to this fiasco. The greatest hope is that no one else in the history of game design attempts to re-create said system. It was as if the designers were uncertain if they wanted to make an action game, an over-the shoulder shooter or a platform game and attempted to make all three within the same product. Indeed, this indecision could easily cause character death as the player attempts to navigate across a narrow path and suddenly focuses on either an opponent or even a piece of debris and begins to move in the direction of the targeted object and off of the precipice making “death by camera angle” a very real threat.

The story was interesting enough, however, to entice a player to struggle against the poor game play for a while. However, the sorry game play does ultimately overcome the allure of the story.

Advent Rising was, according to the pre-release press and hype, to be the first of a trilogy of games. The poor critical and player reception, however, have made it very unlikely that the sequels will ever be made. Because of the utter failure of Advent Rising, however, this is not a regrettable outcomethe hope is that the whole story will be told at some point in another formatsuch as novels or comics.