Orson Scott Card is an American writer best known for his science fiction novels Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow. Card began writing plays and musical comedies in the 1960s and 70s, publishing his first fiction short story Gert Fram in 1977. If these titles don't ring any bells you be familiar with some of Card's other work as he also wrote the novel to the original James Cameron film Abyss, the comic series Ultimate Iron Man and of course has contributed to the story to Advent Rising, the first of a trilogy of epic sci-fi third-person shooters for PC and Xbox from GlyphX Games.

The story of Advent Rising is set in the distance future where the human race has advanced to inter-stellar travel and space exploration. As it turns out, Humans are not the only species exploring the universe as the game begins with first contact about to be made with a mysterious alien race called the Aurelians. Players take control of Captain Gideon Wyeth, selected (by the pilot, your older brother Ethan no less) to co-pilot the first diplomatic transport to the huge alien vessel.

Unfortunately, although the diplomatic mission goes well, the news is broken that the Human race holds somewhat of a mythical status with the rest of the universe. One race in particular, the Seekers, have their own beliefs, most of which focus around a quest to systematically search for and destroy all Humans! And guess what? Humanity's new biggest fans, the Aurelians, have unintentionally led the Seekers directly to the Human home world.

The visual style of Advent Rising is simply superb. It is by far the most brilliant use of colour I have ever witnessed in a game in my entire life. Advent Rising is portrayed in a slightly cartoonish, almost psychedelic coloured style. Everywhere you look is awash with beautiful colour and the numerous cut-scenes are in a visual league of their own. The sheer epic scale and mesmerising beauty of Advent Rising's pre-rendered sequences make other games look lame by comparison.

The level design in Advent Rising is also first rate and at times perhaps a little too ambitious for the humble Xbox. Levels vary from space, to outside and inside space ships at rest, battle, and most impressively various stages of destruction to vast expansive areas navigated in vehicles. One of my favourite moments was when during an intense battle aboard an enemy spaceship flying within a planets atmosphere, an alien suicide bomber detonates an explosive that summarily proceeds to rip the ship apart. The ensuing maelstrom is intense as walls and floor sections rip away to reveal the planets surface below with friends and foes alike getting sucked out of the floundering ship.

This dynamic level design is prevalent throughout most of the game with many destructible environments throughout adding to the chaos and action on screen. Many items can also be manipulated by the players new found psychic powers and used as projectile weapons, but more on that later. My only gripe with the levels in Advent Rising is that there is no in-game map or visible waypoints. At times, it can be a little confusing to work out where your next objective is and in what direction you should go. Granted, I always seemed to find the correct route rather quickly but whether this can be contributed to level design or just luck is anybodies guess.

Even though the levels can be quite huge and expansive, there are no in-game loading screens. These are all cleverly hidden behind the wondrous cut-scenes. All cut-scenes can be skipped, but only once the following level has been loaded... Much better than watching a 'loading, pleas wait' screen if you ask me.

The control scheme of Advent Rising centres on independent control over left and right hand weapons and a 'flick aiming' system. Human and alien weapons can be picked up and held in either hand with a maximum of only two weapons held at once. The Right Thumbstick which is predominantly used for camera control is also be used to switch between targets by flicking it in the direction of the desired enemy or object as apposed to moving it slowly and smoothly when controlling the camera. The flick aiming system can be a little awkward to begin with, but quickly becomes functional with practice, especially considering the game auto-aims as well.

The weapons in Advent Rising are well conceived and most pack a punch especially when used together in both hands. There are four human and seven alien weapons, each with both a primary and an unlockable secondary fire mode. Gideon become more efficient with each weapon after protracted use. If you use one particular weapon more often than others, then that weapon will level up faster. Once a certain level of proficiency is reached, the secondary fire mode can be used.

This levelling up is not restricted to just the weapons however as even repetitive actions unlocks new skills. If you dodge and jump a lot, then additional aerobatic moves are unlocked. If you forgo weapons for hand-to-hand combat, then your melee fighting skills improve and evolve. As mentioned earlier, there is more to Advent Rising than weapons and melee combat as Gideon posses a number of impressive psychic powers.

After making contact with the Aurelians, Gideon gets introduced to Humanity's forgotten dormant psychic abilities. These abilities start off with Jedi style telekinesis (moving things with your mind) and rapidly increase to shooting energy balls and homing exploding ice crystals from his fingertips. All of Gideon's powers are very useful and once you have levelled them up, transform him into and unstoppable superman character capable of time shifting into a room and clearing tens of enemies in seconds. Each of these powers and weapons are mapped to directions on the D-Pad and can be access quickly even in the heat of battle.

Unfortunately, these powers become so supreme (around the time you learn how to shoot the homing exploding ice crystals) that the game just becomes two easy. It is possible to literally race through the second half of the game (even if you ramp up the difficulty) which is a real shame as you tend to miss the finer details of the impressive set pieces and rapidly unfolding storyline.

The only major flaw of Advent Rising is its tendency to suffer from appalling frame rate slow down. There doesn't seem to be any particular condition of series of events that lead to slow downs as it is equally common for the frame rate to drop to a few frames per second inside a confined corridor as it is out in an open city scape. This is a real shame as it can distract significantly from the games overall enjoyment and is either a product of inefficient programming, hardware limitations or both. Hopefully any sequels in the trilogy will be released on the new generation of consoles such as the Xbox 360 who could really do a game like this justice.

On a closing note, the musical score of Advent Rising is simply superb and was recorded at Paramount Studios by the Hollywood Studio Symphony. This beautiful classical score is enhanced by a hypnotic choral accompaniment and original music by Charlotte Martin. Advent Rising gets my vote for one of the best game soundtracks of all time and is more reminiscent of a Hollywood blockbuster film than a game. The in-game sound effects are also top rate and sound impressive through a quality 5.1 surround sound set up.