We've made first contact with an alien race. The good news is they regard us as gods. The bad news is they've come to warn that another alien race is en route to exterminate humanity and due to arrive in 48 hours (give or take a couple of days). So begins the plot of Advent Rising, with a script by celebrated sci-fi scribe Orson Scott Card (Ender's Game) and a revolutionary "flick" targeting system. Too bad it plays like a third-person Halo 2 knockoff.
The much-hyped story line, purportedly the first of three, plays like Titan A.E., becomes Star Wars, with a smattering of Halo 2's theistic extraterrestrials, and becomes compelling right around the epilogue. The "flick" targeting system is as haphazard as it sounds, and frequently selects targets when you don't want them. Through Xbox Live, you can search Advent's levels for an icon that rewards a million bucks, and if you find it, it would be just enough to forgive the game its frustrations.
MADAGASCAR (E) (3.5 stars)
Activision
Xbox, PlayStation 2, GameCube
As Activision's animated movie-to-game adaptations go, there are two kinds. There's the Shrek 2 type where, regardless of the movie's story, the game is simply a beat-'em-up platformer, a collect-a-thon with Shrek and company pummeling fairy tale characters while gathering coins. Then there's the Madagascar sort, where the goofy animals' exodus from the zoo is broken down into a variety of fun mini-games, which oddly makes the game far more entertaining than the film of the same name.
PAC-PIX (E) (3.5 stars)
Namco
Nintendo DS
Pac-Pix is the perfect example of what is both great and not-so-great about the DS. As it was with 2004's E3 tech demo, drawing your own misshapen Pac-Man and watching it subsequently jump to ghost-chomping life is instantly cool, but not nearly compelling enough to keep you playing. Pac-Pix is a fleeting event to show your friends: "Check this out." "Whoa, cool! ... So you wanna play Halo 2?" "Sure."
SMART BOMB (E) (2 stars)
Eidos
PlayStation Portable
With so many games tasking you to blow things up, defusing bombs should be a nice change of pace. But what should be an addictive puzzle game is marred by staggering frame rates and imprecise controls, making you feel like you're defusing a bomb while drunk. In the end, you'll want Smart Bomb to literally explode, so that in your last few seconds of frustration, you can hurl your PSP like a grenade at the designers.
Matthew Scott Hunter has been known to mumble, "Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start" in his sleep. E-mail him at
[email protected].