SOLDIER: “Monsters! The monsters, ahh!” SOLDIER: “I… I… I CAN’T!” It’s 2005. I’m sitting in a movie theater for “Revenge of the Sith”, which will confuse me in a lot of ways. But before all that, a trailer played for “Advent Rising”. At the time, this blew my mind. I had never seen a trailer for a video game in a movie theater before. My friends told me that they’d only seen that happen before with “Halo 2”. It seemed like a big deal, and that connection is not a coincidence. The game started to be known as “the Halo-killer”. It even outright said it would be the start of a trilogy of games. To make it even more legit, it would be written by Orson Scott Card. His name was all over any copy of the game. And for a sci-fi game, it should be! The man wrote “Ender’s Game”. Schools here still have that as required reading sometimes. But not my class – oh no, I had to read a book where, eh… Ugh, what hap-…? I think a Jewish kid gets hit with a baseball, and… I don’t remember the rest, but… whatever. “Ender’s Game” is great, and the sequel is just as good in other ways. Some people think it’s even better. After that, you have “Xenocide”. It has interesting ideas, but… not as exciting as the title would make you think. Then “Children of the Mind” is… It’s- It’s different… Ehm… There are spin-off books, too! Wow, look at- look at those…! The Steam page now says “working WITH Orson Scott Card”, which, as we’ll talk about, is much more accurate. The trilogy never happened, and you should know how “Halo-killers” go. It ran horribly on Xbox, but now on PC it’s pretty good. The one thing that’s choppy everywhere is some of the cutscenes. It’s the video files themselves, and the lip-synching can be rough. There’s actually a mod that re-edits most of the cutscenes, fixes some bugs and adds widescreen support. Fortunately, I talked to GOG about it, and they just integrated it into the base game. Steam has it too, so no need to monkey with downloads. So good on Advent Revising for doing that! I can start the game with no hassle. [solemn music] [ominous undertones creep in] [dramatic woosh-baboosh] Well, okay then! [thunder] Okay, the real story starts here. You play as Gideon Wyeth, and, honestly, I kept forgetting his name. I keep wanting to call him Terry, because it’s the “Batman Beyond” voice actor. ETHAN: “Err, do you always make your approaches upside down?” GIDEON: “Hey, Ethan! You know that this view is one of my favorite things about being a pilot.” So, Gideon’s brother Ethan is a hotshot pilot and war hero. He fought in something called the “independence wars”, which I assume was some kind of break-away thing, since they’re by a faraway alien planet, but I’m not too sure. What is important is that humanity is in the middle of first contact. ETHAN: “Wait til you see the alien ship with your own eyes. The vids they’ve been showing don’t do it justice.” GIDEON: “Wow… How big is this thing?” ETHAN: “It’s… big.” ETHAN: “Watch out for secondaries from the alien vessel. Their activity back and forth from the surface has been increasing. C&C is still trying figure out why.” GIDEON: “Copy that. Starting my… Whoah!” [music swells] Good timing there! The music swells, and the K-Mart Covenant are here. They do seem peaceful, so once you park your ship into the human space station, the game begins. Well, Gideon looks like a noodle person… Actually, all of humanity look like noodle people, and you’ve got this “Jak & Daxter”-like NBA high jump. So you go “Oh, this must be like an adventure platformer!” Then you go to training, and it turns out that Gideon knows gun kata. And this is BEFORE he gets space magic. But I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself. I’ll start with the graphics. On a technical level, for an Xbox game, it’s pretty decent. Especially considering how big some of these maps can get. Looking back, “Advent Rising” struggling to run on the Xbox makes a lot of sense. The character models are still detailed, and the game has some really cool shader effects. Which does make it weird when they’re lined up next to the kind of blocky looking-textures. It makes me wonder why they made these scenes so big, instead of just scaling it back and improving what they had. Well, I do have a guess… Most “Halo-killers” I’ve played, really, really want to BE “Halo”. It’s clear from the intro with the big purple ship and the epic orchestra music, but then you fight the evil aliens who have different colors, based on their rank. You know: red, blue, elite gold ones… They use energy weapons, while humanity still uses bullets… These are just broad strokes – there’s a lot more weird specific examples. But by the time you get to the first not-Warthog section, it’s very clear this game wouldn’t be how it was without “Halo”. Except, in “Halo”, the AI can actually drive you. I mean, it’s fine to be inspired by things (and “Halo” certainly was), but as the game goes on, it just becomes kind of funny how blatantly they’re doing it. So you have these grassy fields with rocks and strange alien structures that’s WAY bigger than “Halo”. It is larger, but drab and pointless. The more confined maps generally look and play so much better. They take advantage of the mechanics, instead of throwing you into a big field to own-zone some aliens. Some are for vehicle sections, but again, the bigger the map – the more barren the actual gameplay is. It is possible there was meant to be way more stuff here, but it was cut down for the Xbox. I don’t know. The actual character art style is another mystery. The people have these cartooney, exaggerated forms, but nothing else in the game is like that. The design of everything else and the tone is going for realism. Now, I admit this could just be because Orson Scott Card’s name was all over this game, but I feel a strange kind of disconnect that I can’t quite put my finger on. I don’t hate it or anything – it’s just kind of odd to me. I would have like if they embraced the unique art style. I’m not sure what this was going for. The environments have a clean, kind of 70’s sci-fi look to them. A lot of people have said it reminds them of “Mass Effect 1”, and I agree. Doubly so when you get space magic, and get some of the same biotic powers. Some people say “Mass Effect” copied them, but on this one, I don’t think so. Everyone knows what “Star Wars” is, and “Jedi Academy” had been out for a few years now. “Advent Rising” has a very vanilla flavor of space magic. It is interesting that it was also going to be a trilogy, where decisions would carry over through save-importing, but, as you know, that didn’t happen. As a Los Angeles CSI member would say: “I think there’s some DNA here, but I can’t tell how much.” Oh, right, the shadows! Don’t try to turn dynamic shadows on. I tried for ages to fix them, but the only thing I could do was to get some blob shadows to work. And that only happened when they felt like it. Turns out, they only work on a specific ATI card from 2003, so good luck! As for the sound design, it’s also decent. The weapons have a good variety of effects, and it adds some impact to the combat. [bassy gunshots] [*click-wo-wo-woosh*] I do like the silly “woosh” effects when you’re reloading or flipping, or anything else, really. [sloww-moww] GIDEON: “M’wah!” [punchy energy shots] [*chik-woosh-click-woosh-click*] That’s a good feature! Very welcome! The voice acting is good, and I do have to give them bonus points. They are working with some ROUGH dialogue. MARIN: “I’m supposed to believe that there are not only one, but TWO advanced alien species out there, with a simultaneous interest in little old Edumea?” MARIN: “I mean, millions of years go by, without so much as a “Hello there” from the Great Beyond,” MARIN: “and for some reason, they both picked today to come out of the closet?” ELITE: “Mwahahah! Oh, this is too good!” GIDEON: “You. Destroyed. My. World!” Oof…
GIDEON: “You. Destroyed. My. World!” ELITE: “Oh dear, the little savage is upset…” ELITE: “I have personally slain more of your pitiful kind than ever lived on that sad little rock you call home!” ELITE: “You are going to wish you had died with the rest of your sorry world. My kind has perfected the art of slaughtering humans, little man.” It is direction, too, but this is hard to work with. It’s really the random NPCs that get deep in the beans. NPC: “Hah-ha-ha! Take that!” The most fascinating part is the music. The music is genuinely amazing. Like, the gap between quality of music and quality of game might be higher here than anything I’ve played, outside of, like, an old Tim Follin project. The issues come in with how they use it. Let’s look at some cutscene clips, where they have complete control of what’s happening. [tune goes from hopeful to triumphant, then drops with the shell] [spirited choir, accompanied by orchestra] The music really brings that grand scale the game was trying for. The problem is, the music is pretty clearly separated into “hype” and “be sad”. It works out sometimes, when what happens on screen matches up perfectly. [hype chanting] [mournful singing] ETHAN: “The floor has been blown out, we’ve gotta climb down!” All good. Now imagine you’re just walking through a hallway. Or doing nothing. [epic choir] [same melody, but slower] It’s also a very similar melody. Over and over again… Everything you’re doing is just the most important thing ever. This will be my last “Halo” comparison, and it’s an important one. Bungie knew where to use their music, and how to break it up. The big exciting music is used appropriately for the moment. Here’s what “Advent Rising” does. [energetic orchestra] Marty isn’t unleashing the strings while you’re staring at rocks. Trying to make every little thing huge, ultimately, makes nothing stand out. This needed some more low-key music at points. Or just silence, like here. Still, it’s a very good soundtrack. Sometimes, it does bug out, and it will play the cutscene music at the same time as the level music. It’s usually so over the top that, sometimes, I couldn’t tell, but there are cutscene controls to restart it. Except for one time it cursed me and played the healing sound over and over again. [healing sound over and over again] [healing sound over and over again]
You should expect some… sound bugs from time to time. [deafening roaring of invisible fire] Okay, my mistake. I looked up Xbox footage of this, and that is the INTENDED sound effect. Please, continue. [deafening roaring of invisible fire] As you play, the gameplay does evolve a bit, so I’ll need to talk about the story here and there. When Terry first gets on the station, he needs to do some weapons training. “Advent Rising” has a unique control scheme (in the same way there are road signs warning of unique children). On PC, you aim by using your mouse’s scroll wheel to aim left or right. This is awkward, but seems like a thing you would get used to. On PC, you could have free aim, and it should work out fine. But this was based around Xbox, who actually had it way worse here, because the right stick controlled your camera AND aiming. So you just wanna move the camera, and end up locking onto another target. It’s awful here, because you and the game don’t always agree on what you’re aiming at. When the system IS working, the camera’s spinning all over the place. You’re quickly aiming at things behind you, things out of sight… It’s already a chaotic game, so, sometimes, I didn’t realize something was bugging out. A bad man in front of me would just stop dying. It does look sick, if you don’t actually get sick from the camera whipping around. It does suck to try and hit something, and then you aim completely in another direction. You could get tempted to plug a controller and then try, but it’s not better. Plus, if you plug one in during the game, things will really start spinning. I think this SHOULD be a controller game, but the targeting system makes that difficult. When it’s working how it’s intended, it can be fun. When it’s not a lobotomized “Drake of the 99 Dragons”, it can be a… unique… version of “Max Payne”. Saying that is incredibly generous. Essentially, you level up your weapons by using them. They might just be increased effectiveness, but you can unlock alt fires and other cool stuff. This also extends to jumping and dodging. The more you flail around in combat, the better you get at it. Movements get a passive slow-mo effect added, animations change. I really appreciate when games do this, over just bigger numbers. You don’t go from chump to demigod though, since, from the beginning, Gideon is pretty insane. I have to sprinkle some story in here. On the station, Gideon hangs out with his brother Ethan, and talks to his fiancé… Girl. Girl is a scientist, so you might think she has a bigger role to play in a first contact story, but no. You’re not supposed to want Girl’s scientific insight – you wanna be inside of her pants. I mean, Jesus, it’s more than a cake – it’s like the whole birthday party. At least by “Code Geass” Barilla Pasta people standards… After murdering an Australian in a boss fight, you go to meet the aliens. These are the Aurelians, and they’re more than just friendly. Not wanting to risk anyone important, they give Gideon the universal translator. The Aurelians aren’t just here to help and trade with us, but they view humanity as gods. I don’t know about you, but I find this baffling. Either the Aurelians are deeply, DEEPLY disturbed, or they picked up some really convincing Heaven’s Gate members. But they’re also here to warn us of an enemy alien race – The Seekers. KELEHM: “They will come. And this time, they will leave no survivors.” LANDWELL: “How long do we have?” ENORYM: “Maybe two days. Probably less.” SPEC OPS: “Two days?! What can we do in two days?!” ENORYM: “This is a great tragedy. You will all be killed.” SPEC OPS: “What kind of weapons will they be using?” KELEHM: “They throw rocks.” SPEC OPS: “Rocks? They throw rocks?” KELEHM: “Asteroids.” The Seekers then show up instantly. Not even two days of prep time. They attack the colony station, and, true to their name, start scanning people. They are looking for SOMETHING, but it’s not clear what. This leads into the big and only story decision of the game. Both, Ethan and Girl are hurt, and you can only help one into an escape pod. It looked like a choice, but the first time I played it, it loaded me in already holding Girl. At first, I thought it was a cut choice, because I didn’t want Girl – I would have saved Ethan. On playing the game again, I got to choose properly. It does spawn you right next to Girl, so I’m sure it bugged for more than one person. You crash into planet, then you do escape it, before the Seekers destroy it. You, and whoever you save, meet up with new character, named Captain Steele. This interaction goes way better if you have your hero brother with you. ETHAN: “I imagine you’d like some help prepping for takeoff?” MARIN: “Sure, sure!” 🤩 It looks like there may have been a turret section planned here, but instead, you go right to the Aurelians. It’s here that you learn how to use space magic. Now, I appreciate it when the story doesn’t explain every stupid detail in how a power works, but they give you NOTHING special here. GIDEON: “Earlier, you mentioned something. Something about hidden powers?” KELEHM: “I am a remnant of the ancient religion, human.” KELEHM: “All of the civilized races have individuals with the seeds of this power. Our prophesies…” Okay, no one knows how it works, but they believe that the Force comes from humans. They use their downtime to show Terry silently practicing his new “Mindgate Conspiracy” brain powers. It’s like there should be a voiceover here, explaining a little more about what he’s doing, and what’s going on. Instead, they just say he’s a wizard, which is really strange for a sci-fi setting like this. Who cares – you have magic now… You get to play around with it in a space battle, and then whoever you saved dies. GIDEON: "Huthuhuthuthuthuthuthuthuthut." The powers you get are a joy, and more unlock automatically as you play the game. They have the same mastery level-up system too, so they get better and better. Though, like the weapons, there’s nothing really out there with them. You have a force push, a lift, you can shoot energy or ice (which gets really absurd in the end game), slow time, the vanguard charge – there’s still a lot here. Combine that with other weapons you have, and there are a lot of ways to play this game. Sadly, equipping a power does take up a weapon slot. This means no supercharging around, carrying dual pistols or something like that. Which I would have liked, but the controls are already weird enough as is. Even with that barrier, the game can be enjoyable. Yet, right behind the weird control layer are two more. The first being the enemy variety. They run out of new stuff to throw at you very fast, with the exception of some boss fights. Even when new things showed up, they never really altered how I played the game. The enemies and the weapons are just too similar to each other. Because, on the surface, it seems like there should be a lot of variety, but in practice, it feels very repetitive to play. The levels I talked about before contribute to this, since you just fight in a big empty plain. You’ll see a big flat area full of enemies for a battle, but then you can just walk around it. I’m not sure how to word this, but... enemies will frequently feel less like obstacles, and more like decoration. You could run way over there to fight aliens, but it’s pointless – there’s not, like, a hidden weapon or anything like that on the maps. You’ll also blatantly see allies and enemies just respawning endlessly in front of you in some parts. I like protecting NPCs in these kinds of games, but here there’s no reason to – they just come back. And the enemies stay so much worse, because they’ll respawn three feet behind you. You take the camera off, and the game plops down three, four, five enemies there. And where it happens, it happens endlessly – it’s not just them pouring out of a door or something. It’s a shorter game, too, but, by the end, I was so sick of the combat. If the camera spins around, you wipe out a group of enemies and can move on – then great. When it’s set up like this, the camera can endlessly spin around and around, as you kill enemies forever, for no reason. It goes from being a space adventure into some kind of purgatory. I would guess they did this to make up for the AI, which isn’t very good, and breaks frequently, which leads me to the next layer of just how broken this game is. Even with a fan patch that fixes quite a few bugs integrated, they’re still everywhere. The camera freaks out and locks you into an angle. An ally blocks off an elevator. Enemies getting elevators stuck, so you have to AoE to get it to move. A door you need to go through refuses to open, until you restart the entire level. Stuck in a wall, stuck moonwalking, stuck hanging for my hopes and dreams. “Stuck” is such a frequent word. How about “stuck in a first person mode, which should not exist”? And of course, you have your occasional crashes. This is highly unstable. But before I finish, I do wanna talk a little bit more about the story. To sum it up: it’s abrupt. ENORYM: “They have pulled back to regroup for the final onslaught. It has been the highest honor…” ENORYM: “Halt! These are ours! Status report.” AURELIAN: “We just secured the main ports and transit points of Arnyss. The eastern rebels’ defenses are crumbling…” The story is paced like it’s late for work. The rest of the game after the colony escape becomes “escape the Aurelian homeworld” and “tell the Galactic Council on the Seekers”. So much was said with so little happening, that I actually looked on Wikipedia. These two sentences are over half the game. Which would be fine, if they weren’t trying to make the story seem bigger than it is. Check out this breakneck rollercoaster of tone-shifting. GIDEON: “You know, it just occurred to me that this is the only thing I have left from home.” MARIN: “You mean you forgot to pack underwear? Hah…” MARIN: “Hey, I was just kidding! Your underwear is your own business.” GIDEON: “You can’t come on this mission, Marin.” MARIN: “Oh yes I can!” GIDEON: “Let me explain.” GIDEON: “There’s nothing left of our world. Nothing left of humanity.” GIDEON: “To venture out on a ridiculously dangerous mission with BOTH of us? I don’t know what I was thinking…” GIDEON: “If I lost you, I- Uhm…” GIDEON: “I mean, if either of us were lost…” He recovered from Girl dying quick. I thought the Seekers only wiped out a human planet, but he’s talking like they’re Adam and Eve. Apparently, all of humanity is likely wiped out, and I found out after an underwear joke? There were opportunities to talk about the scale of this happening, but they only talked about this planet. Unless this is the only human planet left, and, like, the war’s wiped things out? I don’t know. It doesn’t establish its setting well. And they do so little with the characters, even though there’s opportunity to. Terry living in the shadow of his heroic brother, losing him and having to measure up to him is an interesting idea. I honestly expected more cliché moping about his brother, but that didn’t happen outside of a single scene right after. It’s so strange, because there are set up obvious things to do, but instead nothing happens. There are so many cutscenes of characters being introduced, and then dying 10 minutes later. If this sound off for an Orson Scott Card story, it’s because it’s not his story. He wrote the dialogue for “Advent Rising”, and not all of it. The main story was written by the designer and his brother, who had never made a game before. The brothers did end up making the “Infinity Blade” series, which was a really good franchise on mobile. Though, last I saw, it was pulled for reasons unknown. “Advent Rising” actually had some comics released, too, which did explore the characters a little better. Though it is just covering the same events, with some… interesting… artwork. You can never expect a perfect adaptation. At the end of the game, they get to the Council, and Captain Steele reveals that she’s magic too. Roll credits. Now, what if I told you the story gets interesting AFTER this? MAGISTRATE: “The Senate recognizes Commander Enorym Tenspur, envoy from the client world Aurelia.” ENORYM: “Members of the Senate, I have come before you today with news that is, both, shocking and unavoidable.” This does become “Star Wars” prequel territory for a bit, so I’ll condense it down. The Seekers have been active for over a 1000 years, uplifting other species into Galactic Council. They’ve acted very nobly, except for this recent deal with humanity. So it takes a human to accuse them. GIDEON: “I am here to accuse the Seekers of destroying my world.” GIDEON: “I was witness to their bloody arrival on Edumea, their deliberate and directed murder of my fellow people, and the complete eradication of my-” SENATOR B: “This is simply unbelievable! These charges are preposterous! The Seekers are responsible for the sapiency of many of us in this very room!” SENATOR C: “I recommend that you use your vaunted sapiency, Senator, for this data is undeniable.” MAGISTRATE: “The N’Kul have requested the floor, as is the right of the accused.” There is a lot more bickering. Until… KOROEM: “Hello, little brother…” GIDEON: “Ethan?!” KOROEM: “This drama has gone on for long enough.” KOROEM: “You look upon a true human, my children.” KOROEM: “Your collective histories, your countless religions, all bear witness to me.” KOROEM: “You know this to be true. The beauty of my divine form has been worshipfully rendered by your artists since time immemorial.” The mixing makes it hard to understand at points, but I’m interested in where this is going. Whoever you saved for the escape pod wasn’t killed – they were turned into a being called Koroem, or… Koreem? Something like that. Whatever they are, they claim to be the real humanity. They claim to have ordered the Seeker genocide of humanity, because humans as we know them are a race of frauds. Which is true, but in this case, we were imitating the Koroem’s divine form. Human beings are a part of a plan of some unknown usurper. This does raise a lot of questions. Are the Koroem something of the Seekers’ creation, they used to dominate the Galactic Council? Are they actually under orders from the Koroem, and they can convert certain humans to them somehow? Maybe, their telekinetic Jimmy Neutron brains make them really into eugenics: “you’re not a true human, unless you have the Force.” This reveal opens up a lot of intrigue, and can move some things forward, but it’s happening at last possible second. At least, you do get to fight a god, like it’s some kind of JRPG, but this is such a waste. Halligan then opens up a black hole, which sucks up the monster and himself, accidentally getting banished to the Himalayas. This is the end, all hope is lost. STRANGER: “Come with me, human. There is much to be done.” [conclusive epic choir] I don’t think it’s being continued… The marketing machine for this game was huge. There would be more comics, Orson Scott Card would write a novel, there would be two more games to come, but none of that happened. There was also a contest to win $1.000.000 by finding secrets in game. This was shut down under the pretense of cheating, but in reality, the studio and publisher were running out of money. No, it didn’t kill “Halo”, and yes, overall, I think it’s a bad game. There are cool ideas in that, but the polish is unbearable, and the story is all over the place, but nowhere at the same time. “Advent Rising” is good remake material. I would love the idea fleshed out properly, because, even with all the jank, there are these flashes of being a superhuman warrior that are great. Even after getting a fan patch integrated into it, I can’t really recommend it. No matter what happens with it, I’m pretty sure the soundtrack will live on. Even if it’s just in some people’s “Supreme Commander” playlist from time to time… Come back next time for another CRPG! One that’s been taking a long, long time to record. NPC 1: “Heartburn?” NPC 2: “Even worse. Things get, eh… y’know… messy.” NPC 1: “Eww…” Jacob Thacker: “With the boom of retro-style games, which genre would you like to see come back?” I want an RTS comeback, but the problem is they keep trying to balance that for esports and multiplayer. Some of the most fun RTS games I played were horribly unbalanced, but they were fun. If you tried to have this micro-balanced game like “StarCraft” and rock-paper-scissors, it gets harder and harder to get silly units in it. I think something could happen. Adding onto this question: Redde: “Have any retro-style games done something as good or better than childhood favorites?” That’s a tough one, because you said “retro-style”, and it’s like there have been genre improvements for sure. Uhm… “Sonic Mania” is really good, but I didn’t play a lot of “Sonic” as a kid. “Axiom Verge” is really good. I don’t think “Hotline Miami” counts. I guess I don’t have anything screaming at me on that one… Billy The God: “Fuck/marry/kill, Sseth/Lowry/Spooner Briggs.” I’d hate to marry Sseth, and I think Lowry might deserve to die. I guess I’d get with Spooner Briggs for a night… He has a… nice smile? I almost said Spoony… I hope Spoony is doing okay too. Okay, that’s it for now. Stay safe. What is it with “Halo-killers” and these alarms going off?
The soundtrack for this game was superb.
The concept was great and the gameplay, buggy as it was, was really something.
The ability to equip any weapon in any hand or any weapon with any power or powers together was fantastic.
I remember dual wielding rocket launchers was fun as hell.
It also had vehicle gameplay, space gameplay, strategic powers with alternate modes for each power, hand to hand combat, acrobatics, etc.
And the best part was that everything "leveled up" (there was no actual leveling, just progression) the more you used it.
Shame about the bad port job and the canceled sequels.
I wish we would see Advent Shadow someday...
This game is more than a game for me, its a reminder of a great time in my life. Watching techtv shows like electric playground where Tommy Tallarico would hype the game and the score he wrote for it. Meeting him at video games live, idk, just felt like a different world than what we have today.
One my favorite games for sure, clunky but fun. I might just give it a play through again.
Good times.
If I recall correctly, this game was in large part collateral damage from the collapse of Majesco. They just ran out of money and decided roughly around the same time that they would pivot to mobile and budget games.
I think with good investment this could have been a decent franchise. There was enough there to make it a hit, and with a few more rounds of polish it could have been a legitimately GOOD game, not just a fondly-remembered bargain-bin jank game. I loved it.
When I played this game as a kid it was the raddest thing ever. I'm sure it doesn't hold up, but it really helped me realize games could have cool and compelling stories (even if I'm not sure the story is all that great by today's standards).
Advent Rising was like mass effect... With its budget cut down multiple times. Way too much ambition for what it wanted compared to what it could do. Tommy Tallarico's review of it was extremely biased, and g4 during the tech tv assimilation was pushing EVERYTHING they had trying to promote this.
Nobody ever won that million btw, majesco couldn't afford it.
Holy shit this was an awesome game to play when we were in between Halo games on Xbox. I thought it was revolutionary at the time.
I let out an audible gasp thinking for a second that this game was getting a remaster.
Damn.... If only
I remember seeing stuff for this in magazines and shows like X-Play, but I swear I never heard or saw it when it came out. I was probably just slamming Battlefront, Splinter Cell, or Halo back in these days though.
Aside from KH2 this game left me wanting a sequel more than anything growing up. I must've played it over a dozen times as a kid.
I've tried to replay on PC but even with fixes I have trouble running it correctly with a controller. There's probably no chance of it, but I'd love a remaster.