Just as you launch into space, aliens attack. A huge explosion occurs at the space station where you are based. When you awaken, you realise that you have somehow, miraculously survived the attack. Death is everywhere and if things couldn't get any worse, aliens land on the space station and begin to massacre the surviving humans. Can you say Body Count?. Welcome to Advent Rising.

The game is played in third-person view, with a mixture of flying action in space and also driving vehicles. The control of your character is easy and simple. One of the real challenges in the game is learning to control the land vehicles. This can prove to be quite difficult to do - plenty of practice is required. Flying the spaceship is relatively easy and it's just a matter of time and repetition. There is also the ability to access stationary gun turrets if required.

On the weapons side of things, picking up more weaponary is easy. The weapons are dropped by aliens when they are killed. Similarly, you can also pick up weapons from fallen comrades. Your character will be able to mix and match weapons with both of his hands.

Finding out what weapons suit your character is important: try using a machine gun with a rocket launcher in your other hand. The alien weapons are definitely worth getting and the combat sequences in the game are usually fast and furious. The use of grenades is important so it is well worth learning how to use these properly.

The cut-scenes in Advent Rising are quite detailed and are important to watch because they tie in with the plot extremely well. The only downside is the cut-scenes give off a very 'animated' feel and do not look realistic. The cut-scene character interaction at the beginning of the game is quite comical but as the game progresses, the atmosphere and 'feel' of the game takes on a more serious tone.

Advent Rising blends an RPG flavour with action and combat sequences. Each time you use weapons, your mastery level improves. What this means is that your ability to inflict damage upon the enemy increases. This can also impact how your character moves in the game. Your character can become better at jumping and can also become more agile. For this reason alone, it's important that you are shooting as many targets as possible to increase skill levels.

And what about the things to look out for? There was a couple of frustrating experiences in Advent Rising, random game crashes which send you back to Windows being the first. The second was finding yourself in a completely different area to the one you last saved in. Minor, buggy animation-related sequences where your character looks poised to run somewhere even when standing stationary is also quite interesting. We considered the crash-to-Windows the worst of the three noticeable bugs.

Overall, Advent Rising seems a little too much like Halo in third-person. While that isn't necessarily the games' undoing, we found Advent Rising to be more like the poor-man's version. With no multiplayer option available, Advent Rising managed to lift off the space station, but somehow found itself crashing back to Earth all too soon.