Advent Rising

Advent Rising is a third-person action-adventure game for Xbox that was released in May of 2005 (with a PC version being released a few months later). You play as Gideon Wyeth, seeking to defend humanity from an alien race known as 'The Seekers'. To help you in this quest are the friendly Aurelians, and the fact that humans are apparently demigods with a vast number of powers.

The Xbox game was not entirely well received, due in part to the number of bugs and difficulty of controls, but the PC version fared better.


 * Badass: Gideon Wyeth, of course.
 * His brother Ethan possibly moreso, being able to hold the line at the escape pods while crippled.
 * Beam Spam: Level up your energy-blasting power enough and you can blast the hell out of EVERYTHING.
 * Bullet Time: You get this ability if you level up your jumping skill high enough. Note that "bullet time" is more or less literal: you can only use this ability with a weapon in your hand that you're using to target someone, which means you can't use your innate Beam Spam powers while flying through the air in slow motion.
 * The Call Twinks You
 * Colony Drop: The Seekers destroy the hero's home world by dropping asteroids on it.
 * Convection, Schmonvection: A few levels later in the game take place in an underground lair inside a volcano, where you routinely jump around pits of lava.
 * Does This Remind You of Anything?: Several of the levels seem to be homages to Halo. Or maybe just ripoffs. It's hard to tell.
 * Gainax Ending: Seeing as this was meant to be the first part of a trilogy, this trope was practically inevitable.
 * Game Mod: Advent Revising, a fan-patch that, while not fixing any possible problems the PC version has when it comes to gameplay, fixes a buttload of problems it had with cutscenes & cinematics [including adding in cutscenes that were cut from the PC version, along with (arguably) better subtitles, less cutscene stuttering, and lowered music delay]. Essentially, this makes the PC version (available on GOG for about $6, or Steam for $10) basically the best version.
 * Giant Space Flea From Nowhere: The bounty hunter boss. Jumps at you in the middle of a conversation with the Seeker ambassador, shouts something about a huge bounty placed on you by some never-explained "worried" people, is then killed and never mentioned again.
 * Also a Hilarious in Hindsight moment - if you turn on the subtitles, you see his name is Baraka Bahma. Say that quickly...
 * Ground Pound: Once his superhuman melee skills are upgraded, Gideon Wyeth can perform a 'Seismic Pound'.
 * Guns Akimbo: You have the choice to dual wield any weapon in the game. Even the rocket launchers. You can use two different weapons, and use a weapon with a power, or use two powers.
 * Hey, It's That Voice!: The main character, Gideon Wyeth, is voiced by Will Friedle, who also voiced Terry Mcginnis from Batman Beyond and Ron Stoppable from Kim Possible.
 * Humans Are Special: Obviously. So special that the Aurelians, at least, worship the humans as gods, while the Seekers will do everything they can to control and/or destroy them for the same reasons.
 * Normally I Would Be Dead Now: In a cut-scene, the hero falls out of a walkway, hits the side of a building hard, slides down it for about thirty stories and slams into an observation platform. He just shakes it off. And this is before getting any superpowers.
 * Loading Screen: Between levels, you are treated to in-game cutscenes that can only be skipped once the next level has finished loading. These cutscenes range from plot-moving action and conversation to long, pointless shots of gunfights and general destruction.
 * Obvious Beta: The Xbox version has a lot of bugs.
 * Ominous Latin Chanting: Present in most music tracks. That or One-Woman Wail.
 * One-Hit Kill: Using high-level melee attacks, Gideon may randomly snap an enemy's neck instead of just punching them.
 * Orson Scott Card: Half of the writing team, and heavily promoted.
 * Out of the Inferno: Gideon does this after causing the self-destruct of a base stationed on top of a volcano. And it is awesome.
 * RPG Elements: The powers and guns the player uses will level up, unlocking a secondary mode for each weapon/power as they do.
 * Sadistic Choice: You are forced to choose between saving your brother or your fiancee.
 * Oh, and if you choose, every time you save there's a chance the file will be corrupted and after loading it'll turn out you have took the other option, making the above choice moot.
 * Scenery Porn: Here, have a gander.
 * Schizophrenic Difficulty: The game can be quite challenging in the beginning, before you get any superpowers. Then the first (unspoken) ability you get is the ability to fully regenerate your health by standing still, and suddenly things get much easier. Afterward, as your powers develop, how difficult the game is can vary wildly depending on what abilities you decided to invest in.
 * Sorting Algorithm of Weapon Effectiveness: Subverted, in that you start with extremely powerful weapons, but as the game progresses you learn to fight without them using your demigod powers instead.
 * Space Opera
 * Stillborn Franchise: It was intended to be a trilogy on consoles with a spin-off for the PSP. The poor reception of the original game put a stop to any further prospects, as well as the million-dollar contest promoting it.
 * Subtitles Are Superfluous: There is a subtitle option, but it only affects the FMVs, while the in-game speech is left unsubtitled.
 * Superpower Lottery: Gideon Wyeth, has, once he unlocks all his powers, Super Strength, a Healing Factor, Bullet Time when using his improbable dodging skills, telekinesis, various forcefields (which are impenetrable and harm any enemy that touches them), electromagnetic bolts, massive, devastating radial energy explosions, gravimetric teleportation, intertial damping, dozens of exploding ice-missiles, and cryokinesis. He's also skilled at piloting, marksmenship, and hand-to-hand combat. And, for his last trick, he can create controlled singularity that can kill a Physical God.
 * The Chains of Commanding: Gideon isn't very comfortable with the idea of being worshipped. Most of the time he seems to avoid talking about it.
 * As one of the Aurelians says, "It is not easy being God."
 * Unorthodox Reload: All guns are reloaded by twirling them around Western-style... including rocket launchers.