"Advent Rising" Contest Cancelled

Back on June 9 I reported on the Advent Rising Million Dollar Giveaway contest. The contest, which ran for six weeks, had players log onto Xbox LIVE to find a hidden icon placed in the game at the beginning of each week. If you read my story, you'll see that I am not a big fan of Advent Rising. Today, I discovered this announcement on Xbox.com which effectively cancels the contest due to technical difficulties that would not, "allow the contest to continue in a fair and secure manner."

As compensation, anyone who participated in the contest can claim two free games from Majesco's game catalog (details here).

This sounds a little fishy. Advent Rising was a highly anticipated game (heck, I fell for it too) that had all of the right parts which make for great sci-fi adventure games. It had lots of capital behind it, from advertising to the soundtrack. And, they announced the "Million Dollar Giveaway". What could go wrong?

Well, the game is terrible, was panned by most reviewers, and did not sell well, especially for a game upon which so much hope was pinned. All of a sudden, a "Million Dollar Giveaway" sounded a little scary.

Granted, there were technical difficulties with the execution of the hidden icons in Xbox LIVE starting in the second week. My guess is that after seeing the first week of sales and the terrible reviews, Majesco decided that they'd have to end the contest. What better way to do that than to mess up the technical side of the contest starting in week two and then claiming after week six that the contest is cancelled because the technical difficulties made it unfair.

Hey, you can still get two free games out of it. We highly recommend Psychonauts and BloodRayne 2.