Alpha Prime

The Good
Is there ANYTHING good about this game? ???

Yes. The 3D engine performs very, very well. Some may argue that it's because it's not actually doing very much that would tax hardware, but whatever. I like it when 3D engines perform well!

The female model (seen in the opening cinematic, which ran quite too long while telling us not much) is the best I've ever seen! Very realistically and well-shaped, moving fluidly, and looks great! No really, she does! Hehehe...

And the third and last good thing is that you get to fight armed killer-robots! We've all fought Marines, Zombied-Marines, Hellspawn, a million different kinds of aliens, Mafia hitmen, redneck mercenaries, and army men too. But I think the last time that I got to shoot killer robots was when I played 'Robotron 2084'.... Christ! Just how long ago was that!? Yeah I think a good shooter with killer robots is a little bit overdue by now, people!

The Bad
I wanted to like this one, maybe calling it Far Cry in Space, or Doom³ Lite, but I rather instead found it under-developed in almost every aspect, poorly designed, and I found that it even has some alarming gameplay problems.

I mean did I really just run around in maybe a thousand circles for like an hour before realizing that the map was not linear but CIRCULAR!? Who the hell makes circular maps!? ??? I never did find that Exit! And this happened like in maybe the second map where the game is just barely starting! So awful!

The lighting effects were poor, making much of the graphics look garish, with too much gloss coupled with washed-out coloring. Turning down the Gamma down from its Factory-Default setting helped somewhat.

The story is sketchy at its best, but mostly is waaaay too vague. Never mind that I didn't know why I was shooting, I didn't even know WHO I was supposed to be shooting! And that's not good for a video-game at all!

All-in-all, it comes across as a video-game-equivalent of a bad, shoe-string-budgeted B-movie. I have to wonder: Is "Alpha" the title, or the development-status of this game program...?

The Bottom Line
1½ of 5 stars. I've played free homebrew mods for other FPSs that made for better games than this commercial release.

...But would somebody please make a good killer-robot FPS, please!...

The Good
I liked the graphics and presentation. The environment is also very interesting, something like Doom 3, but not so dark. The weapons and their efficiency (except the shotgun effective only on very close range) I liked too.

The Bad
I hated playing the game on higher than Easy difficulty. The game changed to save-load-maybe-this-time-you-will-be-lucky type of gaming. The enemies ALWAYS shoot faster and with 100% accuracy. I like difficult games, where you must use various different strategies to beat the AI. But this is not the case. Entering some levels with 30% of health means a dead end, the restarting of a previous level again (I use quicksave only during the game).

The other thing I didn't like was the talk of the characters. Using too many words like f..k a s..t doesn't make me feel that they are cool or cold-blooded; it just makes the characters look primitive.

The Bottom Line
Alpha Prime is well presented sci-fi FPS, very similar to Doom 3. Driving a buggy or using the train adds fun and variability to the game. Start playing on Easy difficulty, no matter how experienced a player you are.