Alpha Prime - Shooty Shooty'ness

Alpha Prime definitely sits in the area of FPS games which I call the 'Middle Ground' of FPS titles. It doesn't throw enemy after enemy at you like crazy (such as the more old-school FPS titles such as Serious Sam, Duke Nukem and such) but at the same time, it doesn't try and take itself seriously at any point (Such as the Call of Duty series). Think Half-Life sort of gameplay and you already have a good idea of where this game is heading.

The game itself is very pretty, graphics are crisp and polished and explosions go off nicely. Gameplay itself too is quite polished with care taken to add controls that allow players to hide easily, then pop out of cover via holding one button. All of this does equal to a game that has all the potential to be a really good game... But it isn't as the game manages to hurt itself in two major areas.

The first big issue is that the game itself just never really becomes all that interesting. Settings range from gray engine rooms to gray corridors with the occasional dark orange and gray exterior areas. Weapons never really being any excitement either with almost every weapon in the collection being pretty cookie-cutter with a boring if occasionally practical pistol, a shotgun, a machine gun, a sniper, rocket-launcher and the nice looking, if totally useless, flamethrower. This boredom expands across the plot too with characters following rather basic patterns, enemies that seem to have come straight from a cloning machine with no real variety across the game.

The other big issue however is the difficulty level, even on easy the game has a habit of turning into a real save-spam fest with occasional levels where enemies just pile on. This is only made worse by having levels immediately after the super hard ones, where enemies just fall to a few shots. The reason behind the save-spamming though is not the amount of enemies, but more because of the fact that they seem to be able to scan and see you through walls, enemies often shooting fast as soon as you appear round corners, often with pin-point accuracy.

Overall the game has all the potential but is let down by boring design and uneven difficulty. Game is ridiculously cheap though price-wise.