Alpha Prime
November 22,2007 - There is no shortage of First Person Shooters on the PC these days. Quake 4, F.E.A.R. S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Doom 3, the Battlefield series. The list goes on forever. Black Element Software and Meridian4 throw their name into the FPS hat with Alpha Prime, a budget priced shooter that hopes to dispel the myth that a game has to cost fifty dollars in order to be good.

Alpha Prime opens with a long cinematic introduction that hopes to set the mood for the whole game. The story revolves around a precious mineral called Hubbardium. This mineral can be used for many things, but handling it can prove to be very dangerous. It’s been known to drive people who come into direct contact with it crazy. Some folks, like the game’s main character, are immune to its effects. These people can use it to heighten their senses and reflexes. Arnold is asked to go investigate the Alpha Prime mining asteroid by Livia, his former girlfriend after her fiancé loses contact with her. That’s just what we need, a game that starts with awkward sexual tension. Unfortunately for Alpha Prime, it doesn’t get much more interesting than that as you progress.

What we have here is a first person shooter that doesn’t really do much to differentiate itself from games that have come before it. It borrows gameplay and design elements from games like Quake, Doom, and F.E.A.R. and tries to bring all those elements together, but doesn’t quite execute them as well as the games it's taking inspiration from did. One example of this is the game’s level design. The game blends outdoor environments with traditional corridor running. The biggest problem with the game, though, is its pacing. The game starts off slow and continues along a pretty sterile path for several levels before finally starting to get interesting. Most people probably wouldn’t even get that far.

An FPS needs to have a good set of weapons, and Alpha Prime has all of the main bases covered, from the meager pistol to the powerful flame-thrower and rocket launcher. There’s nothing that hasn’t been seen before in other games, but they serve their purpose well. It’s unfortunate though that none of the guns feel all that powerful when they’re wielded by the player. The enemy AI on the other hand is another story. They seem to have pinpoint accuracy at just about any range. This leaves the game feeling unbalanced and harder than it needs to be.

Since your character is immune to the negative effects of Hubbardium, he can inject himself with a refined form of the mineral which will allow him to enter into a bullet-time mode for a few seconds. This should give you an advantage, but it doesn’t seem to work as well as it did in F.E.A.R. Later on in the game you will be able to use a hacking device called a ReCon to take control of vehicles or other devices that can assist you in either clearing a path or dispatching enemies. There are also some vehicle sequences where you can drive a Jeep. Both of these elements are under-developed. The ReCon could have been a really neat addition if there had been more emphasis put on it. As it is, you don’t need to use it all that often.

For a game that only costs twenty dollars, Alpha Prime looks pretty good. It has a decent 3D engine that handles some nice effects like smoke, haze, fire and the like. The characters look good for the most part, until they start moving. The game’s animations feel a little stiff. Overall though, the environments, characters, and weapons look pretty good.

If there’s one aspect that Alpha Prime really suffers in, it would have to be in its audio presentation. The sounds of battle, weapons, explosions, etc, lack that emphatic punch that you need to really get the blood pumping. The character voice acting is average at best. The actors sound like they’re just phoning the lines in. This is punctuated by the awkward pauses during the dialog delivery.

Alpha Prime is a very average game. It might have nice visuals that make it look comparable to other games of its ilk, but in the end it suffers from being a truly derivative and under-developed game. The game is strictly a single player affair with no multiplayer modes to speak of, meaning that once you’re done with the campaign mode, there’s no reason to go back and play this again.

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