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| Feels like an honest box art |
Ejecting originality. Proceed to planet Fun? [Y/N]
Alpha Prime is a game released on PC back in 2007 by an indie team trying to tackle an FPS shooter during that transition period... without any of the transitioning bits, and arguably not even the best of the games before it. It was a shooter trying to hop onto the success that Half-Life 2, Doom 3, and F.E.A.R were pulling on and the game was described as a "tried and true" attempt for the company to tap into the core PC market. Honestly it really wears that influence on its sleeve, meanwhile Modern Warfare was about to take the world by storm and Bioshock was the new big shooter everyone else was talking about, so an indie game that was clearly goofing around with old fads didn't stand much of a chance. It got overshadowed and burried without a doubt, but in the end how good exactly was it?
The game is centered around corridor shooter style FPS gameplay on an asteroid mining base known as Alpha Prime. The base has gone completely mad with miners going insane, robots with busted circuits going rouge, and just when you begin to think that's your enemy the real bad guys show up as an elite military unit from a big corporation that wants you dead and the mining minerals secure for secret powers it holds. You go through fighting these guys from room to room with various staple FPS weapons like rifles, shotguns, pistols, and grenades and interacting with the environment to push on. For the most part it all plays out like a standard PC corridor shooter of that time. It was more clearly driven off the success of Half-life with a very gimmicky but fun physics engine allowing you to mess with, break, and throw around all sorts of objects in a room. The art style looks borrowed as well, mostly looking like a brighter more optimistic version of Doom 3. The glows, well lit rooms, and flashy particles can't hide the character models and textures that are just so.... well Doom 3-ish. Then I suppose those on wall health dispensers don't help, every game except maybe FC1 at the time was doing it after Half Life put up those dispensers. Actually while we're at it to, there's even a Halo-ish jeep thrown in towards the later half of the game, and a FEAR style slow-down element tied in as part of the game's minerals that made people go crazy (and this doesn't effect you for some unexplained reason). However with all these "me to" bits floating around, and the game constantly pulling at the cogs of older games, I can't help but feels like it sort of develops its own charm by intentionally riding off of others. Besides it isn't without its perks.
For starters I'm going to get it out of the way that the shooting is better than about every game I can name its copying from. Its got ADS, effective general aim, peeking, guns feel good and strong, enemies are satisfying and challenging targets, and its just fulfilling to fire (if you exclude the awful flamethrower and sniper rifle). Oh and of course the slow down bullet-time feature is nice. The game is one of the best aesthetically pleasing shooters of its time period and maybe even of its whole style, except maybe Wolfenstein: the New order. Compare that to the very strange robotic hit boxes of doom 3, and the dull and horribly inaccurate guns of HL2, or the floaty feeling left to FEAR's guns, and you can see where it beats them. Plus out of all those, I think only FEAR had ADS. The game's only down side to this factor is it was certainly within that time frame where hitscan weapons were becoming an issue, and the game did nothing to hide this. Enemies were straight up aimbots. There's even a glitch you can trigger (and several have reported on this if my own account isn't good enough) where you can look into a camera behind cover and see the enemies shooting the wall perfectly at the position you are behind. They actually register you and hit you precisely on the mark with little if any spread once you've got their line of sight. This enforces a means to quick save/load a lot and go through a sort of trial and error feel to the game where you must beat them on resources and precision. However.... I'm sure I'm going to be looked at as crazy for this, but I absolutely adore this and the drive it brings just like I do with Far Cry 1's "AI issues". They both are hard games focused on lazy but effective AI shoot outs that enforced a feeling of sharp precision. When the gunplay feels this good, and there are quick saves to help out (though FC1 could learn from this little detail), I don't mind returning to the fight and getting it just right. The AI isn't impossible or anything, its just that it requires an adrenalin rush of movement, precise headshots, and lean and peak movements that outmatch the AI trigger finger. The rush, thrill, and satisfaction just feels unmatched by most games, even when many others clearly put more effort and meaning into their AI. Though speaking of which, the AI isn't completely lazy anyways. The miners are crazy and dumb people that charge at you, and the robots behave like.... well, dull robots, however the military units that you fight the majority of the game behave with some decent competence. They have actual battle chatter and talk with each other, calling out grenades, and communicating when a "friendly" goes down, and they weave in and out of cover when they feel the need to. On top of that seeing a more heavily armored shotgunner is steadily walking towards letting off a bursts of shells it makes for a pretty intimidating sight if you've got under 50hp left. You also can't always rely on cheap exploits like kiting, sometimes the enemies will surprisingly wait for you or even reposition themselves to surprise you if you while you hide behind a corner or a door. The AI isn't anything ground breaking, but its impressively competent coming from an indie team.
To accompany the gameplay's many shoot outs, there are bits of interaction and physic based extras. You can break open a glass pane and get to a throw-able explosive device, you lift lids off crates to get to extra ammo, have a device that hacks into doors or cameras and explodes internal wall circuits, or you can simply stay at the gym and play basketball. Thankfully the game doesn't stop you with many of those see-saw puzzles, but it does a lot to show off and push its physic engine in your face, along with other minor distractions. Similarly there are one or two unique levels where they put a vehicle into the game, or moments where it makes you travel down a path with limited oxygen supply. There's just enough variety to justify enjoying the 10 levels presented. The levels themselves don't look to varied up, and it is a corridor shooter in a literal sense. There's plenty of decent level design at work, but it all looks fairly similar. With that in mind though, its not a bad looking game at all. The blue, gray, and slightly glowing halls look fine and live up as sort of a campy 00 era sci-fi corridor shooter. Its also got a fantastic electronic industrial rock soundtrack to fit right in with that sort of art choice. There's plenty of computer terminals, some office spaces, and some pre-killed corpses lying around to attempt to give the place some interesting life and to show that it was indeed once a facility filled with workers rather than the murdering psychos that are left. The actual tech side of things isn't too bad either, if again you don't mind the Doom look. It supports more resolutions, maybe just a bit more polygons, has flashier effects and brighter colors, but in the end it feels similar to Doom's look... and I've got to say it doesn't age too badly and considering how well optimized it, I'm generally impressed. Its not going to wow you by today's standards, but it just feels right for what it is. I guess the windows could seriously use some improvement though, glass in this game both looks and reacts like some sort of bizarre alien substance in itself with how it chips away in very tiny fragments and looks like it was tinted with dust.
For starters I'm going to get it out of the way that the shooting is better than about every game I can name its copying from. Its got ADS, effective general aim, peeking, guns feel good and strong, enemies are satisfying and challenging targets, and its just fulfilling to fire (if you exclude the awful flamethrower and sniper rifle). Oh and of course the slow down bullet-time feature is nice. The game is one of the best aesthetically pleasing shooters of its time period and maybe even of its whole style, except maybe Wolfenstein: the New order. Compare that to the very strange robotic hit boxes of doom 3, and the dull and horribly inaccurate guns of HL2, or the floaty feeling left to FEAR's guns, and you can see where it beats them. Plus out of all those, I think only FEAR had ADS. The game's only down side to this factor is it was certainly within that time frame where hitscan weapons were becoming an issue, and the game did nothing to hide this. Enemies were straight up aimbots. There's even a glitch you can trigger (and several have reported on this if my own account isn't good enough) where you can look into a camera behind cover and see the enemies shooting the wall perfectly at the position you are behind. They actually register you and hit you precisely on the mark with little if any spread once you've got their line of sight. This enforces a means to quick save/load a lot and go through a sort of trial and error feel to the game where you must beat them on resources and precision. However.... I'm sure I'm going to be looked at as crazy for this, but I absolutely adore this and the drive it brings just like I do with Far Cry 1's "AI issues". They both are hard games focused on lazy but effective AI shoot outs that enforced a feeling of sharp precision. When the gunplay feels this good, and there are quick saves to help out (though FC1 could learn from this little detail), I don't mind returning to the fight and getting it just right. The AI isn't impossible or anything, its just that it requires an adrenalin rush of movement, precise headshots, and lean and peak movements that outmatch the AI trigger finger. The rush, thrill, and satisfaction just feels unmatched by most games, even when many others clearly put more effort and meaning into their AI. Though speaking of which, the AI isn't completely lazy anyways. The miners are crazy and dumb people that charge at you, and the robots behave like.... well, dull robots, however the military units that you fight the majority of the game behave with some decent competence. They have actual battle chatter and talk with each other, calling out grenades, and communicating when a "friendly" goes down, and they weave in and out of cover when they feel the need to. On top of that seeing a more heavily armored shotgunner is steadily walking towards letting off a bursts of shells it makes for a pretty intimidating sight if you've got under 50hp left. You also can't always rely on cheap exploits like kiting, sometimes the enemies will surprisingly wait for you or even reposition themselves to surprise you if you while you hide behind a corner or a door. The AI isn't anything ground breaking, but its impressively competent coming from an indie team.
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| Oh yes, there is a lot of this |
To accompany the gameplay's many shoot outs, there are bits of interaction and physic based extras. You can break open a glass pane and get to a throw-able explosive device, you lift lids off crates to get to extra ammo, have a device that hacks into doors or cameras and explodes internal wall circuits, or you can simply stay at the gym and play basketball. Thankfully the game doesn't stop you with many of those see-saw puzzles, but it does a lot to show off and push its physic engine in your face, along with other minor distractions. Similarly there are one or two unique levels where they put a vehicle into the game, or moments where it makes you travel down a path with limited oxygen supply. There's just enough variety to justify enjoying the 10 levels presented. The levels themselves don't look to varied up, and it is a corridor shooter in a literal sense. There's plenty of decent level design at work, but it all looks fairly similar. With that in mind though, its not a bad looking game at all. The blue, gray, and slightly glowing halls look fine and live up as sort of a campy 00 era sci-fi corridor shooter. Its also got a fantastic electronic industrial rock soundtrack to fit right in with that sort of art choice. There's plenty of computer terminals, some office spaces, and some pre-killed corpses lying around to attempt to give the place some interesting life and to show that it was indeed once a facility filled with workers rather than the murdering psychos that are left. The actual tech side of things isn't too bad either, if again you don't mind the Doom look. It supports more resolutions, maybe just a bit more polygons, has flashier effects and brighter colors, but in the end it feels similar to Doom's look... and I've got to say it doesn't age too badly and considering how well optimized it, I'm generally impressed. Its not going to wow you by today's standards, but it just feels right for what it is. I guess the windows could seriously use some improvement though, glass in this game both looks and reacts like some sort of bizarre alien substance in itself with how it chips away in very tiny fragments and looks like it was tinted with dust.
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| Shoot some hoops after you shoot the bad guys |
Where the game falls completely flat on its face though is the story. I love the presentation, and I love the gameplay, but the story is just unquestionably awful. It shows slight pieces of potential as a gripping though cliche sci-fi plot at times, but it can't ever deliver. Its voice acting is the first red flag. The main character is going for a style that is supposed to sound like a cheesy wise-cracking action hero, and while the attitude works on its own the voices deliver stays the exact same tone the entire game. There's no real human emotion or basic changes to it, its like someone just phoning in some lines with a cool voice, and he isn't the only one with this problem. However that's when the voice acting is at its best. At its worst is with a guy named Paolo Bellini who is possibly more well known than this game itself for how awful his voice acting is. Its just something I'm going to have to link to you. So here you go, enjoy. Meanwhile the writing itself just never lets itself go anywhere interesting. It starts off ok with a mission to track someone down on a troubled asteroid mining facility where things have gone wrong. The mining facility was crippled when a mineral called Hubbardium turned out to really screw up people's psyche and screw up technical equipment. This is also the element used as an excuse to give you bullet time, and for whatever reason you are immune to the awful side effects that have caused nearly everyone else to go insane. Rumors were also floating around that the planet was ruled over by a monster of some sort called Glomar, but many cite it as a myth or exaggeration about the minerals just behaving weird and life-like. However the story ruins any potential it has as it goes along. Confused writing mixed with attempts to add a couple of plot twists rush together at the end, and the game ends with an ending I'm sure wont be satisfying to many people. I would explain in more details, but either I can't because its so convoluted or forgettable, and for the fact that it would technically be spoilers since most of it comes off kind of rushed in the later half. Even the website seems conflicted about its own stories, describing the crazy guys or "mutants" as just illegal miners after the place was shut down. So which is it, illegal miners and pirates like the website and marketing says, or psychos turned from weird minerals as the in-game context tells it? Either way the message is clear, this is not a story driven game, and it would be nice if they had the option to skip some of the stop and chat comm messages that pop up ever other level for 5 minutes of your time.
Verdict and Closing Notes:
I think Wile E coyote was a decent choice for the "flawed" review card.
Text version (in case image is broken):
+ Excellent gunplay and battles to compliment solid FPS mechanics
+ Great Industrial themed OST that suits every part of the game
+ Fun and quirky presentation, physics, and tone, even if it all is a bit familiar.
+ Its $5 or less
- Absolutely horrible story, dialogue, and voice acting.
- Aimbot AI creates a tense difficulty that may turn off many players
- Hacking wasn't used enough, and the game just doesn't go very far with its ideas
On one hand I feel like I've gone easy on this game. I know it released to a lot of hate, and isn't so interesting. Its basically a really good looking budget corridor shooter, the exact opposite of what we expect from indies now. Even those that defend it usually jump to the excuse that "well, its worth $5" which isn't exactly saying a lot. On the other hand though, I simply can't find enough wrong with the game to justify hating it myself. Its got plenty of problems I can still see in it. I especially hate how underused its "hacking" feels, and how downhill the story went so fast. In addition I guess I didn't explain the enemy types very well, but that's because they just didn't go out of the way to truly stand out apart from whether or not they took a bit more bullets to kill and carried a different weapon. 90% of the game just looks like fighting other guys with guns, with the occasional spider droid tossed in. Still for all its down sides, it presented a lot of familiar things in a combined package fused with amazing gunplay, and for that reason and with little getting in the way its hard for me to be angry at any of its disappointments for too long.
As a matter of fact its a game that just feels like a straight up blast of nostalgia and comfort to me. Its not exactly an iconic sort of nostalgia, but instead sort of like those games copying a pixel art style, or paying a homage to a combination of retro games. We almost never get that with shooters (there's serious sam.... and that might be about it), but this feels like it unintentionally wound up as one that hits the mark for me. It just does everything right to feel familiar and right at home with the era of shooters I loved most, and its modern enough to still feel slightly relevant while its kind somewhat died beyond Bioshock. The gimmicky physics, the twitchy moderately spongy enemies, and just straight up raw corridors of constant precision gunplay at the core with action packed music following it as you traverse a hostile blue and gray scheme sci-fi facility all add up to this great comforting blast of nostalgia. It never feels unique enough to warrant anything to its own name, but because it does so well combining the successes of others it almost feels like a big tribute of why corridor shooters were so much fun. Heck even the publisher, Meridian 4, sounds like some cheesy name you would hear from and older sci-fi FPS. Actually its the game's name as well; How much more generic gamey sounding sci-fi name can you get than Alpha Prime? Its a more mindless junk food type comfort game that I turn to when I just want to play a good shooter on the computer with no technicalities or questions asked and an energy drink ready to go with it. Its not the best of games, and doesn't even come close to touching my favorite FPS games, but its a fantastic and nostalgic sort of corridor shooter that I find myself returning to frequently for short bursts of amusement. At the very least... well I guess I'll agree with the common defense that it is at least worth $5. There's also a really good demo you can grab and judge for yourself.
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