This is a fast paced FPS title which seems to be looking good. The story isin't really something to write home about however. In short, you (the character) go by the name of Arnold, have to help a friend that got caught inside a mining facility on some asteroid called Alpha Prime. Naturally you go out and help, but you find mining robots gone all crazy attacking everything in sight, and other foes. So you have to try to figure out what the hell is going on.
You get to blast stuff up in a Doom style of play. But its not all trigger happy madness. Some cases involve some strategic thinking. If for some reason you cannot shoot maybe due to lack of ammo, being outnumbered or whatever, you get to use this hacking device which enables you to remotely control various devices that are found throughout the dark trail you have to follow. One of the things that seem to be cool is the fact that you can drug your mind and sharpen your senses by injecting a small dose of hubbardium (have no idea what the hell that is supposed to be but anyway).
You have an arsenal large enough to blow all the huge ugly apponentes away. The game has all the weaponary you find in those frag hungry FPS games, starting off with the pistol, shotgun, machine gun, assault rifle, rocket launcher, flame throwers and grenades. Unfortunately, we dont find any new guns to rock our world.
From what I can gather, Alpha Prime is single-player game only, however I am not 100% sure. Still need to verify that. My first thought of this game was that it would probably just pass by, unnoticed. However, I have tried the demo out, and it seems to have some potential.. Strangely enough, I had previously heard very little or nothing at all about this game. So I dug in a little, in search for some info about the developers. they go by the name of Black Element Software, consisting of a small team of developers located in Prague, Czech Republic. Apparently, for some of these developers, Alpha Prime was their first game ever developed. At the moment, there aren't many FPS shooters of its type, so it wouldn't hurt to give the demo a try and tell us what you think about it. More about the demo later on. The name, Alpha Prime... erm... could have been something a little more attractive I must say.. But anyway..
Alpha Prime is also supposed to support the AGEIA PhysX PC processor for more advanced physics and in-game interactions. Unfortunately I don’t have a PhysX card myself installed on my PC, so I cant really tell you guys if this really pays off in the game, however I have included a trailer which demonstrates some of the physics and interactivity in the game. Also, a teaser and weapon demo have been thrown in for your amusement.
Screenshots:
Demo:
I played some of the demo myself.. The physics and visuals of the game are pretty good, nothing we haven't seen before, but good. On the other hand, the game seems to lack in explaining what is going on and bringing out the story of the game. Also, the objectives aren't always that clear, and you don't really know what to do. The demo has two levels from the full version game. Level one named 'Basement' and Level 3 named 'Basement Storage Sector' In the first level, you start of with just a hammer and kill a few foes to get some other weapons. In Level 3 you start off with all the available weapons at your disposal, so you get to try out the missile launcher, rifle etc. The shotgun seemed disappointing . Its usually one of my favorite weapons. Here, you need to give off 2 shots to kill a guy, even at close range. Unfortunately you don't get to try the flamethrower, unless it was lying around somewhere and I didn't see it. So, if you are interested, you can download the demo
here.
According to the
official website, the system requirements go like this:
Minimum system requirements:
CPU: Intel Pentium® IV 2 GHz or compatible,
Memory: 512 MB,
Graphics card: GeForce FX/ATI 9600 or compatible,
Sound card: DirectX compatible,
Free space on hard drive: 3 GB,
DirectX: 9.0c driver,
Windows: XP or 2000 system
Recommended system requirements:
CPU: Intel Pentium® IV 3,6 GHz or compatible,
Memory: 1 GB, Graphics card:
Nvidia Geforce FX 5950 Ultra or compatible,
Sound card: Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ series,
Free space on hard drive: 3 GB,
DirectX: 9.0c driver,
Windows: XP or 2000 system
