AlphaPrime - PC

It has good graphics and smooth game play no problems installing or adjusting settings to max. Unfortunately it is not involving. There wasn't a decent story or any reason to care what was going on. I kept hoping for it to get interesting and it never did. I gave up out of boredom. There are tons of other games I would not mind playing over like Bioshock or GOW before I waste time on this. It is on steam though so I dont need to find the CD disk if I want to try it again.

If you buy this game used, you aren't going to be able to play it, as it requires an internet connection and a unique Steam key.

Alpha Prime is a standard on the rails FPS that does nothing to differentiate itself from the pack. The game itself is not particularly a bad game but it's not really good either. I purchased the European version of this game for around $9.99 and still felt ripped off. The story centers around the asteroid Alpha Prime and its hubbardium mining colony. Hubbardium is basically considered a dangerous element and the asteroid is put under quarantine. This is where the main character of Arnie (whom you play) comes in. He's asked by his ex-girlfriend Livia to rescue her current lover and Arnie's previous best friend Warren from the company-quarantined asteroid. Arnold reluctantly accepts which sets the generic story in motion. Throughout the game Arnie meets a few other characters most of which he's unable to tell whose side they're on. The story itself is so bland that it's really difficult to care about any of the people he meets. Combine that with the fact that most of their voice-work while acceptable is terribly annoying. The game really doesn't offer much for surprises and is extremely predictable. Here my thoughts on Alpha Prime;Pros+ Decent graphics, but nothing amazing.+ Smooth frame rate.+ Ability to save anywhere, anytime.+ Some nice but short ambient musicCons- Dull storyline as well as a bland and predictable ending.- Generic weapons some of which are basically useless (hammer and flamethrower spring to mind). Most of the weapons have a very plastic feel when using them.- Uneven difficulty at times.- Typical rails shooter, no real exploration.- Lacks enemy variety.- Enemies can have an amazing line of sight when shooting or sometimes they won't even see you until your gun is right in their face.- Annoying characters (Arnold, Livia, Bruce, Olivier and especially Paolo), dialogue and voice acting. While the voice acting wasn't bad the characters themselves and their dialogue was.- Excessive, unnecessary and out of place profanity. Now don't get me wrong, I have nothing against foul language but if it doesn't suit the mood/story it just comes across as ridiculous. The amount of times characters used the "F" word in the dialogue was laughable and forced. It felt like a teenager swearing just because their parents aren't around.- Only one vehicle to use which had no weapons at all and almost no in game sound. It felt tacked on at the last minute. Let's just say the game is no Halo.- Hubbardium/bullet time effect was basically unnecessary. If you want to play a FPS that does the effect right try Timeshift instead.- Frequent game crashes even with up to date patches.- Horrible action music (insert your typical generic guitar-ridden angst rock here).Alpha Prime's biggest problem is that it borrows from most other FPS games out there and does nothing original on its own. The story is forgettable, the characters irritating and everything else is just average. It's not entirely a bad game but most people will find themselves plodding through enemies just to get to the end of the game. Mind you, not because of the story but because they want to uninstall the game from their system. I struggle even to recommend the game at a downloadable price of $4.99. Unless you're completely broke and have nothing else to play I would give Alpha Prime a skip.

I played the US retail DVD version of this game which I got elsewhere, so I can't vouch for whether the version listed here is exactly the same game. It didn't need Steam to play it and in already has the patch installed to make it equivalent to the 1.3 version.It's not an easy game, but it has menu saves, quick saves, and auto-saves. The last two quick saves are always available, which is convenient. I recommend you keep an eye on your ammo. I got to a point where I didn't have enough to continue and had to repeat a small part of the game making sure to not waste ammo and be sure to search for all I could find (including ammo picked up from dead enemies).Graphics are pretty good. I played with everything set to max on my 3 GHz Core 2 Duo with 4 GB and dual SLI-linked GTS8800 512 GPUs.I thought the weapons, story line, and environments reasonably decent. There was nothing stunningly innovative or ground breaking here, but the game was well done. I actually thought the voice acting was excellent. Theatrical quality, in fact. Weapons were typical: Pistol, shot gun, assault rifle, sniper ,rifle, rocket launcher, and a flame thrower. There were also hand grenades. You get to carry all of the weapons at once. I like that! (I'm not a sticker for realism on futuristic scifi games).There was only one steerable vehicle and it didn't have any weapons, but you have to drive it through some steep windy mountain trails which was fun. All enemies were human-ish with some being harder to kill than others. There were also some robotic bad guys and turrets that you can kill with regular gun fire. You have the capability to hack into various electronic things to open doors and commandeer cameras. Finally, there is an injectable substance which slows down time, supposedly giving you and advantage when you surprise your enemies. I didn't use it very often, but it can come in handy at times.I think it was an average length game and had an interesting, if somewhat unchallenging, climax (relative to the rest of the game). It crashed a number of times throughout the game, but no save games were corrupted and it starts up pretty quickly, so I didn't find the crashing to be a big problem. The crashes only seemed to happen when it tried to reload after I was killed, so it was tolerable. I'm running Vista x64.I don't think the game has any multiplayer option, but I wouldn't have been interested in that anyway.Over all, I was quite satisfied with the game at the $10 price I paid for it. If it sold for $50, I would not have given it 4 stars, but at least the North American DVD version is worth more than two stars.

This is a completely on-rails shooter. No choice about which way to go; if you can open a door, that's the way you need to go and no worries about there being a better route some other way.Difficulty is very uneven; some areas are totally easy while others are insanely difficult, even on the easiest setting. Enemies see you and know exactly where you are the second you pop up your little head. Finally I gave up and used cheat codes to plow through to the end.Graphics are good overall, but can't carry a game by themselves.