Alpha Prime is a very ambitious project for developers Black Element, because it competes with the likes of first person shooter giants like Halo and Half-Life. Those are some big shoes to fill, but here at AceGamez we like ambition. First and foremost though it is gameplay that we thrive on, which Alpha Prime fails to deliver in any new and exciting way. However, it does manage to save some of its dignity by being very exciting as a concept to be developed upon in the future.

Alpha Prime looks like a very promising game before you get started, a sci-fi first person shooter with a nice graphics engine and a strong storyline. It has even borrowed what works from other shooters, so navigating and controlling your character will seem very familiar. For example, the gun selection uses a similar method to Half-Life, you can use a hacking device like in Alien Vs Predator 2 (only Alpha Prime does it better) and it even throws in some Max Payne style bullet-time into the mix for good measure (only Alpha Prime's is less exciting). With these familiar abilities and some unique features, Alpha Prime has the potential to be an extremely cool game. Unfortunately, it's not quite ready to brawl with the big boys like Halo and Half-Life just yet. You do have to be patient to see some of the cool features it offers, and while the storyline is great, it takes too long to get going.

The story begins with a cut scene that focuses on the main characters, who are workers for a company that mines a rare substance called Hubbardium, which can do strange things to people who work closely with it and become infected. Hubbardium is a precious liquid metal that can be used to fuel ships and, luckily for you, when it is refined it can also slow down time, for when you're dodging bullets! But Hubbardium isn't enough for some and there is talk about an even more rare substance on Alpha Prime that some nasty people want to get their hands on at any cost, corrupt workers employed by the mining corporation who will stop at nothing to obtain it and will kill anyone who tries to get in their way. Furthermore, a lot of robot workers are malfunctioning and (you guessed it) attacking humans. You will come across these later on, as well as some Special Forces soldiers who want you dead too, private soldiers used by the mining corporation to hunt down any intruders on Alpha Prime to ensure that they don't live to talk about what they have seen. But to get to all of this you have to wait through the opening cut scene, which is a bit of a chore, as it lasts a good few minutes and is heavy on the dialogue.

This doesn't get the game going with a bang, and there are also some sound issues with characters during cut scenes. The voice acting is great and there are subtitles so you can read everything that is said, but when the characters are no longer close to the screen they go quieter and sometimes become inaudible. I also noticed that later in the game you can get shot during cut scenes, even though you no longer have control of your character! This doesn't happen often, but it is very frustrating because there is nothing you can do about it. The initial cut scene does serve a purpose though, to introduce you to your character, Arnold, and his friends. Arnold clearly displays some mixed affections for another worker called Livia, who wants you to find Warren, another miner somewhere on Alpha Prime. Somewhat reluctantly you give in to her pleas, despite the fact that Warren might not even still be alive. You meet other characters along the way, who help you through communication and or at one point in battle.

The cut scene does end eventually, and when it finally ended I was ready to rock... or so I thought. The control system is pretty standard, apart from the fact that you can hold the right mouse button down to make the crosshair smaller and get a better aim. But this part of the game takes a while to get going too, thanks to the tutorial style opening level, which eases you in gently with prompts to help you learn the controls. It's helpful, but Halo introduces you to all the controls just fine with one of the most exciting opening levels ever. I was itching for action and excitement, yet it took a long time for the game to finally provide some.

This is partly because the weapons you get early on are very dull, your standard pistol, machine gun and shotgun. While I personally prefer simpler weapons in a shooter, these ones have no feeling of power behind them and don't seem to offer many advantages or strengths in any situation. Worst still, they don't have a secondary function, making them very standard and not even vaguely exciting to use. The resulting effects of these weapons, as well as the explosions of fallen robots, feel somewhat lacklustre. Your arsenal increases as the game continues, and eventually you can truly be a threat to the bloodthirsty robots and Special Forces that are out to get you, but still there's nothing too out of the ordinary, with a sniper rifle, rocket launcher, flame-thrower and grenades being the types of weapons on offer - plus the axe, which you carry as a melee weapon. Don't bother using this unless you absolutely have to though, because it has about the same effect on an enemy as slapping your passport in the face of an armed security guard at a Middle Eastern airport; it doesn't hurt them all that much, but it will make them angry enough that you might get shot!

The ways in which you interact with the environment aren't all that exciting either. You can pick up and thrown many objects that are scattered around, but this doesn't distract or hurt the enemy in any way. You can crouch behind boxes and lean around corners to avoid being hit by bullets, but this is unexciting too, because the weapons aren't accurate until you aim (holding the right mouse button) and they aren't that powerful when you do hit the enemy, so popping up and picking people off during a large fire-fight is much harder than it should be. The bullet-time features don't help that much either; you can't perform diving moves like in Max Payne or El Matador, or dodge bullets in anything other than a frantic strafing side-to-side fashion (hardly elegant, is it?)

Another problem I came across in the later stages, when there are more enemies to deal with and larger environments, was one of performance; I had to turn the graphical settings down considerably to keep the game running smoothly, and my computer is practically brand new, a competent machine with plenty of disk space. Alpha Prime is a very crisp looking game when the graphics settings are at maximum, but when the action really got underway I had to turn them down, to the point that they looked no better than Xbox graphics. So, unless you have all the latest gaming hardware, you should be ready to sacrifice some graphical power in the video settings menu before you get started.

So far almost everything I've said about Alpha Prime is negative - and you probably won't enjoy the early stages that much, the impatient among you giving it up as a lost cause before it really gets going. However, stick with it and you might begin to see past the initial annoyances and appreciate its potential. If you do have a PC that can run at high settings, the graphics look pretty great, particularly the guns and the various lighting and shadow effects. The blast of your guns and the fire from your flamethrower are very realistic, further lighting up your surroundings when you're blasting away. Although a lot of the locations are similar in theme, they are rendered well and attempt variation between the confined areas with open spaces on each level.

The sounds of explosions and weapons fire however are hardly an electrifying presence; they do the job, but I would have liked to hear a bit more punch in the weaponry. The up-tempo music that plays during large shootouts adds an atmosphere of excitement without trying overdoing it as well. The sound effects while hacking and activating computers/cameras are spot on, and while the bullet-time isn't particularly effective as a game mechanic, the switch from real time sound to slow-motion is very convincing and stylish.

The AI is fairly standard; enemies initially use the stand and shoot method, but they have strength in numbers on their side, and they are intelligent when they need to be. If they are in trouble, they will find a vantage point and as they are running away they may turn back towards you to continue firing as they retreat. They dodge your fire and they can fire from cover without exposing themselves too much. This is also a positive point for the graphics, because the developers have taken the time to add convincing and smooth animations to your foes.

People who enjoy a challenge will be right at home with Alpha Prime, because even on the easiest setting there are a lot of enemies to deal with, including some cool spider-like robots with machine guns attached to them. Homing mines are often dotted around the map too; step too close to one and it flies through the air at you, so dodge it to ensure that you're not blown into something that resembles spaghetti bolognese. Automatic machine guns on tripods will cut you to pieces and rocket launching gun turrets will blast you to smithereens if you're too slow driving your jeep too.

This brings me onto my next positive point of how you can use vehicles (just the jeep unfortunately) and also use a hacking device called a ReCon to control lots of gadgets. When using the ReCon, you can control mini earth mover buggies to clear your path when obstacles block the way. You can also use it your ReCon to unlock certain doors, or see through a nearby security camera and scope out a room before you head in. It isn't much help in reality, but it is a neat touch. The rocket launcher can be a lot of fun when you have enough ammo, and you really do need it towards the end of the game. Rather than using set save points, you can use the F5 and F9 keys to quick save and quick load, which takes some of the pressure off the great challenge this game can be at times.

These cool features almost make most of the initial frustration worth it, but it is still not enough to make it a classic. The most important aspect, the gameplay, is too lifeless for much of the time. Apart from when you have plenty of ammo for your rocket launcher, the action is never engaging or high octane enough to compete with the best shooters on offer. The cool end of game boss (which is extremely hard by the way) and the amazingly entertaining plot twist at the end almost made me love Alpha Prime and shout to the heavens that it was all worth it. Whether or not you will feel that way if you reach the end I don't know, but there is a lot of rough to take with the smooth.

Alpha Prime is a hard game to review because the game has huge potential for the long term, even if a lot of it remains unfulfilled at this point. There are a lot of fun elements, like the effects that Hubbardium has on people, the spider robots that are hungry for your blood, hacking into the environmental defence systems to use them for your own survival and a whole manner of other nice touches that I would like to see more of. If only the dialogue had been tighter and the storyline faster, then at least the story would have carried the duller parts of the game better. I would like to see the storyline continued though, and if the developers can build on this foundation, injecting more life into the gameplay and weapons next time around, I'll be eager to snap up the sequel, which has the potential to give the big sci-fi shooter giants some competition.

Reviewed by Liam Bennion for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).