Physics and weapons

Physics is also a big part of the game and in addition to the typical rag doll death animations for characters the level environments can be manipulated as well. You can hold onto certain objects and either carry them or push and pull them around and indeed in one part of our preview demo we needed to do some stacking of objects in order to move into another section of the base. Alpha Prime is also suppose to support the AGEIA PhysX PC processor for even more advanced in-game interactions but since we don’t have a PhysX card installed we were unable to evaluate how this worked in the game.

In terms of weapons there’s not a lot new going on in Alpha Prime; you get several to choose from, including machine guns, shotguns, grenades and flame throwers (our preview demo didn’t include the game’s rocket launcher) . One thing that’s promised in the full game is being able to hack into several of the bases’s systems including cameras, doors, security systems and other which certainly adds to the gameplay value. For some reason Alpha Prime also has a “bullet time” feature which of course slows down your enemies for brief periods and allows you to shoot them more easily. It’s a standard trick in action games now but it’s unclear why your character can slow down time in this game.

While our preview demo of Alpha Prime was brief it was certainly entertaining, thanks to the visuals, the physics interaction and the superb enemy AI. Black Element is promising more in the full game including fighting on the airless asteroid surface so we hope that the final version can deliver on the promise that our playtime gave us. Currently Black Element and its parent company IDEA Games are aiming for a release of Alpha Prime before the end of the year but there’s no word yet on a US publisher and release date. We hope to get a more complete version of the game in our hands before its release.