Alpha Response was released at the tail end of last year and has recently had its biggest update, an update working on improved ai, visual features as well as new missions and real-world locales. But, it just doesn’t seem to hit the mark when you actually play it.
Right from the get-go, Alpha Response makes it clear that you’re not an average beat cop. You’ll instead be doing everything from escorting VIPs to defusing explosives that have been littered around a small warehouse, which all seems quite exciting. Heck, in the tutorial you’ll even get a chance to take out a (admittedly, floaty) cop car for a spin on the track.
All of this is covered in a relatively robust tutorial, and then it’s straight into service, protecting the people. Well, it would be if the concurrent player count was a little higher — although, if you’re going to be playing with friends then this probably isn’t the end of the world. As we struggled finding a game, my group ended up just playing on our own.
When making a lobby you can adjust all manner of sliders and enemies to tailor your experience. This seemed strange at first, not least because I was expecting a tactical approach to gameplay — what with Alpha Response being the creation of one of the original Counterstrike Creators — and having so much customisation made it appear… well, almost arcade-like in presentation. We ended up mostly leaving the settings on default and jumping straight in.
Once you’re in, you’re immediately greeted by the tutorial character, who starts shouting objectives and information at you; Whether it be alerting you to nearby enemies or just general information on the task you’re doing. At first this is helpful, however after a while this becomes repetitive and a bit of a chore to listen to. This is especially the case when you, or a team member, dies as he shouts “You have a limited number of redeplomos” every time it happens.
Now, some good advice — before you even get to fighting — is to go to your settings and turn off the red markers that were added in the latest update because they obscure most of the enemy, especially from a distance, making it very difficult to shoot them (as it overlays in front of cover). It almost looks like when an enemy was about to damage you in the Time Crisis games.
There are currently four different mission types: VIP escort, bomb defusal, hostage rescue or protecting the cash. Each of which had a mission timer that ticked down from the start. It should be added that the timer was strictly for the mission time and had no relevance for the objective itself. This was most notable with the bomb defusal missions because the only place you could actually see the individual bomb timers were on the bombs themselves — so getting up to them and checking them out, so you could prioritise which ones to defuse first, was essential.
The one thing that did stand out was Alpha Response‘s environments and localised maps. Although not the most visually stunning, they were very well designed, and each map fit the theme of the mission type well. It also does not limit where you can go, featuring vehicle interiors, lots of open buildings, some cool looking boats, and other areas to explore while on the mission. There is an issue, however, where when approaching the areas for missions and leaving where the mission area would just ping in and out of existence when the mission starts and stops which was a bit jarring.
Combat, felt quite basic, it almost reminded me of the old Medal of Honor games where if you shot an enemy they would do a reactive animation,,, but, this could get in your way if you were in a tight corridor and had to wait for an enemy death animation to end before you could walk over them. In this case, that led to more than a few annoying deaths where we were blocked in.
After a short while repeating the same few missions over and over again, and dealing with some rather janky AI, we’d had enough and there wasn’t really much keeping us drawn into it. It seemed to be having an identity crisis between wanting to be both a tactical shooter and an arcadey sandbox. As a result, it stops itself from doing either of the more cool things that you would associate with those two genres — for example: When you drive the vehicles you are immediately booted out upon arrival at a scene, meaning they are literally there to get you from point A to B with nothing else beyond a timer to keep an eye on inbetween.
If it was meant to be a more serious shooter it should take its time with its objectives. The timer just creates a sense of urgency that doesn’t need to be there. Alternatively, if it was going for the more arcade style, with a faster pace to the objectives, then it should be much faster to complete and have more of an emphasis on earning a better score or points. Unfortunately, it’s stuck between.
Alpha Response has the potential to become something that could be truly great but in its current state is not particularly potable and creates more frustration than anything else. It, coincidentally, reminds me a lot of the old, modded co-op maps created in the original CSGO which featured similar missions to its line-up.
Alpha Response is available now for PC.
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