Well that was brief: Alpha Prime

Alpha Prime took slightly less than half an hour to kill me.

More accurately, it only took about ten minutes to kill me.  The other twenty were spent watching over-acted, over-written soap opera cutscenes.

I really don't think we need to spend two minutes of a seven-minute opening cutscene explaining that the main character can't get drunk because he's resistant to the game's unobtainium, "hubbardium."  Apparently this somehow (they skipped the expose on this part) also conveys an immunity to alcohol.

And yet, the "refined hubbardium injectors" work, allowing for the game's "bullet time" mechanism.

Really?  You're going to bother to shoehorn a plot into a FPS, use plot elements to support gameplay mechanics, and leave glaring inconsistencies in the first 15 minutes?  REALLY?


Alpha Prime being an FPS, I'm introduced to my first weapon immediately.  It's a strangely shaped hammer.

Not a crowbar!

 It's also a magical hammer, as it leaves bullet holes in anything it comes in contact with:

Hammer hammer bang bang

Oh look, another cutscene!  Apparently the ship I'm taking to Alpha Prime has hit a mine above the surface of the asteroid, and I need to leave the femme fatale here and take an escape pod to the mines.  Yay.

Very...vivid... writing there

 After a couple of minutes of shooting crazed mutant-miners (who don't appear to be mutated in any way) and security bots. I stumble upon this:

Somebody here has a few screws loose.

He gives me the games hacking tool, and follows me around for a while until he manages to get himself shot; which of course triggers ANOTHER cutsence.

More sneaking about and shooting things.  Somehow, a robot manages to silently flank me and put a few machine-gun rounds into my cynical skull.

.

Oh darn.  I'm dead.  I was so bored while playing this that I can't even muster up the energy to spend a few paragraphs condemning it.

Off to Amnesia!