By Sam Coles:
You know when you play a game that is really bad
when you can only say one or two positives about it; Alekhine’s Gun is one of
those games. The titular title is name after a chess move, but this game is far
from clever and tactical because it is marred with issues such as graphical
problems, audio and A.I.
You play as Alekhine a KGB agent working for the CIA
who must take on various missions to infiltrate, assassinate and gain
information on the enemy during the 60’s in the height of the Cold War. The
first mission takes place in a German castle in style of Wolfenstein where you
must assassinate a Nazi officer and scientist. It had potential but is
immediately staggered by the first problem I have with this game and that is
the lighting, the game has terrible lighting effects because it’s either too
bright with the sun or in darkness you can’t see a thing. You would think that
there would be some visual options to tweak this problem right? No! There are
no visual options at all, something that is so basic in every game under the
sun like a gamma slide bar, but it is not present and turning the brightness up
and down your TV will not help.
The gameplay is like Hitman, but only if Agent 47
was suddenly hit by a heavy goods vehicle and he forgot the concept of stealth
and assassination. It does remind of Hitman 2 and Blood Money where before each
mission you can prepare what tools and weapons you’re going to take on the
mission and the levels are sandboxes where you can approach the mission anyway
you want to, but the mechanics of the game fail it over all.
The A.I is laughable I haven’t played a game with
such terrible A.I since Mindjack because you could shoot someone right in front
of a guard with an unsuppressed weapon and they will act like nothing has
happened. I can be right in front of a guard with a garrotte wire in my hands
trying to kill them and they won’t have a care in the world. This a stealth
game the A.I plays a key role in these types of games, even if the A.I is basic
with their patrol routes I would of taken that over what I have with this game.
The audio also a problem because when you start the
game it starts with a stylised static cutscene which is extremely quiet, like
any logical person would do I turned the volume up. However when gameplay
started the game is extremely loud where it almost perforated my ear drums, whoever
was the audio engineer on this game needs to be fired because the audio has no
balance at all.
The graphics look like an early PS2 game this game
could of easily ran on a Xbox 360 and PS3 and yes I get why it was released on
Xbox One and PS4 to move with the times, but the game doesn’t look like it
belongs on these systems. The textures are blurry and bland where it looks like
I’ve rubbed excrement in my eyes; this unacceptable for a 2016 release to have
graphics that are this bland. The character models are poor with terrible
animations and lip syncing with movements being unnatural, it looks like a
bunch kids acting in a school play, that’s how bad the animation is.
Alekhine’s Gun had some potential with its Cold War
setting because that period of history was all about espionage which a stealth
should of worked. Due to the poor controls, terrible A.I, horrendous sound
design and abysmal graphics it fails on every level. Do not buy this game there
are better stealth games out there even games that are older than this game.
Save your money for something else.
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