The answer to the change in direction for the Hitman series, Alekhine's Gun promised to return to open-world exploration, non-hand holding stealth. We spoke to the guys at Maximum Games around the game extensively as well, they actually had some really neat swag as well! It's something that you don't entirely -expect- from folks turning up to E3, but it's always nice when they deliver. Especially when they really push the boat out and provide not only the chess set cum wine thing below but a pen and some breath mints to boot! Oh, also some shirts for their other titles on the floor too!
We then went on to interview them to get a little more insight into the development process and the direction of the title. We actually ended up being their official trailer, intro type video for quite a while, which was pretty neat!
However, ultimately, the game has been released as an incredibly disappointing mess. There is very little to be said positively around it, which is a real shame. It promised so very much but delivered on nearly nothing.
After doing a little digging post-E3 (where we first saw the game), it turns out this was originally talked about way back in 2010 as 'Death To Spies 3: Ghost Of Moscow'. In the intervening years, the title has bounced from it's original publisher 1C Company, best known for King's Bounty, Men Of War and frankly not much else other than the first 2 instalments of the Death To Spies series.
The game ran through a couple of failed crowdfunders via Indiegogo and Kickstarter before being taken on by Maximum Games in 2014. This already paints a fairly dim picture of the game but you just want to believe that such a neat premise has a chance, right?
Firstly, the AI is impressively bad. The guards you are supposed to be avoiding have a form of 'alertness' where they'll start to become suspicious if you're being shifty near them. This raises an on-screen, and quite handy, meter on screen that you can use to deal with the situation and measure their response. It's a pretty decent concept, if a little meta, however, it doesn't work too well.
The meter and general 'state of alarm' can randomly raise based on you being near people, standing around or just for the hell of it. By moving away from the worrysome area, sometimes it'll drop, sometimes it'll skyrocket and put everyone on high alert. There seems to be no unifying factor that I can figure out that causes this to work in any particular way.
The overall gameplay design feels a little weak too. There are items all over that are nigh-on impossible to find or see unless you are standing right over them which you can potentially use to take your targets out with. However, none of them seem to suggest themselves to be more useful than a quick stab or a garroting which you enter the level equipped to do.
The first 'tutorial' mission took me around 1 1/2 hours to complete. It was made up of around 10 minutes of establishing what to do, 20 minutes of trying to find out how to do it and an hour of battling upstream against the game's failings. Nothing is clearly marked, sensibly findable or reasonably deductable.
Also distracting from the enjoyment are the graphics. Now, I'm not a graphical snob. I appreciate they aren't everything. However, when the textures for the grass look directly ripped from a PS2 title, faces look like they're carved from stone and character movements look ripped direct from Tracey Island, I have to comment on it. A lot more care could have been taken and just hasn't been. It's a real shame.
Audio design could really have done with a little more love too. All of the voiced sections sound entirely phoned in from a toilet cubicle. There's no balancing to make it feel as if the sound is coming from the character's location on screen and it all comes with a really distracting, muffled static hiss over the top. I think that can quite safely be dubbed as unforgivable.
I dearly wanted to love this game. I took a huge interest in it at E3 and have been following it ever since. I accepted it wasn't going to be beautiful but the concept seemed to promise so much. The name was even quite clever! For those that care about chess, Alekhine's Gun is a chess formation from a former Russian World Champion and this is all set during the Cold War. Clever no?