Alekhine's Gun
OpenCritic Rating
Top Critic Average
Critics Recommend
Critic Reviews for Alekhine's Gun
Like the chess move it's named after, Alekhine's Gun puts its pieces in the right places, but then it fails to follow through with any quality or grace. It's hard to feel accomplished after pulling off a clean kill when the targets lack the competence to even defend themselves.
These were moments of mild fun in an otherwise desperate game, and none of it justifies the time or money one might spend playing it. Alekhine's Gun occasionally reminded me of the fun I had with Hitman: Blood Money, and for that it deserves some credit. Then again, I could have been replaying that game -- or for that matter, earlier, better Death to Spies games -- instead.
It's not impossible to overlook Alekhine's shopping list of shortcomings. There were a few occasions when everything would neatly come together and create something genuinely fun and entertaining. However, the consistency simply isn't there.
Given another year or two this might have turned out to be a solid Hitman alternative, but as it stands Alekhine's Gun fails on every level – poor AI, abysmal frame rate, sub-par visuals, and horrendous shooting. There is nothing here to salvage the premium price tag.
Alekhine's Gun comes with an interesting story and some decent gameplay mechanics which are ruined by sub-par execution. The lack of features that are standard in modern video games such as auto-save and the ability to skip cutscenes, sluggish performance, convoluted controls and mediocre gunplay are just some of the most glaring issues of the game. More development time might have made Alekhine's Gun a better game, but in its current state and with a full price tag, the game is hardly worthy of anyone's time.
Alekhine's Gun's amateurish animation, godawful gameplay, faulty framerate, abysmal AI, and garish graphics all conspire to ensure that you'll never, ever enjoy playing this game. There's no variety or originality, and it's more bug-ridden than an abandoned sandwich – it seems that testing wasn't given much consideration during development. This title is one of a very rare breed, one that will appeal to absolutely no one, and buying it would quite literally be akin to throwing your money away. Simply put, we can Nazi anyone having fun with this.
I suppose I should have realized Alekhine's Gun was going to have quality concern issues following its numerous delays. I just wasn't aware of how severe these problems would be, as the stale gameplay and dated graphics barely put it on level with games from the last console generation.
