‘Rigid Force Alpha’ Review (PC/Steam)
I know what you’re thinking when you look at the title of this game, Britt is about to review a futuristic space-porno, but no… no I’m not. Rigid Force Alpha is a horizontally-scrolling 3D space shooter that takes strong influences from classics like R-Type, Gradius and Project X on the Amiga (I mention it because I can).
There is a story behind the stages of the game but it’s all pretty standard fare, doing exactly what it needs to do in order to move the action along at a solid pace. As you make your way through the stages, your on-board AI will tell you various aspects of your mission and updates etc. (the design of the female-voiced AI reminded me of the cover of Mean Arena on the Amiga, good) which is fully voice acted, a nice touch which goes a long way in helping with immersion.
The game runs smoothly even when there are a lot of enemies on the screen and the backgrounds feel rich and interesting to look at with quite a nice amount of variation to them. The difficulty of the game isn’t shy, even on the lighter mode meaning this isn’t a game that you’ll boom through in one try, instead, it becomes clear that you’ll be needing some serious skills to make your way successfully through the more challenging sections with some clever design tricks in the form of environmental hazards. The visuals are crisp and I really got the sense that I was moving forwards and travelling quite a distance as I blasted my way through space, asteroid belts and the insides of huge crafts, naturally interspersed with screen-filling boss fights (always welcome) accompanied by a synthwave sound track. I was completely immersed in the on-screen action, knowing that death was only a couple of bullets or mis-timed twitches away.
Rigid Force Alpha does lack a co-op mode which would have really opened up the game to a wider audience as this genre does work well with a multiplayer aspect, but it’s a very solid single player experience that has a replayability factor due to the various difficulty levels, it’s a game which goes for an old-school vibe in its progression and design, meaning that most of the weapons, attacks, patterns and pick-ups will be familiar to veterans of the genre but the initial tutorial and general accessibility of the game just as easily makes it a solid starting point for newcomers.
Whilst not breaking the mould and admittedly being reminiscent of previous iterations of the genre, Rigid Force Alpha is a solid entry which adds enough of its own touches to stand out and feels well-designed, offering a pretty rewarding experience. All in all, this is a great opening title for Com8com1 Software, a company I’ll definitely be keeping my peepers on for their future releases.
Rigid Force Alpha is available on Steam now.
