Review by: Jim Richmond
Published: September 16, 2004

Alpha Black Zero: Intrepid Protocol is the brainchild of first-time developer Khaeon, based in the Netherlands. The game is set in the year 2366, a time of far reaching space exploration. You play Lt. Kyle Hardlaw, the leader of the Alpha Black Zero strike team. Covert groups like Alpha Black Zero are used by the ruling authority, SolGov, to put down uprisings of two militant factions: the Troglo-Imperialists and the Black Cartels. When we join Lt. Hardlaw, he is facing a military court martial for the murder of almost 100 SolGov civil servants after his team is sent to put down an insurrection. Alpha Black Zero‘s missions are presented in flashback, taking you through the events leading up to the court martial.

Alpha Black Zero is a tactical shooter that patterns itself on the Rainbow Six model. You lead a squad of five specialists that each play a different part of the team: squad leader, machine gunners, snipers, and heavy machine gunner. Furthering the Rainbow Six comparison, you can body hop from one squaddie to the next to use the specialized hardware each is carrying. The characters that are not directly under your influence are operated by the computer as they provide backup.

The computer isn’t solely left to its own devices while covering your six o’clock, however. You can issue orders to one or all of your team mates, commanding them to hold their position, regroup, hold fire and lay down cover fire. If conservation of ammo is important, you can also issue the directive to use precise firing methods. This saves ammunition, but it comes at the trade off of making your team fire more slowly and conservatively.

Unlike Team Rainbow, the loadout Alpha Black Zero‘s soldiers carry is selected before each mission as a package for the entire team rather than separate loadouts for each individual. There are three discreet sets of weapons: stealth, normal and heavy. The normal weapon compliment includes two standard assault rifles, one silenced submachine gun, one sniper rifle and one heavy machine gun. The stealth loadout replaces the heavy machine gun and one of the assault rifles in the normal set for another silenced submachine gun and an additional sniper rifle. The heavy loadout tweaks the normal compliment in favor of raw firepower, exchanging the silenced submachine gun and standard sniper rifle for one more heavy machine gun and a slow but super powerful sniper rifle. All loadouts also include a limited number of hand grenades for those soldiers not carrying silenced weapons.

As you go through the missions, the waves of enemies will undoubtedly leave their hot lead impression on you, so you’ll need to find places to recover health as well as restock ammunition supplies. Alpha Black Zero‘s maps host a series of ammo and health replenishing stations. The trick is that each station can only be used once by each soldier, so their use must be integrated into your overall strategy as you cross the map.