Alekhine's Gun

It is hardly a spy thriller, but rather a madhouse with disguises and murders, so it’s best to avoid this chapter of Mr. Strogov’s life altogether.

You come at the king, you best not miss. Comparing Alekhine’s Gun to an AAA title like Hitman may seem unfair, but Maximum Games made the mistake of trying to defeat the ruler of the genre with its own weapons and they take a beating on every front. [May 2016]

Alekhine’s Gun tries to emulate the most famous bald killer of all time. Unfortunately, it is dated and can't entice even old-school fans.

Alekhine’s Gun is named after a sharp and refined move in chess, that requires thinking and weighting. The lack of these skills in a stealth game that carries his name would probably make Alekhine turn in his grave and disappoint every fan of this genre.

The obviously Hitman ‘inspired’ gameplay does start to get to you after a while, in an annoying fly-on-your-shoulder kind of way.

The bad news is that this entertaining and occasionally surprising narrative is wrapped around an inadequately polished Hitman knockoff.

Stealth games are meant to be challenging and should feel like a tense, punishing experience. But Alekhine’s Gun is stretch too far and instead punishes you because of its poor mechanics and terrible AI.

Biggest problem of AG isn’t the story or lackluster graphics, but its incredibly poor AI. Should you cause an alarm, every guard on the level will blindly run to that spot, letting you shoot them one by one without even changing position. At some point, you start to wonder – why bother trying to stealth around if it’s so much easier to just kill everyone? [Issue#209, p.63]

Alekhine's Gun could have been a really good game if only it had debuted 10 years ago. It's a stealth game that copies gameplay mechanics from the Hitman series and adds some semi-original ideas but it turns out not to be enough. The complete game is an outdated little monster that lies far from today's standards and is priced like a much, much better game.

Avoid Alekhine’s Gun. There are much better games out right now that are actually worth your time and money. Hell, there’s a proper Hitman game out this month - go get that, it’s a fraction of the price! Alekhine’s Gun will not be remembered for its own efforts, but for the efforts of the Youtuber’s that will tear it apart.