81 Very Good
29 January
Günseli Özkan
Günseli Özkan Editor
Genesis Alpha One PC Review
  • DeveloperRadiation Blue
  • PublisherTeam 17
  • MultiplayerNo
  • PlatformsPC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
  • Review PlatformPC
Mimimum System Requirements
  • Requires a 64bit processor and operating system
  • OS: Windows 7 64bit
  • Processor: Intel Core i3 4130 / AMD FX 4350
  • Memory: 4 GB RAM
  • Graphics: GeForce GTX 660 / Radeon HD 7950 or Radeon R9 290
  • Sound Card: Windows Compatible Sound Card

Genesis Alpha One PC Review

Developed by an independent developer team called Radiation Blue, Genesis Alpha One gives you the opportunity to explore and save humanity in space. Let's review the game, which offers a different gaming experience for those who love science fiction genre. 

Genesis Alpha One PC Review

While Genesis Alpha One is a shooter game with a first-person perspective, it contains more than one genre. For example, we do not have a certain main character in the game, the character we play is the captain of the ship, but he is randomly selected from within the crew. If the character that we play dies, it leaves forever and another member of the crew is promoted to captain. If everyone in the crew dies, it means we failed the mission. In this way the game contains the roguelike genre.

Although the game is an FPS game, it has a detailed base setup system in itself. It's our job to develop the ship that is in charge of Genesis, protect our crew and prevent attacks from outside.

So what's the Genesis mission? The game is in the near future. The regimes in the world and global capitalism have caused excessive exploitation of resources, and the planet has turned into a garbage. Many of the governments have collapsed and the people are desperate. The remaining few governments have supported the four big companies to start the Genesis program to save humanity.

We are witnessing the journey of the ship named Genesis in space in Genesis Alpha One. Our mission is quite simple; to find a new home for humanity's DNA and to prevent the extinction of species. In doing so, we will build our ship, collect resources and counter the alien attacks.

Generally speaking, we can split the game into three different parts. Ship, expeditions and construction. There's more than one thing to do inside the ship. You can visit the buildings you have built and speed up the operations there, prevent the attack of the alien races coming to our ship, and jump into an another universe if you didn’t like the sun of the system you in. In the meantime, even if you are the captain, everything on the ship is your responsibility. If the energy cores are broken, you must immediately go to the technical part of the ship and check all the cores individually.

Genesis Alpha One PC Review

The expeditions in the game are active after building the Hangar. You can send your team members to expeditions and you can join them too if you like. I usually preferred to go because too much time on the ship can cause claustrophobia. There are also different mysteries that you can find in expeditions. Sometimes you find resources that you haven't seen before (for example, aluminum isn't something you can find at the beginning) and then you start collecting them on other planets. Sometimes, you encounter structures that resemble the Black Monolith from Arthur C.C Clarke's famous work 2001: A Space Oddysey but only they are white for some reason. These structures can show the information and planets of other races. They are important for the continuation of humanity.

Another advantage of expeditions is the alien life forms that attack. With the device called Harvester you have, you can collect the DNA of alien life forms you kill and get a very important raw material called biomass. These are very important for clones.

Genesis Alpha One includes different buildings, each of which has a very important function. As I mentioned above, when you make a hangar, you can send discovery vehicles to other planets. You can produce biomass in the Greenhouses, and you can produce and develop turrets in Workshop section. However, these two buildings are very important in the game; Tractor Beam and Clone Labs.

The Tractor Beam is a blessing, but it actually looks like a sharp sword on both sides. The main task of this building is to produce raw materials from shipwrecks in space. But while doing so, it also draws a mini alien life forms to your ship. Even though the monsters in the beginning are harmless, the difficulity to take care of them increases with time. In the end, you become forced to surround Tractor Beam with turrets. In the meantime, these life forms take over the bottom of the ship, if there is only one above, they have eggs below. It’s a little problematic, but Tractor Beam is your only option to get the resources you need quickly without expeditions.

Genesis Alpha One PC Review

Clone Labs, as it is known by the name, allows you to produce the crew. The number of your team members equals to your life, as I mentioned before. Here we can produce new crew members by consuming biomass. You can also use DNA from other alien life forms to create new clones or to improve existing ones. Some DNA improvements increase the intelligence of the crew you create, while some of them allow you to create complete warriors.

There are different companies to choose from when you start Genesis Alpha One and they can change the way you play. Some of that choices can change the weapons while the others can improve the skills of your crew. However, the main difference is the object called Artifacts which will help you throughout your missions. So it is important that you decide in advance what company you want to go with.

The planets you land for discoveries are not very different. However, sometimes you go down to completely arid planets, sometimes you go down to planets full of plants. Although our goal is collecting raw materials, the planets could be a little more varied.

Genesis Alpha One is using the Unreal Engine 4 engine successfully. Especially in-ship lighting and graphics are very successful. However, it is difficult to say the same for the sound part of the game, it could have been more successful.

There are a few other negative things to say about the game. The first one is repetition. After a point in the game, you do exactly the following; go to discovery, kill creatures, produce crew, build new buildings, jump to another system. As you progress in the game you start to find new technology and resources, but the general system remains the same, and the game becomes boring, unfortunately.

Genesis Alpha One PC Review

In the game you can find a detailed help guide and you can get information from the units in the buildings you built. However, the game does not tell you certain things, and it becomes annoying from time to time. For example, you need to disassemble the raw materials from the discoveries at Refinery. These raw materials must be moved from the Hangar to the Deposit first, but if the distance between Hangar and Deposit is so long, it requires longer time. I had to start the game again, thinking that I had made a mistake, and then I saw the carrier robots…

The part where you're assigning your crew is a bit weird. The game tells you that you can assign someone to a mission, but it doesn't tell you how to do it. That is why I recommend you to pay attention especially to the keys on the screen.

Genesis Alpha One is a game that successfully combines roguelike, FPS and the building system. If you like science fiction, Genesis Alpha One is a successful game with absolutely beautiful details. Although it is not a very user-friendly game, I must say it is a nice experience.