Retro Replay Review

Gameplay

Alpha Squad starts from a pleasingly direct place: you pick one of four hunted mercenaries and start shooting your way through enemies from a top-down view. There is no need to wait for the game’s central conflict to reveal itself. The Alliance has marked your crew for death, and you are immediately on the offensive.

The co-op is the main reason to give it a chance. Two to four people can play together on one Xbox 360 through split-screen, or join up over Xbox Live, and that makes the idea of a mercenary squad feel more literal than it does in solo play. A group that wants a straightforward shared shooter will get more from it than someone looking for a deeply personal one-character campaign.

Its limitations are also easy to see from the setup. Alpha Squad is centered on fighting enemies and pursuing its conspiracy, so the pull rests on whether you enjoy repeating that clean action-game loop with friends. Go in wanting immediate top-down combat and a social Xbox 360 session, not a game that asks you to master a huge range of systems.

Graphics

The action is viewed from above, keeping your mercenary and the enemies in the same broad combat space. In local multiplayer, split-screen puts each participant in a separate portion of the display, a practical fit for a couch session even if it naturally makes each view smaller.

Story

The story has a sturdy B-movie energy. Earth is under the rule of the Alliance, a military dictatorship, while Clint, Jin, Lynx, and Lackey are fugitives with bounties on their heads. That is enough pressure to make every fight feel connected to a larger pursuit rather than like a detached shooting exercise.

What gives the premise a little more bite is the unanswered question: who inside the Alliance wants Alpha Squad dead, and why? You are not simply escaping the regime; you are trying to trace the order back to its source. That mystery is the narrative thread most likely to keep you moving forward between battles.

Don’t expect the setup to become more complicated than its foundation suggests. Alpha Squad works best as a lean sci-fi revenge-and-investigation story, with four mercenaries facing down the government that has targeted them. If that kind of old-school action premise sounds fun, it does its job.

Overall Experience

Alpha Squad is easiest to recommend as a co-op action game with a clear reason for its squad format. The first hour’s draw is immediate: you are a wanted mercenary fighting the regime that put a price on your head. Add a few friends, and the four-person team premise finally has the room to breathe.

Playing alone does not erase the game’s basic appeal, but it does put more weight on the top-down shooting and central mystery. The experience is likely to land best if you value a concise futuristic conflict over a dense role-playing campaign or a heavily layered tactical game.

There is something refreshing about how little Alpha Squad asks you to decode before it gets to its core conflict. It earns a modest recommendation for Xbox 360 owners who want a simple sci-fi shooter to play cooperatively, especially if the prospect of one-screen or online squad action sounds better than going it alone.

Retro Replay Score

6/10