Call of Duty 4 has one of the best and most influential multiplayer modes in Shooter history. But its perks and progression system – XP, unlocks new weapons and abilities by gaining fame, and starts over once you reach maximum levels – and also represents a suspicious inflection point in the FPS genre. Grind, and winning the rewards of Grind, isn’t it as if it was a completely novel concept for the 2007 shooter game. The original Doom has PAR completion time on each level screen. Returning to the heyday of the game, if you played missions over and over again and earned records, you could earn a place on the competing leaderboard. Practice, perfection, and speed running through Goldeneye levels are ways to unlock cheats. In dozens of abstract forms, grind and reward dynamics is as old as the video game itself.
But modern warfare makes it much more concrete. It distinguishes and quantifies transactions and tells the player exactly how much grind and how much. Eighteen years later, all major multiplayer FPS games are designed around unlockable items, character levels, seasonal challenges and various other digital availability. This is about small incentives for player retention and bread collisions (often meaningless) to bring people online.
Ignoring ominous commercial motivations, these types of archers are constantly determined circles in terms of creativity and imagination. If developers interpret the most efficient form of psychological softness that they already have an obsession with the game, and if maintaining that attachment is the central goal, they always create a game that is present in the model and purpose and provides that model and purpose. When was the last time you played a new multiplayer FPS that felt original, and if you took away unlocked stages and rewards, will it offer you something meaningful?
Min Le, known as “Goose Man,” co-created Counter Strike at the age of 20. Originally, the first half-life, game, and LE mods were snapped quickly with the bulb. Six years later, Le created and overseen a now-abolized tactical intervention. He then worked for Rust Face Punch and Pearl Abyss on Mmorphg Black Desert Online. Now, a full century from CS 1.0 to 1 century, Le has returned to the world of multiplayer shooters. Alongside the Ultimo ratio team, he is designing and building a complete PVE FPS for a new cooperative called Alpha Response.
Playing as an elite SWAT team, you and three of your peers appeared on the map. At this time, there are two people based on Porto, Portugal during early access. Your commander will give you a mission. Sometimes it’s the rescue of hostages. Otherwise, it is to defend against bomb discharges, or armored pay vans that run from the road. You all start with the same weapon loadout, blow the enemy waves and work together to complete your objectives. For example, if all the bombs are denied, your commander will be on the radio again – elsewhere in the city, VIPs are under attack and need escorts.
Like Counter Strike, you use the “cash” you earn in the current round to buy new weapons, exchange armor and health syringes, and refill your ammunition. The entire team piles up on the squad car and floors to the next goal. But this is not a hardcore tactical shooter – whether this is ready or not. Stylistically, the Alpha’s response is closer to the great light gun game of the 90s: Time Crisis, Virture Cop, Silent Scope, Fatal Enforcer. The colour is lively. The gun seems to deaf ears. The animation of death is spectacular. Gore is abundant. It’s fast. Designed for QuickFire Matches. This is a pickup style shooter game where you can enjoy cooperative or solo for 60 minutes at a time.
There are no microtransactions and you cannot play freely. There is a level-up system, but almost all weapons are available from the start, with no perks, loadouts, or tearguard skins. The joy of Alpha Response has nothing to do with what unlocks. It’s not about the “metagame.” That’s about game.
“I don’t like games where you have to log in to all these different accounts and get all these different currencies,” explains Le. “I feel that’s because of a game that really wants to smoke time from players. With this whole concept of ‘player retention’, which many triple-A games focus on, I feel that’s not a very healthy way. We respect the player’s time.
“When players come back, they really want to play missions, so they enjoy the real game, not for shattering. If someone plays our game for 10 hours and then cleans up, it’s a success.
By the time Le joined the Ultimo ratio, the basic idea of Alpha Response had already been introduced. It was partially modeled on payday and was always meant to be a cooperative shooter with a large map. However, additional structure was required. Over the past two years, Le and the team have adopted a shared design ethic and given shape.
“We asked if we could do a little more alpha response like a counter strike,” Le says. An encounter is about someone who truly has the best reflexes.
“We’re trying to target audiences that are a little older, those who enjoy arcade shooters. Many of the developers are in their early 30s, so the game has been influenced by many of the things we’ve played in the past.
In addition to its aesthetics and its pace, the alpha response is a departure from the mainstream of current multiplayer FPS, as long as it is fully PVE. On the contrary, it feels like part of a new wave of online shooters based on collaboration. Poor spiritual successors left and right, leading the energy of Valve’s zombie game to various setups and mechanics.
Progression grind promotes an inherently self-centered approach to online play – about XP, when you level up and move on to the next gun and perk, everyone is there for themselves. By stripping all of that, the Le to Ultimo ratio can focus on other more meaningful ways to find the alpha response rewarding.
“When you shoot someone, you get the satisfaction of ‘He’s hit’,” explains Le. “It’s going to be visual and audio feedback, and hearing bullets collide with the enemy. It’s completely unrealistic – you never hear that sound – but to me it really matters. I’ll miss it. When you hit a wall, I want to make sure the visual effects there are also as satisfying as I can make them.
“Ragdolls tend to get very boring. Every time you kill someone it looks the same. I was playing in the ’90s like Time Crisis and Virtual Cops. They stylized the animation of death. It wasn’t very satisfying.
“The ultimate ultimate dream is to have many different levels that take place in different parts of the world,” continues Le. “We also want to make more use of the vehicles we have — we have them in the game now, but we don’t use them for the most potential. For example, we want a mission where one player is driving and the other is sniping from a helicopter.
Although I have been visiting early since October 2024, this is the first time I’ve heard of Alpha’s reaction. “We made the mistake of entering early access without a sufficient wish list,” explains Le. But even in this early state, the Alpha Response is one of the most original and fun shooters to play this year.
A massive update arrives on Sunday in July and will help you literally push the game’s user count records 4 Players up to 1,516. There are now more changes to the Le to Ultimo ratio. Modernizing and improving the interface is a major priority for adding CPU-controlled teammates for solo play and polishing the visuals in general. But even so, Le suggests that Alpha’s response could reach 1.0 in the summer of 2026.
“I think that’s very difficult because we’re developing five or six years internally and developing a project, then releasing it to the world and hoping it will be successful,” Le concludes. “I always thought it was opening it to the community in the early and early stages.”
