Alcatraz (2010)

Alcatraz (2010) is a first-person shooter for Windows PCs developed by Silden and published by City Interactive (CI Games), whose Polish title is Alcatraz: In the Harm’s Way. A group of heavily armed terrorists takes over Alcatraz Island and threatens San Francisco with missiles, and you play Joe Harmsky, a former special forces instructor who is released from prison to scout the island for a commando team. Polish game databases give a release date of February 26, 2010, while Metacritic, GameSpot, and GameFAQs list June 27, 2010. It is a low-profile budget release: Metacritic has no Metascore for it, and its one listed critic review is negative.

The name belongs to several games. This card covers the 2010 shooter. The 1992 Infogrames game, Alcatraz (1992), has a different plot (a drug baron named Miguel Tardiez), though Wikipedia’s page on that game describes the 2010 title as an unofficial remake. Alcatraz: Prison Escape is a 2001 stealth game by Zombie Inc., and 1954 Alcatraz is a 2014 point-and-click adventure from Daedalic, and neither is this game.

Technical Specifications

Plot: Terrorists on Alcatraz

A terrorist group seizes Alcatraz Island, turns the prison into a fortress, and threatens San Francisco with missiles. Their goals are not clear, and because a former U.S. general commands them they are treated as a national security threat. Harmsky is sent to the island first to gather intelligence for the assault force and to find and destroy the missiles. Reviewers and databases compare the premise to the film The Rock, which is known in Poland as Twierdza, and a Polish reviewer writes that the plot is borrowed from it.

How It Plays: Stealth, Night, and Physics

The Polish databases describe a single-player shooter in which you eliminate large numbers of enemies by day or by night. Night is the stealth option: enemy vision and alertness are reduced, so surprise attacks are easier. The weapon set covers pistols, machine pistols, and rifles, and the Aurum engine provides dynamic lighting and a physics model that lets you interact with the environment. A Polish reviewer says the engine and gameplay resemble Atak na Czarnobyl. Campaign length and mission count are not stated in any source we could check.

Reception: Is Alcatraz (2010) Worth Playing?

The critic record is thin. Metacritic needs four critic reviews to compute a Metascore and has one: Absolute Games, which wrote “This is CITY Interactive’s worst FPS since Code of Honor: The French Foreign Legion.” Users on Metacritic give it 3.8, labeled Generally Unfavorable, from five ratings. MobyGames lists a critics’ average of 41% from three ratings and a player average of 1.7 out of 5 from two. Polish sites are more forgiving: Gamepressure shows a user rating of 5.1, GRYOnline shows 4.9 from 248 ratings, and a 2023 expert review there scores it 7.5. If you collect City Interactive shooters, it is a curiosity. The scarce and mostly negative reviews give little reason to expect more than a budget shooter.

Where to Find It

The game was sold as a PC disc and as a digital download; Amazon lists both a download and a boxed edition, but Amazon blocks automated checks, so we could not verify current availability. We could not find a Steam or GOG page for the 2010 game. The Steam page for “Alcatraz” that appears in search results is 1954 Alcatraz, a different game. For the older shooter of the same name, see Alcatraz (1992), and for a stealth game set in several prisons, Alcatraz: Prison Escape.