I am in the middle of my second playthrough of Alpha Protocol. It appears to have gotten very mediocre reviews. I cannot understand why, especially given that it is a role playing game and not a fps.

The conversation trees and storyline manipulation available to the player are a lot of fun and as far as I can tell the reviewers concur. I personally think the characters are a lot of fun, with Heck being my favorite. But all the reviewers seem to think that the gameplay is so horrible that it drags down the rest of the game. They say that the AI is bad, that the cover system is bad, and they even object to the fact that there is a stealth ability that turns you invisible for 5 seconds.

What the hell, I say. It's a role playing game. It's not Splinter Cell, or Left 4 Dead. The gameplay is supposed to be about your character stats so it really cannot play exactly like a straight up shooter or sneaker. I personally have never had a single problem using the cover system. I guess the AI is a little weak but then again most of your enemies are supposed to be spy movie mooks.

I feel like there are so many complaints about things that are not really the point of the game, and at the same time everyone just glosses over the aspects that are outstanding and fairly rare in video games, such as the memorable characters and the ability to affect the story.

Because it's a role playing game that does some FPS type stuff rather poorly and many, many people don't like either genre to begin with. Oh, and it's really visually unpolished.

This is a guy who considers Planescape Torment to be his 2nd favorite game of all time, but I still consider Alpha Protocol to be a clumsy waste of time in between new discoveries and dialogue. As much as I love those discoveries and conversations, Obsidian still deserves to be taken to task a bit for the actual gameplay portion of the title.

The few commercials I've seen have been so visually poor that my interest hasn't really been piqued -- is it a Mass Effect or Fallout 3 style RPG/shooter hybrid thingie?

Kind of, yeah. The writing shames most titles out there, like with any Chris Avellone project, but at this point I'd rather he take up just plain ol' writing rather than keep pushing out games. There's lots of good stuff in there, don't get me wrong-- it's actually pretty damn impressive how much the stuff you do impacts the rest of the game-- but it's definitely a rent first title, since the replayability only factors into things if you can put up with the game in the first place.

I think that' the problem Obsidian have never made a fully polished game. They've always lacked something huge. KOTOR2 had a few nice game-play additions but they weren't really factored in to the game well and the less said about the plot and the cut content that still had whole diologe trees ect in-game but lead to naff all the better. I'm afraid to say any Obsidian game now bares for me a well this game will suck in some inventive way while still being ok label. At least they are braching out from taking other peoples IPs and making a sequal/spinoff as the IP holder cba with it.

You mean like people complaining about Deus Ex: IW because it didn't have different kinds of ammunition?
Some things matter more to some players than to others.

Yep. Personally, I don't think RPGs are necessarily about the stats so much as they are about the setting and character interaction, which to its credit, Alpha Protocol did a pretty good job at. Most of all, I just don't think the presence of a skill or stats is a terribly good excuse for being lackluster combat. For example, as much as I loved the original Deus Ex, I'm not so sure that the game would have actually been any better or worse if you had just been given a maxed-out JC from the word go and the whole advancement system had been swept under the rug. The content still would have been in there, and ultimately, that's the stuff I remember.

I guess so...

...still, though, surely universal ammunition is more obnoxious than the ability to ninja vanish. Ninja vanish is humorous and in character for a superspy. Universal ammunition is tantamount to the devs telling you that you're stupid.

Universal ammo didn't really bother me. On the plus side you didn't have to worry about finding ammo for your favorite gun and being forced to use a backup you don't like. On the minus side when you're out of ammo, you're out, period. Six of one, half-dozen of the other I say.

"Like Mass Effect 2, but better on some parts"
Sums up my opinion about Alpha Protocol pretty well, right now on my third playtruogh with a Veteran character.

well the KOTOR2 problems where partially because of executive meddling. Lucasarts told them one timeframe and then suddenly told them to get the game ready for release within a smaller timeframe.

I quit playing alpha protocol out of frustration on the final mission. Maybe it's a quirk of my set up or my mouse but by your second or third campaign world the minigames seem to have ramped up to the point that they are unplayable. If my mouse is sensitive enough to be used in combat it is WAY WAY oversensitive for the hacking or the lock picking game. This was especially jarring in russia for example when I'm being told repeatedly that the houses security system is woefully out of date and I'm having more trouble breaking it then the "state of the art" system i'd faced earlier. I should also add that this is on a character using two tech boosting armor inserts and signifigant investments in the sabotage skill groups. Spy's luck for example should really refresh every device for the amount if investment. That does nothing to explain why up to a certain point in the game you could abort out of a hack or lockpick with no penalty, but suddenly without any announcement at all aborting a hack or lockpick suddenly counted as a "failure".

Some of the games "choices" seem way too heavy handed.



Last gripe refers to the final part of the game, i'll spoiler it out for those who arn't that far but actually hope for some help for those of you on multiple play through.

True as it might be, its not the only game they made that was lacking.

See, this is an example of someone with a review that is so far away from my own experience that it caused me to write the OP.

When I play FPSes I turn my sensitivity up to 7 or 8, and likewise with AP. However, I never found the minigames impossible. Challenging yes but hardly impossible. My characters never invest in skills or EQ to make the mini games easier, so I was doing them at max difficulty. On my first playthrough they felt impossible but by my second playthrough they were simply challenging. The key is to "speed read" the screen. Don't focus your eyes anywhere specific and take in just enough visual data to make a quick choice. My point is in contrast to the review above I don' understand at all people saying stuff like the mini games are impossible with a mouse.

I recall one reviewer saying something similar that the sniper rifle was too sensitive to ever use. I diagree and think it's weird to even say that. I use them on every playthrough with my sensitivity turned way up. It's just a little bit of challenge and a scoped precision rifle should be a little bit hard to use.

People complain about stuff like that, they complain that you suck at shooting if your skill is low ("awkward weapons"), they complain if anything in the game is slightly difficult. But on the whole AP is an easy game. Think about back when we were playing Marathon, or Dungeon Master. In those shooters and RPGs you could get lost, run out of resources, and get absolutely screwed. Remember the SSI Gold Box D&D games?

This is what I mean when I say I cannot understand the negative reviews.

BTW yes you can save Mina. And the data, too. You just took a wrong turn.

The HUGE problem with sensitivity is how hugely different it is based of mouse, OS settings, game settings. And how one uses a mouse. I know most people using my PC can't. The mouse sense is so high. If 7-8 for one person in game might be fine but for another could be dead slow or wildly fast. I knwo I have a toggel on my mouse that flips between a few sensitivity so I can slow it down for precision and bump it up for quick reflex shots ect.

I read it more as the devs telling me that they care as little about ammunition as I do.

I agree with you about the minigames being quite doaple with a mouse, i had problems at start but at the end of my first playtrough it was okey, but the sniper rifle does ramp the sensitivity way up for no reason and is a bitch to use.
And for lurker.

Ronin:
Face it dude, the game has issues. Having to fight a games interface isn't good game design. I'm not even having an issue in most of the mini game, hell even the hacking one wouldn't be so bad if it wern't for the matter that I have to stop moving my mouse 1 to 2 blocks before the block I want to stop at, and god help me if the code in question isn't up against a "wall". Similarly there are many bugs in the AI a gameplay the cover system is is goddamn ridiculous and some of the weapons trees are no way comparitive (try playing with pistols vs shotguns for example). Furthermore it's not just a sensitivty issue, there is some wierd lag going on sometimes with the game processing of mouse input, likely a carry over from it basically being a console port. I've gotten a little better performance by killing some of the stuff I keep in the background, stuff I can run fine when i'm playing the MWL mod for Crysis as a metric. That to me says slop coding on a console port

The only reason I give the game a pass is frankly I love the genre, I'm so tired of sword and sorcery RPG that alpha protocol for all it's issues is a breath of fresh air.

Max thanks for the tip I recall the call about my handler but don't recall being in a real right side left side path area. I may go back and try again but that last level is so buggy it's getting annoying.

Final thought: Alpha Protocol is ok, but even 10 years down Dues Ex is still the best shooter RPG that comes to my mind. I have hopes for X-Com though.

The AI isn't good, I concede that point. But AI is often poor in games, I don't really expect any better for a RPG. I personally don't feel that hacking or sniper sensitivity is a problem as I felt that it was very manageable and that after all a game should be challenging.

Everyone complains about the cover system but it's not really any worse than in rainbow six. I just don't feel it is a serious issue that makes the game unplayably hard. You can still use corners etc as cover and you don't always need to use the cover function to take cover. I guess I just feel it hardly makes any difference.

Oh, and heh, need I mention, this song is featured in the game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHLXnyY537c

That pretty much automatically makes it a good game in my book. 80s great justice and all that.

Before you head through the door, look around carefully. The door you take to save the handler has a flashing picture of the handler above it IIRC. You should be able to find it if you take a second to look around.

That music video either exemplifies everything that is right or wrong about the 80's. I am not sure which.

can it be both? that is, being so wrong it becomes right?

Yeah, but a game should be challenging because the game is challenging, not because sluggish controls cause the hacking thing to keep moving after you've stopped moving your mouse and be hard to position, often going diagonal when you want it to go horizontal. I mean, maybe it is a feature for increased difficulty, but when it takes me 2-3 times longer to input the mouse based half of the code than the 'WASD' part of the code, I figure it is a problem.

The lockpicking one is mildly annoying because I have to actually pick up my mouse to be able to move it enough for alot of the tumblers, but I can live with that. I'm always happy when I get that circuitry one though, as my mouse isn't really used except to hit buttons which is easy enough.

Seems most of my complaints about the game stem from things that involve the use of the mouse, which seems to me to indicate that the game was ported from the consoles without much effort being put into fine tuning the controls. To be honest, something as simple as being able to set the sensitivity for menu/mini-games separate from the main game would have gone a long way. I have finally (with much tweaking) found a sensitivity setting that lets me work reasonably well in both parts of the game.


I've not had any problems with the cover system myself. I kinda dislike that when you roll out from cover it takes you out of sneak mode, but whatever, I just don't use that to move around when I'm sneaking. I love that you can blind fire around a corner instead of having to step out from your cover.

I'm playing through AP again to try and give it another shot. It's still bullshit on many many levels. I got another mouse and the tumbler game is easier now. The hacking game is still bullshit due to wierd sensitivity issues.

Gama balance is also still bullshit. I droped the tech skills and am much happier for it as the gadgets are useless. I took martial arts instead (standard stealth build to start). Sunk a lot of points into martial arts which was a mistake. Sure it's great when your closing on one mook and beating the crap out of him but more often then not trying to engage more then one at a time you'll be tripped up by the games crappy camera every time.

It doesn't help that every single named bad guy in the game has some rediculous melee resistance, including the 80 pound girl. She blocks every single attack after the first combo and then does some bullcrap kick which is going to automatically damage you and can't be interrupted.. For comparison the chinese super agent just blocks alot and occasionally trades a blow with me. The problem is he blocks so much that fight was the longest I've done yet (which was ok because i got the perk for listening tot he whole speech while we were doing our re-enactment of Rock 1). The fight with the cocaine addled russian however was hurrendous. Here's a guy who's major combative skill is supposedly cutting up people his friends have tied down and yet anytime you close to melee he basically gets an automatic chain of hits on your because of his boss power. If you do manage to lock him up in melee he'll either go into his unbreakable cocaine comba (which at least he can be hurt now thanks to the Steven Heck assistance, something i didn't have in the first game) or flash teleports away like some 80's sparkle vampire wet dream. I can't even begin to imagine what's going to happen when I face the NPC in rome who'se actual dossier involved extensive martial arts training as all these untrained fools have been kicking my ass.

Another thing I noticed. Anytime the game involves a drop scenario for some reason if the camera is looking up when the character drops down, something that can happen fairly frequently depending on how the camera is oriented when you do the drop. There's about an 80% chance you'll fall through the world and have to reload.

So yea i'm going to finish the game but I got to say most of the crap this game gets for being shit is well justified. Oh well soon we'll have new vegas and all will be well.

On my second and third playthroughs I invested a lot in martial arts, and I have to disagree with you that it is useless. I hate to say it because it just makes me sound like a naysayer, but honestly, I never had a problem with the camera either, but I don't know what more to say about that since other people have mentioned it.

I've never dropped through the world. :O


The key to using martial arts against mooks is to use cover and manuvering so you can beat on or two mooks at a time up without being in the line of fire of several more. It can be done, but you certainly can't just wade out into the open in order to use it against a firing squad.


You can use martial arts against bosses with a very high level of skill, but you just can't button mash regardless. You have to time your special abilities to counter their special abilities. Basically you have to use your flying knee in combination with the frenzy power. If the opponent starts blocking you must use the Quick Draw ability to at that point pull out a firearm and start shooting him in the middle of your MA combo. When the opponent stops blocking and pulls out a gun, that's when you start using your MA combo again.

This is the sort of thing I was referring to in my first post. Just because martial arts don't work if you simply run up to someone and button mash, that doesn't mean they don't work. You just have to take the time to figure out how they work and then using that skill becomes a challenging and rewarding part of the game.

Me either. Nor have I had any camera trouble.

This is how I've beaten basically every single boss in the game so far using a shotgun and MA (Both of which I have no skill points in). About the only one I don't think I used this on was whats-her-name, the bodyguard girl. Been too long since I played and now my computer crashed Think I need a new motherboard.

Sis.

Yeah, Sis is one character I never tried to MA, because it's just so easy to kill her without moving from your original spot where you start the battle. I did like her character design, though.

Knew it was something kinda weird like that. Personally I was simply afraid to leave cover against her, because in my first battle I didn't worry about her much at the start as I was trying to pick off the normal guys, and she killed me quick with her pistols, then the next time through I took the guys out more carefully, then got mowed down trying to close on her, so finally I just started hiding like a coward and firing blind at her

Didn't help me that I'm a stealth spec with basically no combat skills.

And yeah, great character design. I lost so much rep with albatross and gained so much with Sis when I talked to them.

All the complaints just have me curious about the game, now, and make me want to see how cheap I can find it.

The first play through sis was one of the easiest bosses to take down, but damnit I put a fair amount of points into MA I wanted to get some return. I didn't use the gun pull because that's next rank, I'll get that and see if it improves things and maybe button mash less.


Maybe the through the world thing is a problem after a patch as I don't remember it happening in my first play through.

Wait, gun pull is some sort of ability? I just run up to boss, punch a few times, quick fire to break their block, punch a few times, quick fire, punch, then eventually run away to reload. Oh, also remote mines and trap mine

Sis wasn't too hard once I learned not to not use cover. My character is an infiltration type after all, which sadly helps very little against bosses, but owns mooks five ways till Sunday.

AP is one of my new favorite games. I bought it when it came out (admittedly on the 360 rather than PC because it seemed more geared towards it) and did a rookie playthrough my first time. I can very honestly the say that the writing and story development are superb and while the gameplay could use polish, it is by no means a bad game. Overall though it's an 8 or so. Made for those who enjoy that particular genre but not for everyone.

(also, Chainshot on pistols is broken to hell and back)

Playing as a pistols guy was like night and day from playing a shotgun guy. The end boss was cake to take down with a pistol as he's essentially stationary and will only shoot when you stick your head out which with a pistol you don't have to do.

Interestingly enough in regards to the boss in rome he turned to be the easiest boss when previously he'd been the hardest. When he closed to melee with me, something other bosses other then Brakyo just won't do I just begun pummeling the crap out of him. Easy peasy.

Glad I got through the game, still didn't feel like it had too much closure also seemed pointless to have different relations with the AP members when their basically all turned into one more boss in the final mission. Minigames were still BS, especially the lock picking.

Got the game on STEAM the other day and have been running through it. Overall, nice game, some fun moments that had me cackling evilly at my computer. Some thoughts:

1. Fire is awesome. Moar firebombz!

2. I like that npcs react to bodies lying about, but this brings me to 2 thoughts. It would have been so much cooler if bodies were persistent. And related to that, its a pity you couldn't (or had to) drag bodies away, ala Chronicles of Riddick, or as apparently seen in the new deus ex.

3. Upgraded adequately, melee is a giggle to use, especially once you start being able to combo melee and shooting them with your pistol.

4. A more varied patrol pattern of NPCs would have been nice, if you're patient, even without fully invested stealth, you can pretty much stealth kill all the minions.

5. It is always wise to (if you can afford it), lay traps around the area behind you when doing missions like 'hack the whatever' as the final step of the mission, as the game likes having ambushes.

6. Related to that, my first encounter with Sis was hilarious because I had lain down a brace of firebombs outside the cabin, so when it shifted from cinematic to 'boss fight' mode, she and the minions by her triggered the firebombs and ...well..boss fight was done in relatively short order.


My build was stealth/sabotage/melee. I was a firebombing ninja. With decent pistol skills too, since I ended up using them so damned much.


A pity there won't be a sequel, or expansion. But with Deus Ex coming out again, hopefully that'll tide me over.


Alpha Protocol was , to me, like Vampire: Bloodlines, an awesome though initially buggy game, that will likely continue to work if the community makes patches for it, cause the publishers can't or won't. It tried to do something new, which was nice, but unfortunately couldn't make a decent enough impact.

Silent running is one of the most hilarious special abilities in the game, combined with that auto triggering power that gives you a little time before they actually react to you when they see you, you can in some points just activate the power and run from one enymy to the next and next and next steath killing them all.

Its funny looking when you run pretty much full circle around room stealth killing enemies one by one while the other guys in the room dont notice anythink.

Yeah stealth gets a little (ok alot) broken at upper levels. You pop your 'combat obfuscate' and yeah run around stealth killing guys in front of each other. I do like the running KNEE TO THE FACE attack you can do with upgraded melee tree, the cinematic slow down is a nice touch too.

Some other thoughts:

Cameras apparently don't care if you leave a dead/unconscious body in the middle of their view.

Still working on my 1st playthrough, second one I'll go veteran operator route with the 'jack bauer' approach, i wanna threaten people and punch people in the face during conversations.

My current track is having good results though, so i can see how taking a super aggressive track will not work well. (I'm currently on pretty good reputation terms with everyone in the game so far) Heck, even the guys that want to kill me 'trust me'.

Yeah, they mentioned this early on in the game, and then I've only seen.... like one time where you could actually use it so far.

Yeah Ive just seen it once so far too. Satisfying, but there were other instances well before it I wish I could have used a FALCON PAWNCH interrupt.

Hmm, only time I remember it being an option was breaking into the arms dealer place, which was my first mission ever.

But yeah, plenty of times I was like "Okay, when is my option to shoot the person while they're being long winded going to come up?"

Similarly they talk about adrenalin going down and endurance recovering, but you never really have conversation and combat that close together. One of those 'cool ideas that didn't really amount to anything'.

Well, Alpha Protocol's officially on my Amazon wish list, so I might snag it soon (I try to make birthday shopping as easy as I can for my mom. My wife I can trust to know cool stuff when she sees it, my mother, not so much)...looks like the critical reviews helped drop the price, so maybe we'll be able to score it for cheap.

I'm not thrilled with the idea of "boss fights," but I figure the game itself should still be worth checking out.

Just finished my first playthrough on Recruit with all of my points into Stealth, Pistols, and Sabotage. Easiest. Playthrough. Ever.

Early on it was a little tough, but then I got pistols up to the point where I got Chain Shot. Sabotage made the minigames easy pickings, and once I got the Stealth pseudo-invisibility power, there was a great deal of mass-necksnapping to be done. The game was a great deal of fun, and I'm playing it through on Veteran now. I'm also going to see if I can manage to romance all four love-interests this time through (I got Mina, Scarlet, and Sie on my first playthrough). James Bond style, here I come!

Possible disclaimer, I played the PS3 version, so I don't know how difficult the lockpicking minigame would be on the PC. In fact, it's hard for me to imagine how it works on the PC, as it is pressure sensitive with the PS3 controller.

Poorly

I just picked up Alpha Protocol for $2.00 (yay, Steam sales!) and with the caveat that I've only completed one mission (the airfield), I'm pretty damned impressed with it. It reminds me quite strongly of Deus Ex, which is one of the best compliments I can give a game. I haven't had any technical issues with the minigames: security panels and lockpicking are cake, and the difficulty in hacking is real difficulty, not fake difficulty, in that I find it genuinely challenging to pick out the strings of non-changing characters against a background of constantly changing characters.

Overall, I give it 8/10 at first blush.

I was gifted the game, but seems nice so far. Only done the tutorial/starting area though. The hacking thing gets me because I keep forgetting I use two different buttons to lock in the codes on either side.

I actually really enjoyed Alpha Protocol. I know the game wasn't perfect, but I was really quite disappointed when I heard there wasn't any chance of there being a sequel -- it seems to me like for once a sequel was just what the doctor ordered, because they would have been able to keep the core idea and just smooth over some of the game's rough edges.

I beat the game a long time ago and I pretty much agree with most of things said here. Good, but largely unpolished Mass Effect clone with some interesting things. The one thing that did bug me were stupidly linear levels that are pretty much one-directional.

Actually, there just might be a slight hope of a sequel!

The tl;dr version of that link is basicly thus: Obsidian is willing to admit certain things went poorly, but they really liked what they did right, and are interested in doing a sequel one day; Sega may of said no, but it's Obsidian who hold rights to the property. No official announcements yet, but the recent Steam sale has done fairly well, so who knows.

Ah, sweet! Thanks for the link. I won't get my hopes up or anything, but it's cool to know it's got a chance. For all I acknowledge it wasn't a great game, I think it wsa a good one, and deserves a second chance.

It's not a perfect comparison, but part of me likes to think of Alpha Protocol as something like the first Uncharted game. It was good, but it was a shot in the dark with some really annoying parts, and they had some lessons to learn before it was perfect. Soon enough, Uncharted got a sequel and the reception speaks for itself.

Sometimes you just need a second chance in order to achieve greatness.