Alpha Protocol

[Adept Mechanicus]

First off, every single gameplay flaw reviewers found in Alpha Protocol is true. The AI is pretty bad, there is no reason to put points into any guns other than the Assault Rifle and Pistol, and every weapon does pathetically low damage except for headshots.

All the gameplay flaws really just make it kind of endearing. I really liked Alpha Protocol because the story was really well-designed. The characters were all well-rounded, even the really minor plot-device characters. Almost every single one of them was hilarious and quirky, meaning Mike Thorton is a straight man trying to fit into a world that resembles a Saturday morning cartoon version of a Tom Clancy novel. The dialog system is a faithful recreation of real human interaction because when you fuck up, people yell at you a lot and dislike you a lot more and you feel bad afterwards. And the degree to which you can customize your character's personality is unmatched in any game I've played since.

I played my first playthrough as a suave Top-Gun-meets-SWAT kind of guy who tries to align with the factions that cause the least collateral damage and tries to focus on the greater good even if it means people he cares about dies. As a result, he becomes increasingly isolated from the world around him to the point that his only motivation is to kill whoever he thinks is responsible. Unlike in Mass Effect, changing the motivations of your character from time to time actually works because it doesn't use a binary moral choice system.

My second playthrough was a psychopathic lumberjack brawler who is nothing but a vessel of destruction working for whoever points him at someone and says "fuck that guy up." If nobody tells him to fuck any guys up, he will fuck guys up anyway. He is a whirlwind of indiscriminate, bearded death.

Any game that allows you to play it seriously and as a parody of itself is simply awesome.

 

[syaoran728]

I bought it off of a steam sale for $2(90%) discount and probably wouldn't have payed more for it. It was fun, the stealth was alright and that's mostly why I even bothered with it.

 

[Radoh]

It is a really good game that would have done much, much better if they had the time to playtest it properly.
The bugs are the buggiest, but the good is the best.

 

[Reven]

AP was one of the few games that once i finished, I immediately played again, is it perfect? Hell no, the gameplay is extremely rough, i'm pretty sure no one can deny that, but the dialogue system and story is one of the best that i've ever played.

 

[Kathinka]

i loved it, had no technical issues either. beat it a total of five times i think, once with all evidence collected.

fun fact: during developement, the actual plan was to make it a lot darker and dirtyer than it turned out to be in the end. there can still be leftover traces of that found, like the strong hinting that nasri will be intensively tortured if you let him live. but all in all the devs switched to a less gritty version with clearer good-evil distribution for the u.s. market.

i'd kill to see how the original product would have turned out.


also, you fight a coked up dual golden smg wielding russian mob boss in a leopard suite while 70s pop music is blasting out of his speakers. that is really all you need to know to buy this game.

 

[AD-Stu]

It's worth it for the coked-out Russian mobster boss fight alone.

Yes it's got flaws, heaps of them. But if you're into the action-RPG genre then you'll get your money's worth.

 

[triggrhappy94]

I remember that game.
When it says decsissions and consequences, it means it.
I ended up getting locked out of the best ending because I accidently killed someone I shouldn't have.

It wasn't balaanced well either. I remember I was planning on going all James Bond like, with a focus on pistols, computers, and stealth. I can't remember what computers or stealth was like, but I remember the pistol was super under powered and I was stuck with the starting one the whole time, because it cost way too much to buy a better gun.

 

[Estelindis]

I didn't run into a single bug playing Alpha Protocol. I loved it. Great spy feel and enjoyable stealth gameplay allowing for very challenging "pacifist" runs.

 

[recruit00]

The game did have some flaws. SMGs did suck hard and the fake radio was super glitched but the game was a lot of fun. The stealth aspect, although it could be broken at times. Being able to walk around and snapping people's necks without being seen is so much fun.

Assault rifles are pretty typical cover based shooter fair. Playing as a recruit is actually pretty fun because it gives you a bit of challenge and it feels right for the story. The last time I played I was in the middle of a hard Veteran run which is a breeze. Pistols are the most overpowered weapons in the game. You can have super accuracy once you put enough points into pistols. Chain shot is ridiculous. Gadgets I was planning on messing around with on a fourth playthrough.

Hacking and what not are actually pretty good in the console versions but I watched my brother do it on the PC version and they were so poorly done. That stopped him from playing the game. It actually did well on consoles.

The story line I actually liked. I liked how somebody made the joke about a saturday morning cartoon Tom Clancy novel. It's funny because it is true. You have crazy Nolan North as one of your contacts, a Russian mobster, a secret society officer, an S-M woman mercenary, the coked up Russian mobster living in the 1980's who is probably one of the most fun boss fights ever. Listening to Turn Up The Radio while being chased by a coked up guy with a knife is both terrifying and hilarious. Hard on assault rifles though.

The dialogue system can seem off putting but the limited time aspect adds to it. It makes you think on your feet like you were in that situation. Mike can feel snarky at times but I feel that it can add to him at times. I feel the fact that he is the "ponciest ponce who ever ponced from Ponceville" is what makes him great because it is quite hilarious at times.

Stealth was actually pretty simple and at times seemed more complicated than MGS. Using tranquilizer bullets works well and knocking people out works.

In the end, it was a great game. It had some flaws like every game but they could have easily been polished out if given enough time. I hope for a spiritual successor without Sega as publisher. If only we could get Obsidian to become its own publisher. Then New Vegas would have been even better and same with AP

 

[snekadid]

Overall, I am heavily recommending this game to fans of RPGs and stealth games.

Surely you jest! Using stealth in this game is completely unnecessary, downright unwieldy even, and seems rather quaint next to pointing your gun at things you don't like and then the things stop living.

Well, that's what pretty much every stealth game has in common - unless the penalty for being detected is death. Just out of curiosity, what would you consider a good stealth game?

As for usefulness of stealth: it depends on the context. I prefer to avoid killing civillian security or organization I am allied with, cases in which stealth is invaluable.

Deus ex: human revolution? say what you can about the crappy boss battles, the stealth was really well done and any game you can go through without shooting a single person is a great stealth game.

The stealth in this game is terrible, light levels and movement mean nothing to enemies ability to see you so the only thing you can do is stay away from their face or outside their very specific sight range. This wouldn't be as terrible if
A) Character movement wasn't jerky and terrible from a cover position
B) AI weren't so completely broken so that they can see you through walls or their own backs. This is offset by the times they will walk around you without attacking because you look like a decorative lamp or something.

The game is moderately fun to play but the bugs are everywhere and while people like to compare bethesda to obsidian because of on release bugs, atleast a majority of game breaking bugs in bethesda games eventually get fixed. Obsidian loses interest after launch, and there are still so many annoying problems that I want to scream sometimes when something absolutely stupid happens.

 

[Loonyyy]

Okay so basically this thread is to ask folkses opinions on Alpha Protocol.

The reason I ask is because I hadn't heard of it at first (makes me feel shame because im an RPG gamer lol) and when I did hear of it some months after release I heard really bad things. Like really really bad things.

And I believed those things cos hey its an obsidian title. Obsidian are like Bethesda, their games are always buggy unplayable heaps of crap on release.

So I didn't bother investigating.

In my defence it was more because there were other "better" more interesting titles coming out around that time, and my own financial situation meant that I felt that I had to prioritise what I was purchasing.
So Alpha Protocol got forgotten about.

Until very recently when I was told some very positive things about it (the convo system?), and the fact that its like 15 quid from Steam now.

So wondering, is it worth buying?

I mean did obsidian get around to actually fixing the thing? Lol.

Opinions?

It's brilliant and you should play it.

Ok, flaws:

Gameplay is... shitty. The play is schizofrenic and inconsistent, and the stealth is kind of silly. It's just kind of mediocre. It's not annoying most of the time, but hardly good. At times if you've got the abilities working right, and you find the right weapon, you'll feel appropriately badass, and some of it really does work well for stealth. Other times not so much.

Buying weapons and testing them makes little sense, and you can't test things.

Boss battles suck.

Bugs, glitches etc.

The good things:

Story seems to actively respond to your decisions. It's nice being given options because you didn't just murder the last guy, or because you decided to negotiate rather than fight an organisation.

The way you interact in conversations and the decisions you make actively effect the story in question.

The plot is interesting, at the very least. It's a full-blown conspiracy, which can get hard to follow at times, in the best way.

I'd recommend it. It's like Mirror's Edge. Flawed, fundamentally broken, but still a great example of the core concept, simply in need of revision.

 

[recruit00]

All the people who are saying that the gameplay is crap. It would be better if you made clear whether you were playing PC or console because the PC version is much worse than the console control wise.

 

[CplDustov]

I've heard many things. The only warning I'll give is that there was one bug for me in a sniper mission that rendered the game almost unplayable but for a lot of luck and messing around. The crosshairs would stick to a target and no input would work. You have to aim on and off the targets quickly as possible until scanning is complete rather than just scan normally.

Not saying much more because of spoilers but that was one thing that was very frustrating.

Other than that the game is pretty damn awesome. I really loved it.
Just make sure to have at least one combat skill in your abilities. Others complained about boss fights being ridiculously difficult if you had no weapons training.

 

[distortedreality]

I picked it up for $40 AU a year or two ago - well worth my money. After seeing this thread I decided to re-install it, and am going to do another play through now that i've done one of Dishonored.

Really under-rated game. Or, put a different way, a game where the positive aspects aren't praised enough.

captcha - goes to eleven. Indeed it does, Nigel.

 

[Windcaler]

Okay so basically this thread is to ask folkses opinions on Alpha Protocol.

The reason I ask is because I hadn't heard of it at first (makes me feel shame because im an RPG gamer lol) and when I did hear of it some months after release I heard really bad things. Like really really bad things.

And I believed those things cos hey its an obsidian title. Obsidian are like Bethesda, their games are always buggy unplayable heaps of crap on release.

So I didn't bother investigating.

In my defence it was more because there were other "better" more interesting titles coming out around that time, and my own financial situation meant that I felt that I had to prioritise what I was purchasing.
So Alpha Protocol got forgotten about.

Until very recently when I was told some very positive things about it (the convo system?), and the fact that its like 15 quid from Steam now.

So wondering, is it worth buying?

I mean did obsidian get around to actually fixing the thing? Lol.

Opinions?

The game does have some bugs the the majority of them have been graphical in my experience. Ive played through the game a ton of times and I have no encountered a game breaking bug or one where control gets taken away from your character (something I heard of from the escapist).

That said, what you get in return is a true conversation system where some choices have do have significant consequences, stats based combat system where any playstyle is viable,and a cool spy story.

IMO the pros far outweigh the cons and yes it is worth the price on Steam right now

 

[EclipseoftheDarkSun]

I enjoyed it. I rushed through the game so I can't say I really explored every option but it was interesting. I played a martial artist with toughness up the wazoo, so I basically just sneaked into a room then went crazy running up and knocking out every gun-wielding terrorist/special forces guy around. I didn't find the hacking or lockpicking minigame too onerous once I mastered it (didn't upgrade any skills to make it easier - the highest difficulties were quite hard but doable after a couple of goes.) At the end of the game, I reloaded just before I encountered the final boss, so I could go through the different conversation options and see the different possible endings. My character's general philosophy was to knock everyone out (due to the martial arts doing it as a default) but always killing the end of stage bosses.

 

[BiggyShackleton]

It's worth the money for the kung-fu, crouch walk animation and hilarious dialogue alone.

 

[AngloDoom]

I actually really enjoyed the game.

I came into the game with low expectations but I found it very fun. I played as a stealthy guy who used pistols and the game was just the right amount of difficult: I never felt like any slip-ups were as a result of anything but my own poor decisions. Admittedly, this couldn't be said of the dialogue, where there were a few times when I ended up upsetting (sometimes assaulting) characters who I was trying to get along with.

I had it for the 360 and encountered no bugs, with the exception of an unconscious guard clipping into a doorway, and the only reason I stopped playing it was because I put the controller down for a week and totally forgot what was going on. I personally felt the story was twisted to the point of obscurity, but that may be because I was mostly ignoring it assuming it'd be terrible.

For £15 you could probably get a better game, so I'd shop around if you want the game. Considering Human Revolution is currently in GameStation for £10 and is a much more recent game, you'd be screwing yourself to pay anything over £10.

EDIT - Whoops, turns out the £10 Deus Ex: Human Revolution I was on about is a preowned, not new. Apologies.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

I absolutely loved every minute of Alpha Protocol. I did get it for $3, so that might be informing my opinion of it. I also didn't experience any of the bugs or performance issues people talked about. Maybe they got patched out?

Totally worth getting.

 

[AJvsRonin]

Yay! As someone who enjoyed AP the bashing on it seems to be quite hard. I was at a game shop and over heard the cashier warning a guy not to buy it when he brought up a 2nd hand copy to buy.

Sure it has it's problems but I enjoyed it.