Review: Alpha Protocol

[Thanatos5150]

Um.. thought about something. ...can anyone who has played the game explain how the aiming/shooting system works?

Four different systems, four different guns:

Pistol:
You hold the aim button (L.Trigger on the 360 controller) and put your targeting reticule near the guy's hitbox or on it, and hold it. The reticule will turn red and shrink and a bunch of little arrows will draw closer to the dot at the center. And its shrunkenist and reddest, firing will result in a Critical hit.
Extra points for headshots. Moving, standing, or dropping your reticule off the target will spoil your aim, and the reticule will grow larger and less red. At level zero, the whole process takes a little more than three seconds.
Firing spoils your aim completely and the reticule grows to maximum size. You can only precision aim at nearby targets (five meters or so)

Assault Rifle:
You hold the aim button and hold the reticule in one spot, four arrows at the "corners" will slowly close and converge on a red "x" in the centre. All three bullets in the compulsory three-round burst will land between the arrows. Moving or shooting completely spoils your aim, nudging the stick, standing or couching only slightly affects your aim. The AR is actually good for precision and mano-a-mano close combat.

SMG:
Spray and Pray and Sell at First Oppertunity. These are nothing resembling accurate. There is no real "aim system. Hold the aim button will give you a (large) reticule and a bar which climbs with every hit. The higher the bar, the higer you damage multiplier for each successive hit. Reloading resets the modifer.

Shotgun:
Hold aim, put target in reticule. When the whole thing is red, pull the trigger for maximum damage and probable knockdown effect.

 

[SomeBritishDude]

I wasn't looking forward to this game much so this doesn't bother me. What does bother me is the fact that Obsidian is also working on Fallout: New Vegas, a game I was very much looking forward to. Now...I'm more than a little cautious.

Obsidian, you had your chance. You were finally given a decent time schedule for a game and your blew it anyway. I was looking forward to seeing a blending of the old and new Fallout in NV but now not so much.

 

[Susan Arendt]

*snip*

Our opinions are actually fairly close, but given what a buggy experience I had, naturally I scored lower than you. Really quite befuddled by the number of people who say they had no problems at all on the PS3. I'm wondering if perhaps the version of PS3 you have makes any difference at all. Because if something happens once, maybe twice, I'm happy to chalk it up to my imagination, but these issues were just too frequent to be all in my head.

 

[Thanatos5150]

*snip*

Our opinions are actually fairly close, but given what a buggy experience I had, naturally I scored lower than you. Really quite befuddled by the number of people who say they had no problems at all on the PS3. I'm wondering if perhaps the version of PS3 you have makes any difference at all. Because if something happens once, maybe twice, I'm happy to chalk it up to my imagination, but these issues were just too frequent to be all in my head.

Might it be an issue with your controller?

... who am i kidding even asking that question?
I'mma go wander off for a bit and bludgeon my skull using the nearest wall as an improvised thwacking implement.

 

[Susan Arendt]

*snip*

Our opinions are actually fairly close, but given what a buggy experience I had, naturally I scored lower than you. Really quite befuddled by the number of people who say they had no problems at all on the PS3. I'm wondering if perhaps the version of PS3 you have makes any difference at all. Because if something happens once, maybe twice, I'm happy to chalk it up to my imagination, but these issues were just too frequent to be all in my head.

Might it be an issue with your controller?

... who am i kidding even asking that question?
I'mma go wander off for a bit and bludgeon my skull using the nearest wall as an improvised thwacking implement.

Yes, thought of that first, actually. Sadly not the case.

 

[nipsen]

Spoiler: snip

Um.. thought about something. ...can anyone who has played the game explain how the aiming/shooting system works?

Four different systems, four different guns:

Pistol:
You hold the aim button (L.Trigger on the 360 controller) and put your targeting reticule near the guy's hitbox or on it, and hold it. The reticule will turn red and shrink and a bunch of little arrows will draw closer to the dot at the center. And its shrunkenist and reddest, firing will result in a Critical hit.
Extra points for headshots. Moving, standing, or dropping your reticule off the target will spoil your aim, and the reticule will grow larger and less red. At level zero, the whole process takes a little more than three seconds.
Firing spoils your aim completely and the reticule grows to maximum size. You can only precision aim at nearby targets (five meters or so)

Assault Rifle:
You hold the aim button and hold the reticule in one spot, four arrows at the "corners" will slowly close and converge on a red "x" in the centre. All three bullets in the compulsory three-round burst will land between the arrows. Moving or shooting completely spoils your aim, nudging the stick, standing or couching only slightly affects your aim. The AR is actually good for precision and mano-a-mano close combat.

SMG:
Spray and Pray and Sell at First Oppertunity. These are nothing resembling accurate. There is no real "aim system. Hold the aim button will give you a (large) reticule and a bar which climbs with every hit. The higher the bar, the higer you damage multiplier for each successive hit. Reloading resets the modifer.

Shotgun:
Hold aim, put target in reticule. When the whole thing is red, pull the trigger for maximum damage and probable knockdown effect.

I see. Thanks a whole bunch. I was worried that it was just shooting repeatedly while running, lol. Sounds a bit more promising now.

 

[Thanatos5150]

*snip*

Our opinions are actually fairly close, but given what a buggy experience I had, naturally I scored lower than you. Really quite befuddled by the number of people who say they had no problems at all on the PS3. I'm wondering if perhaps the version of PS3 you have makes any difference at all. Because if something happens once, maybe twice, I'm happy to chalk it up to my imagination, but these issues were just too frequent to be all in my head.

Might it be an issue with your controller?

... who am i kidding even asking that question?
I'mma go wander off for a bit and bludgeon my skull using the nearest wall as an improvised thwacking implement.

Yes, thought of that first, actually. Sadly not the case.

I relised you might of ex post facto. Hence the self-inflicted cranial trauma.

 

[Benny Blanco]

Well, that's a damn shame... I've been consuming rather more Burn Notice than is really good for me and the idea of roleplaying a spy whose agency hung him out to dry sounded nifty.

Hey, maybe someone'll do a game of that? God knows Bruce Campbell alone would be worth it...

 

[Thanatos5150]

I see. Thanks a whole bunch. I was worried that it was just shooting repeatedly while running, lol. Sounds a bit more promising now.

Not counting atrocious spelling and grammar, I feel the need to correct a minor issue:
When actual numbers are given, these are numbers observed for level /zero/ of proficiency. Leveling up will increase range, decrease aim time, and all sorts of other goodies. Numbers can be ascertained by hitting the "More info" button (Defaulted to L.Bumper on the 360 controller) on the level up screen.

 

[Megawizard]

So far the only issues I've had is a laggy camera, but we'll see. I don't know why I haven't learned to just stay the hell away from Obsidian by now. Oh well, I guess this was their final chance with me.

 

[Podunk]

Seeing how ugly the ads were(like the one that just played while trying to watch the review supplement), I had the feeling the game had to look even worse. Seeing how prevalent they were didn't exactly fill me with confidence, either. When the article about the foreign reviews and posts by disgruntled employees came about earlier I knew there just could not be any hope for the game. Though it's still always nice to get the Escapist's official take on it and a new chance to listen to the dulcet tones of Susan Arendt. Hopefully New Vegas will be really cool?

 

[chaos order]

OMG i though this might be you know THE GAME. but dammit it was too broken if ONLy they spent more time on it. aw

on a side note I JUST LOST THE GAME. and so did u

 

[Madshaw]

helooks way too retarded when he runs for me to evenconsider this one

 

[Fightgarr]

Sounds less like a case of bad development and more of a case of really bad QA. Though, me being on the QA side of the gaming world, it is very possible that all the bugs you ran into were bugged, but the devs waived them out of laziness or something on those lines... so yeah, it could go either way. Lazy and/or rushed devs or bad QA staff.

 

[Korhal]

*snip*

Our opinions are actually fairly close, but given what a buggy experience I had, naturally I scored lower than you. Really quite befuddled by the number of people who say they had no problems at all on the PS3. I'm wondering if perhaps the version of PS3 you have makes any difference at all. Because if something happens once, maybe twice, I'm happy to chalk it up to my imagination, but these issues were just too frequent to be all in my head.

I don't know. I had a friend who got all kinds of game-crashing bugs in Red Dead Redemption that I didn't get, and when he called Rockstar they said he probably got a bad disk, so maybe there's a little bit of that going on. Though if it provides any evidence for your theory I have one of the newer PS3s, the thinner one with a 120GB hard drive, I bought it when Heavy Rain came out, whenever that was. Not long ago.

I didn't have any control issues, really, other than, like I said, when it would get confused by there being a bunch of Push X to ____'s stacked on top of each other. Now, I do kind of wish that I had more buttons for skills, given that I was constantly using Awareness, and the AR aiming thingamajig, and Overclock. I got remote hack, but since I was playing an assault type character, i never had to be sneaky and hack from range because everyone would be dead lol. But that's hardly AP's fault.

Maybe this is a game where it just creates a gut love or hate feeling... I mean, I can't think of any other game that ranges all the way from the mid 80s to the low 20s on metacritic just based on who you ask (though in my totally non-professional opinion, that guy from Destructoid is a muckraking hack).

I mean, yeah, the graphics were bad, and yet there was still texture pop and the like. So that was kinda bad. But I'd seen promotional videos, so I knew the graphics were bad going into it. Nothing else really stuck out to me as *bad* other than that (and the more annoying sound effects). And I certainly didn't see the bugs you speak of.

I don't know what else to say :\

 

[antipunt]

This is one of those games that looked great on paper; still, my skepticism was triggered the second I saw the first cheesy-trailer ad. Actually, even before that. Anything that sounds too good to be true that sort of pops out of nowhere deserves a certain wariness

 

[Void(null)]

OMG i though this might be you know THE GAME. but dammit it was too broken if ONLy they spent more time on it. aw

on a side note I JUST LOST THE GAME. and so did u

I won the game [http://xkcd.com/391/] a long time ago.

 

[wonkify]

Count me in with Susan on the shoe phone. But I've always wondered, why only one? I mean two shoes, right?

And nothing is cooler than than a spy standing around in black dress socks holding both shoes up to his head like bunny ears.

 

[wonkify]

The game looks decent enough to me, PC port will certainly be the most "Playable", but has anybody else noticed how desperately unfunny Susan is?

No

 

[Centrophy]

Playing the PC version and I have not encountered any bugs, which from Obsidian is strangely disconcerting. However I did notice that shopping seemed to go by faster on your version of the game than it does on my version. There is an extremely noticeable hesitation when switching between gun models and everything else in the store (Even when purchasing the same item). The same hesitation is also encountered when the game loads up new mobs into the maps during the missions, otherwise the game works as intended.

If I have to find a gripe or two it's that the hacking mini game is kinda ridiculous and tedious; the save system is annoying especially when the doors behind you close during the missions and then you can't reload a previous save to see if you missed something; the timed responses while an interesting idea just felt really... unfair(?) to the point is that sometimes you don't have the time to read and understand all of the options before you run out of time; Oh, and the cool downs on many of the abilities are extremely long for no reason.

With that out of the way I still have to ask myself the question; Am I having fun with this game? and my only response can be that there are fun bits to be had but over all I say no. I can't really point to one thing particular reason why but I'm just not. I say give it a rental if you are curious and can. (PC version, likely you can't.)