f13.net

To get this out of the way: mouse/keyboard play is many shades of broken.  If you're going to play this on PC, I strongly suggest using an Xbox 360 controller.  If that isn't an option for you, get it on a console or hope for a patch down the line.  (Other controllers probably work, but the Xbox 360 one seems to work just like it would on the console.)

Alpha Protocol plays a lot like two games that recently came out with more refined sequels: Mass Effect and Fahrenheit.  The gun-play is much more RPG than shooter, with skill ranks and weapon upgrades determining if you deal damage to whatever your huge base reticule is trained on.  Yes, you can aim down scopes and sights to bring the area down and keeping your aim still long enough lets you strike for critical hits or knockdowns, but the results are still unsatisfying.  The melee combat is also simple and reliant on spending skill points to add any sort of complexity to it.

None of that really mattered to me as I mostly went around doing stealth takedowns.  They're just a simple matter of sneaking up behind someone and hitting B to disable them (throat punches, leg sweeps, choke holds, etc.) or A to kill them (which I haven't tried).  There are also skills here, like being able to move silently for a few seconds or see arrows of where a guard is facing and their alertness.  While I usually despise stealth action games, I was really able to get into recognizing guards' patterns and moving in for takedowns.  Some of that comes from the guards' AI being laughable in that they don't seem to notice that while they were turned around their buddy disappeared.

The story is your usual spy fiction mix of intrigue, plausible deniability, and arms dealing but it's delivered well and it's not something I get in a game often.  While the game plays a lot like the original Mass Effect, its dialogues play out like Fahrenheit's (minus the mini-games).  You're given a few seconds to choose between answering Suavely, Aggressively, or Professionally by pushing a face button.  Sometimes your responses will be hinted at more than that, but most of the time you're just stuck choosing intent.

My biggest complaint about the dialogue system is seemingly random: that +/- Reputation status messages show up mid-conversation.  I hated choosing an intent and getting a line I wasn't pleased with and on top of it all immediately seeing it made my reputation with someone go the wrong way.  While I found them annoying enough in Dragon Age, having them mid-conversation somehow took me out of just choosing what I felt like.  Add on to that while mission checkpoints are mostly well-placed, there doesn't seem to be any between important dialogue sequences so replaying them often meant going back to action-y bits.

It's hard to tell why I like this game after reading the above, but I've had a great few hours with it and look to tear through it.  I imagine most will be put off by the poor shooting and enemy AI (and essentially impossible with a mouse hacking minigame), but for me, Obsidian doing an okay job of sticking Mass Effect 1 in a setting I love is more than enough to make up for the game's flaws.

Rent It.

The sneaking animation scared me off this.  The videos just make this game look like typical sloppy Obsidian fare.

It is.

I've been playing this on and off with a mouse/keyboard on the PC. It really is a technical mess - stuttering framerates, weird locations for load times and jerky controls make it frustrating to play.

There hasn't even been an attempt to obscure the consolitis inherent in the port.

For example, despite the fact that you can have multiple abilities active at one time, and multiple abilities cooling down independently, you can only have one ability activatable (i.e. available on button press) at any given time. To switch this ability, you hit a button that pauses the game and opens a radial menu which was obviously meant to be controlled by one of the spare D-pads on a modern controller.

A review I read of it said it best - don't think of this as a spy game, as you really don't play much of a spy. Instead, think of it as a game where you're a one man commando army being sent in to infiltrate and/or clear out various enemy bases. Your expectations will line up with the gameplay much better.

I'm flickering between mild enjoyment and mild distaste. I like the dialogue and noncombat sections of the game, mildly dislike the combat/stealth segments and loathe the minigames.

This statement summarizes my feelings on the game: Developed by Obsidian Entertainment.

This is another broken game in a long list of broken games that Obsidian entertainment has unleashed onto the public.  Unlike before this game reached new lows for Obsidian Entertainment.  I am convinced that skills like Stealth does not work and are in fact completely broken.  In addition to completely broken skills, Alpha Protocol features a broken stuttering camera that you have to fight almost constantly when fighting along walls, and worse still when turning it likes to lag you out.  This I find most curious since I experience no lag whatsoever in a game like Mass Effect 2 which features completely better graphics in every way.

What really irked the hell out of me about this game was the "mini-games."  I am o'k with hard mini-games, but these unbalanced nightmares simply wrecked by playing experience and bordered on sadism.  Honestly I stopped trying to stealth missions due to the fact that every mission asked you to "hack" 10 -15 times, this would not be a problem normally but the way its set up, due to time constraints and difficulty your almost guaranteed to screwed one attempt up and then all the alarms would go a blazing eliminating the stealth game (Yes I know that you can play yet another mini-game to shut the alarms off, but honestly once those alarms go on what happens to your immersion level when your supposed to infiltrate without anyone knowing your there, and then you leave 15 guys on the ground riddled with bullets or because your screwed up a panel now your "stealth mission becomes the gunfight at the o'k corral).

One final thing, Obsidian entertainment marketed this game by saying that your "weapon" was choice.  To a certain degree this was in fact true.  For story options you had a lot of choice.  Those choices made things play out differently.  Those were extremely well done.  However honestly because of the flaws this game had and specifically the mini-games that you must participate in, I really don't think I will play this game again unless some major patching is done.

  

Everything I've heard about this game suggests it is one big post-launch patch away from being a great game.

I've read it a lot, but I haven't had much problem with the Hacking mini-game.  About the only time I've had to abort and try again multiple times is when it used a half-length block in one of the missions in Rome.  There are definite annoyances though, like how damn slow the cursor moves, but I'm usually able to get "normal-length" matches off one every pass.  I guess I just lucked out with this one (and ME2) as I have had games completely ruined by mini-games, most recently Puzzle Quest Galactrix.

As for the stealth gameplay, the only real hindrances I had were turrets until I picked up Remote Hack, which is reasonably deep into Sabotage.  Before then, I was stuck using EMP charges which you can only carry two of per slot :uhrr:.

I'm playing this on the 360 and loving it. Hell, I've played it for hours at a time. It has some weird bugs but in general it is a very fun game. I love how the choices have an impact and you know about it pretty quickly. I can already see how going through and killing/letting live some different people will change not just background info but also the actual gameplay through things like losing access to discounts and such.

Sorry, have to call you on this. KOTOR2 was broken, yes. NWN2 was not, neither was the first expansion to it (never played the 2nd.) And that's... all the games they've ever released before AP.

NWN2 was a horrible system killing pile of dog feces.  Buggy? Only if you can count looking god awful while making ridiculous demands on your system. (It may have been buggy, but I didn't encounter any before the game bored me to tears).

Anyhow, yes, stating that Obsidian has a "long list of broken games" is pure hyperbole.  They really haven't made a lot of games.  :awesome_for_real:

Perhaps your memory is flawed concerning the release of NWN2.  In order to refresh your memory I would ask that you go to Bioware's web site and confirm what I am about to tell you.  When you do your research you will find that there were a lot of people complaining at the release of NWN2 and they were complaining about some of the same problems that Alpha Protocol has by the way.  Specifically I am referring to the camera that was also nothing short of brutal in the initial release of NWN2.  In addition if you would remember, load times were a pain and people were complaining about turning lag (turning lag is also a feature of Alpha Protocol).  This does not mention the frequent crashes people were experiencing.  Did Obsidian entertainment fix this?  Yes for the most part in NWN2 they did fix the game in later patches and expansions.  However there is a difference between AP, KOTOR and NWN2.  The difference was that the NWN2 series was in fact a series that they inteneded to milk for more money; therefore, they did fix problems with it.  In the stand alone game, KOTOR2, they left it in the same broken build and charged full price for it.  This is my fear for Alpha Protocol.  As I stated before I liked the story and I really liked the freedom of choice you recieved.  This is why I purchase Obsidian games honestly its the only thing I believe they do very well.  This game seems made for multiple play throughs, it would be a shame if its left in this state because I simply can not see myself playing it again in this state.

Finally you took issue with my long list remarks.  I consider two incomplete titles from the same developer a list too long.  You may consider this to be exaggeration or take exception to this, but I do not and since the purpose of this thread is to give our opinions I will leave this as a respectful point of disagreement.  I will say however that I consider only their record having purchased every title they have released including the expansions of NWN2.  The bottom line is they had no buisiness releasing this game in the state it is in right now.  Its absolutely shameful in my opinion and its a troubling trend for Obsidian Entertainment.  

I was reading a review that implied that the delayed release wasn't to complete the game and fix bugs but to avoid competition with ME2. Likely the game was in limbo while just about everyone moved to Fallout: New Vegas.  

Pure speculation, but it seems pretty plausible.

With the state it's in, I thought that myself.

KOTOR2 did patch out bugs, what it never patched in was the unfinished ending that was the only thing that really made it broken. I am relatively certain that the reason that the ending never made it in in the first place has more to do with LucasArts than Obsidian. If it wasn't for the big choke on the ending, KOTOR2 would be a better overall game than KOTOR by a decent margin.

I never had trouble with NWN2 performance-wise at all. Maybe it came out right as I upgraded systems or something, but it was never as bad for me as say, Dragon Age was with its memory leaks at release. About the worst thing I can say about it was that it was kind of unexciting. It was still much better than the first NWN as a single-player experience though.

I'll fire up Alpha Protocol for a bit tonight and see what that's like in comparison, it is mostly on hold for RDR and a vacation though.

Didn't patch out the Bao-dur. There's your problem right there.

Wow the PC controls are horrible. Going to have to finally hook a 360 controller up to the PC I guess.

The password minigame is complete ass with KB and Mouse. Whoever thought up that gem needs to be shot.

Stealth edit: I uninstalled it. Dialogue and voice acting annoyed me. Bugs made it worse.

I got dumped into a forced-run-n-gun mission with an insanely harsh "protect the idiot NPC who won't take cover or run from grenades" sequence. As a stealth- and pistol-focused character. My backup Assault Rifle was already down to 14 bullets when I came into the section.

I've been kicked back to the checkpoint at least a dozen times now. It's rage-inducing.

I've enjoyed the hell out of this game personally. I got it on XBOX 360 and have had maybe one freeze and that's it for technical issues. The voice acting is alright and I'm fascinated by the ending. It has tons of permutations including:

Who lives and dies.
What your goals are.
Who is on your side.
Who is your enemy.
Who the final boss is.

All of these can be mixed and matched. I would say more but don't want to spoil anything.

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/85916/headslam.jpg)

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3667682/facepalm360.jpg)

Awesome.

Does not make me want to get it. That's pretty terrible state for the PC version. If I'm playing PC version I guess I'll just set it to EZ mode to play for the story. (And hopefully a patch will come out by then)

I picked this game up for PC last week with a gift card because why not.

It seems alright enough to me outside of Stealth being almost totally useless, the camera a piece of shit, and the dialog being a rage-inducing trial-and-error mess. It feels more polished than just about anything Obsidian has released if you ask me just because it hasn't crashed to desktop or dropped to 2 FPS randomly. The controls/interface on PC are bad but after playing Borderlands I am unfazed.

I heard this game sold so poorly that this IP is donewith, which is too bad. A sequel could have turned out to be damn good.

Stealth failure for spy game? I didn't see Rambo on the title.
Camera failure for over the shoulder perspective? Oh God.
Dialogue trial and error? That's just terrible for RPG.

I still haven't purchased it yet, and I really wanted to, but it's not improving is it? Patches are not being any help?

See, I'm in almost the opposite boat.  I just started playing this last week, and I'm working with a mostly stealth oriented character.  Finished up Saudi Arabia and most of Taipei with no major problems.  I'm playing on ps3 though, but haven't run into any major issues yet, and stealth has been a very viable option for me for most of the game.  I've been liking the game a lot so far, but my taste in games is questionable at best.

Yeah I really quite enjoyed this game too, to the point of being disappointed that there's not going to be another.

Had no problems with stealth, after putting points into it stealth is quite the opposite of useless. I don't think it even took that many points IIRC. There was another skill that worked well with stealth too, an electronics one? It gave you breathing room with cameras, allowed remote hacks etc.

Hell I even liked the dialog system, nice to have a bit of pressure to act now think later. One thing that was a minor issue in mass effect 2 for me was being able to take a 5min break at the 'capture or destroy the station' part. Kinda took some of the intensity out of the situation.

Stealth is buggy as fuck; sometimes it works great, sometimes you literally get seen through walls. When maxed out you can pretty much just run around murdering everyone with impunity however. The problem with stealth mainly is that if you focus really heavily on it at the expense of decent weapon skills you'll get your shit pushed in on required fights.

The camera is in a good strata and doesn't get "caught" on shit but for some reason at least in the PC Version you need to turn the mouse sensitivity all the way up just to be able to look around and aim at the same speed you do in Mass Effect 1/2. Turning fast causes the camera to flip its shit and point in a random direction half the time.

The idea behind the dialog stuff is cool where you pick an approach rather than a canned phrase but the reactions are pretty hard to gauge most of the time and that sucks because dialog has waaaaaaaaaaaay more of an effect on this game than any Bioware thing I've ever played. Nearly every conversation after the opening area changes shit for the rest of the game and if you pick a steady approach people will react to you differently before you've even talked to them. I'd rather be able to see what I'm going to say beforehand if I have pay the consequences for every fucking line.

That synopsis was rather scatological.

It's well represented, but fornication also makes a good showing.

(http://img545.imageshack.us/img545/4625/53329300.jpg)

Hrrrm yes, scatological indeed hrmmm.

I'm bumping this because I finally got around to trying it out after I got it on a steam sale for $5.

Apparently, there was a single patch that fixed a bunch of stuff. Not a miracle patch, because when I booted it up I had horrible mouse lag, awful, jerky animations, and absolutely HORRIBLE rendering stuttering when I moved - Instead of panning smoothly, it panned in fits and starts, jerkily. I was about 15 seconds from uninstalling but I figured I'd look up some tweaks, and I found them in an SA thread.

Turns out, there are a few easy settings that you can do that turn this from an unplayable mess into a fairly enjoyable game. It fixed ALL the technical issues except for the hacking minigame, and that is still workable as long as you move the mouse slowly. I also found a 1-2 points in sabotage lets you bypass hacks/lockpicks, since you can just grenade the doors/computers open. Once I found this out, the game became a lot more enjoyable.

I'm going to quote them here for anyone else who wants to take another crack at this game, who uninstalled it because it seemed unplayable on the PC. Without these tweaks, in my opinion, it is.

The configuration files are in "Documents\Alpha Protocol\APGame\Config" (not in your program files/steam)

APInput.ini (fixes stuttering issues & mouse):

APEngine.ini (walking/crouch animations and various video tweaks):

Ooh, thanks for this.

Did I miss this on steam sale? $5 is the magic price!

You did miss it. It was the thanksgiving sale. Maybe it'll come around again, like Reccatear did.

Sadly I am already sort of bored with it, though I'll probably go back and finish. The combat is so incredibly shallow, in a console-itis sort of way. It's not awful, it's just you move from a set piece room full of guys to another and another. Since I'm specalizing in stealth and takedowns it's more like a puzzle game, which can I hit first so the others won't see, and then I take them all out and move on. The sad part is the rooms are always fairly small and have no more than 4 or 5 guys in them. The story is good though!

My OCD made me bring up a gamefaqs guide to what responses give what +/- rep and such, I couldn't stand the randomness.

Speaking of.. on sale today.

I was just going to post that! It's 7.50 today.

The UI.  :ye_gods:

There is only one or two skills that are useful, and one or two gadgets, so doing the whole switch thing isn't as bad as all that.

My first five minutes of the game were disorienting, confusing, and left me with a longing for some Ming time. But the shitty dialog (from OBSIDIAN??), the weird animations and stealth / gunplay, and just generally unsatisfying play experience made me turn it off and I don't plan to turn it on again.

The game is flawed, but there's not that many espionage based games around and some of the sections can be quite satisfying. And when it works the production values are actually pretty good for what is now a budget title. Worth a play through, but there's a couple of game choices that will make it much more fun and less frustrating (IMO of course).

1. It's probably not worth playing through twice, and the game is best suited to a stealthy approach. Mostly because it's just not that great as a shooter and you get more out of the maps when you see them as a challenge you can slowly "take apart". The pistol is pretty over-powered too and a couple of points in assault rifle are enough to play run and gun if stealth fails or gets frustrating.

2. You want at least two points in sabotage. If you enjoy the puzzles that gives you a bit more time to solve them. The puzzle difficulty is erratic and save points sparse though so there will be times when you just can't be bothered / get frustrated and want to use an EMP grenade to just nuke it. Yes, you can hack a computer or pick a padlock with an EMP grenade, /shrug. Some of the puzzles have such a tight time constraint, and so many steps, I question if they're even possible.

3. If you want to play on hard it's doable. But you almost certainly want to do Taipei and get Stephen heck on-side before you do Russia. Other than that the missions areas can be done in any order.

4. Most NPC characters have a favored response type and they're always in the same place (agressive = top, suave = left, professional = right). So if in doubt use that guide, and the nature of the character, rather than trying to guess what the hint will mean when put into dialog. For most dialogs you could probably just leave it on a favored setting and let it play out and do fine.

The main problem with the stealth is not that it's buggy (it is) or the enemies are all dumb (they are, but sort of need to be) but that at higher levels it becomes cheesy and magical. A high level stealth operative should have toys and techniques allowing lots of tactical options. You don't get that in this game, you just get a magic invisibility spell and the ability to freeze time. Which means the game-play doesn't change that much and after a while you can cheese any encounter (though some of them need it).

I love this game so much.  Way too much.  Obviously very flawed but just so damn fun.  And dare I say ambitious, given how many options there are in the choose-your-own-adenture storyline.  This game actually changes depending on how you act and what you do.  This is what I like about RPGs, so thank you Alpha Protocol for kicking ass in that department, even though you kind of suck in many ways.

I disagree when you say that it's not worth playing through twice.  If you enjoyed it enough to beat it once, it has so much variety in every play-through that you can easily play it 3-4 times and have a very different experience each time.  I played it through 3 times back-to-back.  It's only about 14 hours long for a play-through so not a huge time commitment.

Also, fuck stealth.  The levels are fun when you run around shotgunning everyone in the face.  Or sprinting around punching people out.  Stealth was nothing but an exercise in frustration for me.

Roleplaying is greatly rewarded in AP.  It is actually pretty cool to just stick to one dialog option (suave, professional, aggressive) the entire game.  I'd recommend against 'gaming the system' and making everyone like you.  Someone people you should piss off.  Trust me, it's way more fun that way.

I meant more in terms of some of the other modes being problematic and a stealth approach giving you the richest first play through experience since you interact with the maps so deeply and are encouraged to take it slow.

On hard the shotgun barely tickles armored opponents even at very short ranges and it's only use is knockdown so you can go kick them in the head (which is an instant kill... go figure). SMG's are similarly weak and the Assault rifle special ability is laughably bad. If you wanted to play run & gun there's better shooters, whereas there are far fewer covert action shooters. Also the AI is really far too stupid to be much of a challenge to an aggressive approach, it's pretty much a shooting gallery and fighting with the oddities in the cover system.

I loved the role-playing. I don't even mind the delivery which seems to have upset some people on forums. But you'll still end up doing the same action set pieces pretty much any path you take.