Alpha Protocol is certainly different, and playing it necessitates a recalibration of your third-person shooter instincts. It feels completely wrong at first that shooting at enemies can do little to no damage, or that you have to stay out of cover with your reticule trained on someone for five seconds in order to get a critical hit. Over the course of four hours with the game, though, it did begin to make sense.​

Where you put your stat points, then, really does determine how you can play the game. Sadly it also means that players will necessarily pigeonhole themselves into a particular approach. It's literally impossible to change tactics for later missions, because your stats won't allow it - you can't suddenly roll out with a shotgun for a level that's giving you trouble if you've been pouring all your points into stealth abilities and pistols. Given that the stealth approach is way, way harder than the others, it's easy to see how this inflexibility might become problematic.​