Alpha Protocol

[BosanskiSeljak]

Mass Effect 2 is some of the worst cover shooting slop I have ever played in my life.

 

[Atlantico]

Sega delaying the game after Mass Effect 2's release hurt it significantly because it looked and played so awful by comparison. This is funny because before release there was an Obsidian dev hyping up

It wasn't Obsidian's job to market the game. Sega fucked up. Simple as

 

[Roguey]

It wasn't Obsidian's job to market the game. Sega fucked up. Simple as

SEGA did sit on it to try and raise marketing awareness during the delay.

It didn't seem like they were doing much for a while, though, so I got confused why they were waiting but no marketing was happening (it did eventually pick up, though).

Unfortunately, the delay meant it came out around the same time as Splinter Cell and ME2.

Even if it hadn't, it wouldn't have been well-received, but compared against two examples of a studio that's got stealth and encounter mechanics refined and a company that's got an established cinematic RPG pipeline, I'd argue AP looked even shabbier by comparison.

Marketing can't save "this gameplay looks like ass" which was a common criticism even right here on the Codex (especially from good old "look at that tire" skyway).

 

[Atlantico]

Marketing can't save "this gameplay looks like ass" which was a common criticism even right here on the Codex (especially from good old "look at that tire" skyway).

Marketing and reality don't really ever intersect much.

 

[Multidirectional]

Marketing can't save "this gameplay looks like ass" which was a common criticism even right here on the Codex (especially from good old "look at that tire" skyway).

If I remember correctly the crouch walking animation was a big deal for a lot of people then.

 

[agris]

lotta late stage Roguey-isms itt

 

[Quillon]

As someone born after the Soviet Union ceased to exist: AP was a Cold War game?! Of the three JBs, the 2002 Bourne (yes, I know the novel is older) and 2001 Bauer were both solidly post Cold War. The first hub is post-Cold War GWoT, Russia's appearance is entirely gangs in international arms deals and the most prominent Russian character is very much a post Soviet sterotype in tastes. Unless we define Cold War to be "the modern one against ultra rich puppet masters fucking over the world for their own amusement and China", which is still ongoing and makes Sawyer's point moot, I don't see how it would be Cold War in the slightest.

At least Josh Sawyer is being truthful in that he clearly doesn't remember Alpha Protocol in the slightest, though he's projecting his own ignorance to the gaming community in general.

tbf he’s equating interest in “spy thriller” stories with Cold War interest, not explicitly saying AP is a Cold War game.

all is fair in love and shitposting, eh?

Why such a leap tho, if what's popular today is superheroes, most of them are spies or half...idk much about them but some definitely are spies!

 

[Camel]

I still have my copy of AP here. I tried it for about half an hour, seemed like a clunky attempt at Deus Ex and didn't bother trying again. I might have to put it on the to-do list and see if it goes any better the next time.

Go play it, you won't be disappointed.

Had both of them killed, but I chose to personally kill Sis the first time I saw her, very satisfying, couldn't be bothered. I stuck with Heck when I played through.

Heck is of the rare characters you can't kill in the game. The most satisfying for me was to kill Marburg in Rome after successfully provoking him.

As for gameplay, I really enjoyed my pistol build, felt satisfying to his headshot after headshot because I invested into it fully.

Pistols and bullet time are OP.

Action games with shooting mechanics do nothing for me because I've spent my entire life playing games focused on shooting and the "RPG" versions are childsplay even on the hardest difficulty. In fact, the "hardest" one I played was Mass Effect 2 and that's only because of bloated shields/HP which just meant sitting behind cover for 20mins in certain missions. I also enjoy watching retards complain about systems like Alpha Protocol. It's most pronounced with Mass Effect 1 because I feel like that's the most popular game which utilizes that. Be shit at games in general --> Don't put skill points into weapons --> Complain about how nothing is hitting. Even if it's simplistic, it's fun to see the casuals squirm.

ME2 combat was tedious with stripping shields/armor/health and biotics didn't work against shields and barriers. ME3 combat was the best in the series and especially BioWare caught lightning in a bottle with the multiplayer.

 

[KeAShizuku]

Sure graphics sucked and gameplay sucked but the game was damn fun. Yeah that sounds strange I know but not a lot of games have me in stitches.

Asshole Thorton was such a badass.

 

[Sannom]

Heck is of the rare characters you can't kill in the game. The most satisfying for me was to kill Marburg in Rome after successfully provoking him.

You gotta keep someone around to get you to the last level after all. Also the reason it's so hard to make him absolutely mad at Thorton.

 

[3 others]

Just playing this for the first time after having bought it a decade ago, so here are some impressions that may have use to a fellow newbie. It's an easy game to write stuff about since it gets so much so right, and so much so wrong.

Overall, it's like Age of Decadence reimagined as an FPS. A narratively ambitious, janky labor of love that mechanically fails as a genre game but is carried by its wonderful branching plot structure. It's one of the few games that has a trace of the original Deus Ex in it - arguably more than the Eidos Montreal games did - and the overall bombastic and not-too-serious tone has plenty in common with Metal Gear Solid series.

The game really lives up to its reputation as being very rough to actually play moment-to-moment. I haven't tried any Mass Effects or Gears of Wars so I can't compare the idiotic shooting mechanics and cover-taking faggotry to anything else, but especially the large-scale gunfights are just not fun, interesting, or enjoyable at all.

The UI is an abomination on PC. To view a map, you press M. To return to game, you pre... no, wait, you don't press M again, and neither do you press ESC. You click on the Back button with your MOUSE which returns you to an unrelated three-item menu from which you can return back to the game by pressing TAB. You have no full inventory view of all the gear you repossess throughout the game, instead you go through your weapon-specific scopes etc. in their corresponding weapons customization interfaces.

As for the map, it really shows how barebones the game's levels are. You get a functional wireframe of the exact corridor your character can pass through in the current level, nothing else. Whole city blocks and museums are reduced to a twirling spaghetti of a route with an occasional set piece arena thrown in there. The levels are full of potemkin doors completely identical to interactive doors that you just can't pass through. You can only drop down from an above level in predefined places. The progress of your globetrotting superspy is constantly being foiled by knee-height traffic barriers and other immovable art assets that you just can't pass through. There's gotta be a word for this type of restricted 3D environment traversal in comparison to the freeform Looking Glass -lineage style. In any case, this completely sucks.

Alpha Protocol also has a problem introducing characters or tasks in a way that sticks with you. Which of the three al-Towelheads was this guy I'm stalking in the current mission again? What exactly is the question my handler is asking that I'm responding at this very moment... oh, she put the informant's call through to me... I see. Was I supposed to protect this Sergei something from these other dudes or make sure he's dead before they get to him?

The set pieces and cutscenes can be kind of incongruous, partly due to the myriad of playstyles you can approach the game with. Your Beretta-wielding silent and not-unnecessarily-lethal Sean Connery who's sneaked out of a hotspot undetected after a successful hit turns into a campy Roger Moore in the subsequent cutscene as he struts away from a self-ignited explosion that throw guards all over the place. It's more humorous than anything, and fits the pulpy aesthetic of the game well, actually. At least if the mission ends there. If the mission still continues after the cutscene it's more jarring when your hyper-competent infiltrator agent with a body count in the hundreds suddenly finds himself surprised and surrounded by a squadron of goons.

The sneaking around bit doesn't really work that well either. The enemies go from totally oblivious to full auto firing hyper-aggressive fiends in a nanosecond like the police cars in Driver who'd start ramming your car sirens blazing if you applied your handbrake while waiting in red lights. This is actually very frustrating since the basic first-person (or over-the-shoulder) stealth gaming formula was already well-refined in Thief. This kind of backsliding on a solved problem is unacceptable. Maybe they were going for a more realistic feel where guards don't bark around their internal state for all the world to hear but it's not fun to play.

Alpha Protocol sort of tries to solve this (and lots of other gameplay jank) with special powers which are enormously powerful. If you specialize in stealth, you gain the ability to become actually invisible for half a minute. If you specialize in pistols, you gain the ability to stop time and fire off bunch of shots that do each more damage than a frag grenade. For better or worse, these trivialize the actual meat-and-potatoes gameplay of Alpha Protocol since you don't have to spend as much time dealing with the wonky shooting and hiding mechanics of the game.

The hacking / lockpicking / etc. minigames are just fine. Nothing much to say about them.

As for the good parts, the widely branching plot also lives up to its reputation for reactivity, and personally I'd say goes even beyond it. It creates an illusion of a truly dynamic world. Characters constantly refer to minor conversations and actions, or even the order of things you did in an unrelated mission hours ago. Every mission seems to branch in numerous places... does that guy live or die? Did you get seen during the infiltration? What did you reveal or conceal from that other guy you talk with at the end? Everything seems to lead to something further down the road.

Despite griping about the obtusely presented characters beforehand, they're actually quite memorable once they get more screentime. The over-the-top archetypes work well. Coked-up Scarface wannabe Brayko, richter scale maniac Steven Heck, jovial sociopath Marburg... even the German battle mommy who I was prepared to loathe based on what little I knew beforehand of the game is a very enjoyable character "Michael, dahling... so commanding! You leave me no choice but to follow your orders. To. The. Letter.".

The dialogue and voice acting is also high quality. I'd preferred to have the mooks around the world speak their local language outside dialogues (where the multilingual Thorton presumably speaks with them in Arabic/Chinese/whatever), but everything else just works. The amount of fully-voiced alternate dialogues in this game must be staggering and they're so far above the Deus Ex Parisian janitors selling "les grenadöes de scraembleu" that it's not even a contest anymore. The banter between Thorton and other main characters is constantly funny/flirty/feisty, and all dialogue approaches you can choose are usually written well and fit the character. Suave/cheeky Thorton actually has quite a Bond-like sexual charisma in places, the aggressive Thorton is an assertive, violent and short-tempered professional killer towards friends and enemies, and so on.

There's also an interesting minor mechanic hidden in Alpha Protocol that's left sadly a bit underdeveloped. The intel dossiers. As you gather data about other persons and organizations, a dossier for this target fills up. The dossier contains mostly some background lore but it has some actionable info in it too. What weapons and engagement tactics an organization's mooks tend to use, and what kind of personality a character has (that you can use to your advantage when dealing with them).

All in all, Alpha Protocol gets the elusive yet very highly recommended verdict.

 

[Butter]

Alpha Protocol is like the Arcanum of cover shooters. Every time it does something really brilliant it turns around, stumbles, and chips a tooth. 3/5 is fair, but it doesn't tell the whole story. BioWare built their company on making 3/5 games that are polished, but don't do anything interesting. One Alpha Protocol is 100x more interesting than 4 Mass Effects.

 

[Cpt. Dallas]

It's hard to ding AP for third person cover shooting jank, since it was what many/most games used in that era.

 

[Ryzer]

Strip out the "Chris Avellone" and "Obsidian" names out of the game, what do you get?

An extremely terrible 3rd person shooter with god-awful controls/gameplay and cringe voice acting.

 

[Sizzle]

Strip out the "Chris Avellone" and "Obsidian" names out of the game, what do you get?

An extremely terrible 3rd person shooter with god-awful controls/gameplay and cringe voice acting.

If the game was made by anyone else, it wouldn't be talked about, as the only things good about it are its writing, C&C, and atmosphere - all of which are entirely CA and Obsidian.

As it stands, the game is a janky, though memorable, entry that still largely hasn't been topped in terms of sheer reactivity. I'd rather have one of those then yet another run-of-the-mill early 2010s shooter.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

Alpha Protocol is like the Arcanum of cover shooters

heyyyy hooooo easy there champ

 

[Cpt. Dallas]

writing, C&C, and atmosphere -

Things sorely lacking in most modern titles.

 

[3 others]

lol there's even a bear rape joke in Alpha Protocol. Truly a game ahead of its time.

 

[Old Hans]

Alpha Protocol is like the Arcanum of cover shooters. Every time it does something really brilliant it turns around, stumbles, and chips a tooth. 3/5 is fair, but it doesn't tell the whole story. BioWare built their company on making 3/5 games that are polished, but don't do anything interesting. One Alpha Protocol is 100x more interesting than 4 Mass Effects.

its like Vampire Masquerade. everything is going great until you get to the combat and then its like "oh god I think im going to be sick"

although that is basically also Arcanum...so never mind

 

[Camel]

its like Vampire Masquerade. everything is going great until you get to the combat and then its like "oh god I think im going to be sick"

although that is basically also Arcanum...so never mind

PS:T and Fallout too. Akshually great RPGs rarely have good combat.

 

[Butter]

its like Vampire Masquerade. everything is going great until you get to the combat and then its like "oh god I think im going to be sick"

although that is basically also Arcanum...so never mind

PS:T and Fallout too. Akshually great RPGs rarely have good combat.

It's bullshit that people keep forgetting Mike Laidlaw's magnum opus.

 

[Sannom]

PS:T and Fallout too. Akshually great RPGs rarely have good combat.

PST had least had flashy combat, what with the very in-your-face spell effects, the "we're not done, don't you move" spell effects and the "please enjoy this cinematic" spell effects.

Long story short, play a wizard, the attribute distribution naturally lend to the best dialogues and you get to enjoy the spectacle.

 

[Silverfish]

An extremely terrible 3rd person shooter

It's actually a brawler and a pretty good one.