june gloom on 20/4/2011 at 18:40

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There isn't. Save at checkpoints and only checkpoints.

Tomi on 2/10/2011 at 16:48

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So I bought Alpha Protocol for 2€ on the Steam sale last weekend, and I got to say that it's the best 2€ that I've spent on a computer game ever. Having read some of the very mixed reviews of the game before buying, and even after the rather tedious training missions in an ugly environment, I wasn't expecting anything that special, but I was in for a pleasant surprise...

I finished the game last night in a bit more than 25 hours (yes, I did play it quite a lot during the last week :p), and as with all good games or movies or books, I wish it had lasted even longer, but 25+ hours is already pretty impressive these days, especially for a game with so much dialogue and different storylines and stuff. I didn't experience any bugs at all either (except for that Russian mob boss getting stuck so that I could finish him off easily), have they fixed all those with the Steam release or what?

The guys at Obsidian have certainly watched their Jason Bourne films closely, and that's a good thing. Playing Alpha Protocol was like watching an entertaining spy action film where you can jump in and play the fun parts and make the important decisions. In fact the story was so good that I had to play "just one more mission" to see what happens next, until I realised that I have to be at work in less than 6 hours.

The dialogue system works really well most of the time too, I think. You get little clues about what kind of responses each NPC in the game appreciates/dislikes, and you only have a few seconds to react and choose your answer. I said that it works well most of the time, because sometimes the answers turned out to be something else than I was expecting. For example I choose the "Joking" dialogue option and try to crack a funny joke with some important person, but end up being a total idiot and insulting their mother instead. But that's not really such a big deal.

I'm not sure if my actions in the game and what I choose to say to NPCs really made FA difference, but the cool thing is that the game at least made me feel like it did. I spared someone's life in mission #3, and much later on in the game, they surprisingly appear in the middle of another mission and save my life instead... That's just one little example, but little things like that make me want to play the game again and see what happens if I make different choices.

The gameplay and controls were surprisingly good, or at least decent, even if they felt pretty clumsy at the beginning. The game restricts your movement quite a lot, pretty often your way is blocked by a tiny box or an almost invisible barrier, and you're only allowed to do some certain actions (like jumping and climbing) in certain places that are marked by an arrow symbol, but even if the mission objectives force you to progress in quite a linear fashion, you'll often have different paths to choose from.

I was playing a Spy, and was really excited about the whole stealth thing at first. OK, it was never exactly as good as Thief or something, but I thought it worked and it was pretty exciting to try to sneak past the enemies and knock them out. But the more I spent attribute points on the Stealth skills, the more silly it got... One of the stealth skills turns you practically invisible for a "short" duration of time (which isn't really that short in the end), and even if you're standing in the middle of a well lit room with guards all around you, they won't notice a thing. That was one thing that I hated about the stealth in VampireTM: Bloodlines, but at least I could pretend that it was some supernatural ability then. If I use that skill that makes me invisible and another skill that makes me completely silent, I can just run around the room and take everyone down and they'll never see me. :erg: Well, some people might find that cool, but I thought it was pretty stupid. It's not bad, but it's no Thief either, and without the overpowered stealth skills I think it would have been pretty good.

Another thing that kind of "ruined" the stealth experience for me - also my pet hate in all computer games - is that the corpses disappear only after a few seconds. Whyyyyy? That just makes things unnecessarily easy and unrealistic. I think it would have been a lot more exciting if you had to carry the corpses out of the sight before the next patrolling guard turns up. The "silent" knockouts also annoy me a bit - you can strangle a guard (not really that silently) and another guard who's standing right next to you but just looking another way won't hear a thing. Then again, I played the game on normal difficulty, maybe it won't be as easy on the higher difficulty level(s)...?

Speaking of pet hates in computer games, Alpha Protocol is also guilty of another one of mine... automatically closing doors! And I'm not talking about some hi-tech automatic doors, I'm talking about totally ordinary wooden/metal doors. And don't even get me started about doors that automatically get locked behind you, so that you can't go back to some areas left behind that you wanted to explore. :mad:

All in all, despite of these flaws I really liked Alpha Protocol, it's the best game that I've played lately. I think I'll take a little break before playing it again though, but I feel that there's still a lot to see and experience. Next time I'll try some totally different approach, maybe some merciless killing machine who specialises on using guns, and see how it turns out. Too bad the 2€ deal on Steam isn't on anymore, otherwise I would suggest everyone to buy this game immediately, but I think it's worth a little bit more than 2€ so go for it... or wait for another special deal. :p

june gloom on 3/10/2011 at 21:24

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Eh, don't be so sure about no sequel. Obsidian retains the rights, and they've expressed interest.

And yes, Sis is the absolute best; the fact that you can't romance her just makes her more popular.