Alpha Protocol Review: More Zeta than Alpha

I was incredibly excited for Alpha Protocol since Day One for several reasons. For one I love Obsidian for it's high pedigree of RPG development. The studio was formed  by former Fallout developers which is one of my favorite game series of all time. Obsidian has crafted great games like Neverwinter Nights 2 and KoToR 2 plus they are returning to Fallout with New Vegas this fall. So hopes were high they could take the  concept of a espionage rpg in the vein of Mass Effect and make it awesome. But unfortunatly Alpha Protocol  has come out of the oven less than finished.

Alpha Protocol tells the story of Michael Thorton, a character who's backstory is your choice as is his personality. You've been recruited into a secret US orginazation known as Alpha Protocol. Michael starts off in the Middle East tracking a terrorist cell after an airliner is destroyed by missiles which they stole from Halbech a PMC. But things go wrong and Michael is forced to go undercover and build a case in Moscow, Rome and Taipei against his enemies. The story is not bad for a spy story just don't expect an Ian Fleming or a Bourne out of it. The story is fairly well told and outside of a couple of bits that sour the seriousness of it (mainly a bunch of characters in Moscow) and predictable ending it's well written too. Characters are fairly strong, Michael Thorton being a highlight as any of his personalities are done well. You see Alpha Protocol includes a Mass Effect like dialogue wheel except instead of choosing what words to say you instead choose your tone: Agressive(Jack Bauer), Suave(James Bond) and Professional(Jason Bourne). Then there's a timer which limits the length of time you have to answer making it very impulsive. This makes the conversation incredibly deep as your tone will influence characters thoughts of you which can affect everything from what weapons you can buy to the amount of enemies in a mission. One last note on this is that the games script must be huge because for example in one mission I accidentaly killed a CIA agent, and yes just the one. Which at the end of the game a character goes and references it which really impressed me.

The problem with Alpha Protocol is that it's gameplay is full good bits but with very bad foundation. The game is played as the cover based third person shooter which all TPS seem to be these days. Now technically Alpha Protcol in gameplay is sound it's just that it's combat sucks. Now it's not exactly that the combat sucks it's just that it's very buggy espacially with AI. The AI is done very, very poorly here  with enemies that are so stupid what seems like 25% of them have an incredibly frustrating move of charging forward through your fire just to melee attack you once. Either one this makes the game very easy or two it ruins a firefight in large scales by having a hectic firefight kill you by the AI smacking you across the head before being so close one shotgun shell will kill you. Other enemies are incredibly stupid in diffrent ways like having no iniative to take cover ever instead standing completely in the open for an easy headshot. This sucks any fun out of combat. The game does however being an RPG very much like Deus Ex has multiple solutions to each problem: one of these is stealth which is actually the most fun bit of the game. You can sneak past multiple enemies or slowly pick them off which works very well in non lethal missions. The problem here though is not that the stealth doesn't work because it does, it's that the enemies again can hyperaware at times removing any hope of stealth and returning us to the combat which as established is the shits.

The worst bit though of all combat in the game is the boss battles because the bosses are cheating bastards. Nearly every boss has pinpoint perfect aim with their weapons and the worst boss of the game is Brakov, a Russian gang leader who is so over the top that his stadium is a dance club in his house with loud rock music playing. You shoot him a bit then he snorts coke and chases you with a knife which wreaks your shit and is invulnerable to bullets. He took me at least a dozen times to kill and I nearly shut the game off then and their. But the good bits of the gameplay are the minigame bits. There are lockpicking and hacking minigames which balance reward and challenge perfectly as well as sniping missions which are some of the funner bits. Your safehouse in each city is also very well designed as it serves as good hubs for customization of appearance, armor and weapons as well as having extra info in dossiers and emails to help with missions. Weapon and armor customization is deep and simple working well as does the games skill system which is experience to spread over skills. The skill system is deep and is fun to customize although broken in some aspects as you at one point may choose your specialties and if you choose any weapon besides assault rifles the game will get much, much harder. There are also combat skills like bullet time, invulnerability and invisibilty for combat and stealth. The gameplay overall is broken with bad AI and boredom in many missions.

On a technical side Alpha Protocol doesn't set the world on fire. The game rarely goes above itself to look really good looking a bit dated but the worst is textures which take way, way to long to load. In a menu showing a picture of a pistol the game took over 20 seconds to load the guns textures. Animations of death are just as bad espacially Thorton's which make him look like a man made of rubber as he bounces inhumanly off objects. Voice acting is one of the games strongest points with an all around good performance including a mandatory Nolan North character who again is basically Nathan Drake. Music works well throughout the game for mood setting and character models are well detailed espacially in facial movements. The game struggles with environments as every hub city has way to many back street alleyways or mansion hallways missions. Overall the presantation of the game is a mixed bag.

Alpha Protocol is poorly executed concept with a lot strong bits but the glue tying it together is weak. The game excels in stealth, hacking and conversation missions with good ROG elements but as for the action or the combat it's very poorly done. Throw bad textures, AI and bugs into the mix and it overshadows really good bits like the story, writing and the conversation system. The game is not fully done and should have been completed considering the game had an extra nine months of development time. It's not the game is awful because it really isn't, the game can be fun at times and I finished. It's just a mediocre game that needed more time to be something truly great.