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Realm of Rikonia
Rikonian Revuze
(Video Games)
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Reviewed By: Lord High Rikonian ( 7/4/2010 9:56:27 PM)
Overall Rating: 3.00 orphans
Quality:
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Review: Alpha Protocol is fun. It has pretty good graphics, it has a nice selection of gadgets and weapons, it lets me shoot people, and it has that moral choice system that lets me express my primal psychotic douchebag nature in a safe manner. The character log even keeps track of how many orphans you made. Not just kills, orphans. If you kill a dude, the game looks up his data, goes "Oh, this guy had 3 kids, so 3 more orphans." Seems like there's a lot for a demented gamer to like.
Yet you're probably noticing that all of the subcategory ratings are higher than the overall game rating, and wondering what the hell is up. Well, I'll explain that first.
There is something I dislike about this game, and it is the reason why its aggregate score is lower than all the subcategory scores: Saving is a pain in the ass. In most games today, you can save at any time (or at least any time you're not actively fighting). Alpha Protocol lets you save during a checkpoints only. Checkpoints are worse than save points, by the way, because save points can at least be used again. Seriously, if you make a game that requires checkpoint saving, then you deserve rabid weasels to eat your eyeballs. And your balls too.
But that is not all. Conversations and cutscenes are unskippable. And there's a couple places where a checkpoint is followed by a string of unskippable cutscenes and dialogs. Today, I had about 15 minutes of cutscene after cutscene after cutscene. This is an annoyance, and a pretty unforgivable one.
Here's a tip for any game programmers out there: if a player cannot, at any non-final-boss-battle point in the game, get to a save menu and an exit menu within fine minutes or less, then you have failed. Not only as programmers, but also as human beings. In fact you have failed as mammals. I recommend cutting some lines into your necks and jumping into the ocean because maybe you'll do better as fish.
Aside from that horrible aspect, I like this game, though it is not my favorite, and I doubt that it wil have much replay value for me. However, other people tend to hate it, and for the wrong reason. The complaints that I hear most often (that the stealth and shooting controls suck) are unjustified.
Alpha Protocol is an espionage RPG. What that means is that your abilities are stat based and the controls will suck until you get the stats raised. It's the same way in Mass Effect and the Elder Scrolls series. If you want to headshot people, you have to put some points in to your gun skill, otherwise your shot may go wild.
My character is pretty proficient with stealth and pistols, and the controls for those are fairly good now (because my stats are raised). I've gotten through several missions already and controls and gunplay difficulty seem fairly well balanced. Occasionally, the NPCs act kind of incredibly stupid, like when I'm fistfighting an islamic terrorist and his friends are not shooting. If these guys are willing to blow themselves up, I figure they probably wouldn't care that much about friendly fire. But then, that may just be because I'm playing on the easy setting.
For the most part, I like the way guns are handled. However I have a fairly major complaint: no sniper rifle in inventory? What the fuck?! Oh you can get a sniper rifle, in certain missions, if a you pay a guy a few hundred bucks. But you can't move the sniper rifle, it's basically treated as a turret. Not since the baldheaded genetic ubermench who cannot jump over a foot tall obstacle has a character limitation felt so arbitraily forced. Come to think of it, old shinyhead had a sniper rifle. It's called a briefcase, Obsidian! New elite technology for hiding sniper rifles in. Put it in the sequel (Beta Protocol: Revenge of the Orphans!), damnit!
Of course, no espionage RPG would be complete without dialog and quicktime events. I'll handle dialog first.
The dialog as written is very clever and funny, but the implementation sucks! Similar to Bioware games you have a conversation with a few options. However, these options are in real time, with a timer ticking down to make your decision. This system would be clever, except it means that dialog cannot be skipped or hastened. And that makes the dialog a stygian slog through a hell of Obsidian's own making, where you want to escape, but cannot, because you haven't gotten to the fucking checkpoint yet.
The minigames are pretty well designed. For the first time, lockpicking actually feels like lockpicking. Kudos for actually giving a reason for the XBox controller triggers to be analog! Circuit bypassing and hacking are also fairly well done, though hacking is annoyingly tricky at times.
Playing Advice: Despite the flaws (the many many many flaws), this is a fun game. However, I recommend waiting. It's not really super earth-shattering, and with the flaws, the game really isn't worth the full price. So get it used or wait for the retail to drop a bit.
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Ron Howard is the Opie of the masses
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