Gamersmint Review : Alpha Protocol
Alpha Protocol is an “espionage/RPG” game from Obsidian that had a really sound and promising concept but if you are expecting it to be a great RPG with good production values, you will be disappointed as the game is primarily a mediocre third person shooter with some really bland RPG elements thrown in. It could be very well be described as a poorly made Mass Effect clone with some Splinter Cell like gameplay thrown into the mix. The game is still playable though and can be enjoyed if you can tolerate the number of appalling bugs and glitches that plague it. Obsidian tried to be really ambitious but they didn’t have the time nor the budget to polish this game although the game does have its saving grace in the form of its wonderful choice based dialogue system, which we will come back to later in the review.
Story
You get to play as Agent Michal Thorton, who is a rookie spy recruited by the government agency Alpha Protocol, the story is great because of the excellent dialogue system and you get to meet a variety of characters, being good or evil is entirely in your hands. Your missions will take you to exotic locations like Rome, Taipei and Moscow with fully equipped safe houses offering you plenty of time to buy weapons, check emails and customize your character. Gathering Intel gives you information regarding the missions and clues on how to exploit weaknesses of the enemies.
The story is essentially about Thorton being embroiled in a conspiracy trying to recover stolen missiles which eventually leads to the agency betraying him and you turning into a rogue agent. As mentioned earlier you will meet a variety of characters and get to interact with them. There is an assortment of dialogue options when interacting with someone which branches the story nicely. Obsidian really took care to polish this facet of the game. It is due to this dialogue system that you can play the game multiple times and have a different experience each time.
You can behave in a variety of ways during a conversation – namely suave, professional and aggressive which affects the characters you are interacting with. You also get a 2 second time limit to choose an option which indirectly helps you concentrate on the dialogue. The story and the dialogue are some of the high points of this game and have been excellently developed by Obsidian. There are also some romantic encounters in the game; it’s a spy game so that shouldn’t come as a surprise. You also get to sleep with women in the game but the sex scenes are horrendous, particularly the one involving a woman named “Sie”. (We def won’t make hay like that)
Graphics
The game runs on Unreal Engine 3 and looks like a 7 year old PC game. The graphics are pretty disappointing considering Obsidian is mainly a PC developer. Lots of recycled assets in each and every mission reduces the immersion factor a lot. It has a tremendous amount of pop-in issues and the frame rate dropped a lot during heavy firefights, highly unoptimized, makes me wonder how they could ship the game in this state. You also regularly get stuck in the environments and same goes for the enemies, resulting in some of the most hilarious moments ever seen in a video game.
The game can glitch and crash on you at random moments so it’s better to save your progress regularly although the checkpoint system is a lot more forgiving for the player. Another thing I fail to understand is the amount of motion blur used. How can anyone add so much motion blur to an already average looking game is beyond me. I played this game on the PC, and the amount of bugs I encountered is enough for anyone to punch their screen in anger. But the game is not unplayable inspite of all these flaws if you can still tolerate all these issues and enjoy the game but that requires you to be a really patient gamer.
Gameplay
Alpha protocol is basically a third person shooter with some RPG elements thrown in, you get a lot of cover opportunities but what bugs me is that, it’s very hard to aim early on due to under developed skills, even if you shoot a guy in the head you will most likely miss, the great thing about the gameplay is that it encourages a stealthy approach, I often found myself investing in the martial arts and stealth skill. Some of the missions are really satisfying if you take a stealthy approach. The missions aren’t that challenging, if you do manage to trigger an alarm, you can disable it, which also introduces you to the hacking minigame, there are a variety of hacking minigames but they don’t offer much challenge if you have a good hand to eye co-ordination. There are four classes of weapons namely Pistols, Assault rifles, SMGS and Shotguns, you can buy new weapons and customize them using the cash you earn during missions.
Enemy AI is the worst part of the game. Running around in circles and getting stuck are some of the common traits of the enemies and holds true even with the bosses in the game, which really dampens the fun you have while playing stealthily or gunning away. You can level up and learn different skills, improve accuracy, stealth etc Mass Effect style through the points earned while completing missions. The outdated graphics combined with the horrible AI completely ruin the immersion and this is one area which Obsidian completely ignored while making the game, resulting in highly unpolished gameplay mechanics.
Audio
Alpha protocol has a decent soundtrack which does a good job at setting the right tempo for each mission. The gun sounds aren’t particularly impressive, but the enemies do yell and communicate with each other during the mission which really increases the tension if you play stealthily. The voice acting is absolutely brilliant and is one of the redeeming factors; and there is a lot of dialogue in the game, which is mostly well written and executed perfectly.
Next Page – Closing Comments and Scoring
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