Alpha Protocol
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Sionnach Glic
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Alpha Protocol
Anyone else played this? I saw it for a mere €20 last weekend and picked it up on the spur of the moment. I'd never even heard of the game before, but it's one that definitely deserves a lot more exposure, because it's easily the best game I've played in a while.
"You've all been selected for this mission because you each have a special skill. Professor Hawking, John Leslie, Phil Neville, the Wu-Tang Clan, Usher, the Sugar Puffs Monster and Daniel Day-Lewis! Welcome to Operation MindFuck!"
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Sionnach Glic
- 4 Star Admiral
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Re: Alpha Protocol
It's a third person RPG-esque game where you play as an agent of a top secret organisation called Alpha Protocol. Without spoiling the plot, shit hits the fan in a big way and you embark an a mission to expose and take down a massive and corrupt corporation. Along the way you'll try to stop a terrorist bombing in Rome, take down an Islamic militant group in Saudi Arabia, foil the assassination of the Taiwanese president, and do a bunch of other things.
Where the game realy shines is in its RPG system. For once in the last decade, a game has been produced in which your choices actually effect the events that happen - make the wrong decision and you can totaly screw things up (such as when I wound up letting the Taiwanese president get shot). How you talk and act to people effects how they think of you. On my second playthrough of the game I actually managed to convince the main antagonist's henchman to switch sides and help me out, while on my third he despised me so much that I managed to bait him into trying to kill me - leading to me taking him out.
On that note, another point in the game's favour is its lack of repitition. For one, you can do missions in pretty much any order you like. This may lead to you encountering different characters, gaining different pieces of information, etc. This also means that you can play through the game a whole bunch of times and it still throws new scenarios and results at you. I've finished the game four times now, and because of the different choices I've made throughout the game it's still interesting and fairly fresh to play.
It's also one of the few games that does stealth well. If guards spot a corpse lying around, they're not just going to have a brief look around and then just shrug and go back to what they were previously doing - they'll run off to sound the alarms, gather reinforcements and then search the area quite thoroughly. This can lead to some tense situations where you're trying desperately to hide from a group of heavily armed mercenaries stalking you through the ruins of a bombed out embassy. Also, damaging cameras results in alarms getting set off quite quickly - a nice little detail IMO. Another nice detail is that you rarely have to actualy sneak your way through a mission. If you get fed up you can just whip out an assault rifle and introduce the guards to your little friend.
The AI's nothing spectacular, but it's far from shabby. They'll toss grenades to smoke you out of cover, flank you, pin you down with machine gun fire, etc.
All in all, I'd suggest renting it at least to have a go of it.
Where the game realy shines is in its RPG system. For once in the last decade, a game has been produced in which your choices actually effect the events that happen - make the wrong decision and you can totaly screw things up (such as when I wound up letting the Taiwanese president get shot). How you talk and act to people effects how they think of you. On my second playthrough of the game I actually managed to convince the main antagonist's henchman to switch sides and help me out, while on my third he despised me so much that I managed to bait him into trying to kill me - leading to me taking him out.
On that note, another point in the game's favour is its lack of repitition. For one, you can do missions in pretty much any order you like. This may lead to you encountering different characters, gaining different pieces of information, etc. This also means that you can play through the game a whole bunch of times and it still throws new scenarios and results at you. I've finished the game four times now, and because of the different choices I've made throughout the game it's still interesting and fairly fresh to play.
It's also one of the few games that does stealth well. If guards spot a corpse lying around, they're not just going to have a brief look around and then just shrug and go back to what they were previously doing - they'll run off to sound the alarms, gather reinforcements and then search the area quite thoroughly. This can lead to some tense situations where you're trying desperately to hide from a group of heavily armed mercenaries stalking you through the ruins of a bombed out embassy. Also, damaging cameras results in alarms getting set off quite quickly - a nice little detail IMO. Another nice detail is that you rarely have to actualy sneak your way through a mission. If you get fed up you can just whip out an assault rifle and introduce the guards to your little friend.
The AI's nothing spectacular, but it's far from shabby. They'll toss grenades to smoke you out of cover, flank you, pin you down with machine gun fire, etc.
All in all, I'd suggest renting it at least to have a go of it.
"You've all been selected for this mission because you each have a special skill. Professor Hawking, John Leslie, Phil Neville, the Wu-Tang Clan, Usher, the Sugar Puffs Monster and Daniel Day-Lewis! Welcome to Operation MindFuck!"
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Aaron
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Re: Alpha Protocol
I have it (360) and its easily in the top for best RPG of the year. One of the few that truly has different endings based on actions, as opposed to ME which has the same two regardless of what you do. Combat is solid, though some of the powers (chain shot) can turn you into a man-god.