Alpha Protocol: A Geekcentric Review
A few weeks ago, I brought you the first Geekcentric video game review. I am please to welcome you to the second in my ongoing series of Geekcentric video game reviews. This one is the new espionage rpg Alpha Protocol by Obsidian Entertainment/Sega.
A Geekcentric Review: Alpha Protocol Edition
I’ve been waiting… anticipating Alpha Protocol for well over a year now. I put my reserve down on it after reading the first feature on it in Game Informer magazine. As a fan of rpg’s, I was down with an espionage role-playing game, a rare enough bird in its own right, that purports to have character archetypes modeled after three of the greatest icons of the genre, whose names all began, the designers noted, with the initials J.B.: James Bond, Jason Bourne and Jack Bauer. Any game that has the kick-ass-factor of any one of those three bad-asses is a good game in my book. Now this game comes along and claims to have the kick-assitude of all three of them? How could you go wrong?
After a number of delays, Alpha Protocol finally hit stores on June 1, 2010. After I finished exploring Bright Falls with Alan Wake and spent some time riding around the scrublands of Red Dead Redemption, but before I fired up the bizarre world of Deadly Premonition, I decided to step into the shoes of rogue agent Michael Thorton.
The Story: The protagonist of Alpha Protocol is agent Michael Thorton who, like most espionage genre protagonists, is soon betrayed by his country and disavowed by his agency. He becomes a rogue agent on the run, trying to figure out what went wrong and bring those responsible to justice. In place is a love interest or three, starting with Mina Tang. There is also a departmental nemesis in Sean Darcy. Playing the role of the evil corporation is Halbech (sounds like Halliburton) Industries (there’s even a W reference or two thrown in just in case you didn’t get the satire).
The Graphics: I have to be honest here and say that those first few minutes I spent with this game were almost painful. I was fresh off two excellent games with beautiful graphics that blew me away, when I seemingly stepped back in time to the not so beautiful 1st generation XBox days with Alpha Protocol. The graphics are definitely one of the weak points of this title. From blank pixels to the laughable dead fish death animations, I was shocked that a game this hyped could look this bad. If you’re one of the people who needs state of the art photorealistic graphics, then this game is not for you.
The Controls/Gameplay: Despite my initial disappointment, I stuck with it. The dialogue mechanic in this game is not bad. I like the timed conversations and the dialogue prompts related to attitudes, such as suave, dismissive, or professional. Also, the execute prompt is great for those long dialogue scenes that just don’t seem to be going anywhere. The controls for other actions are also pretty well done, if somewhat confusing at times just due to the sheer number of options available. The closest comparison I have here is one that I have heard often about this game: Mass Effect. Just not as polished. I also like the min-games here (always better than blatant contextual prompts) and enjoy hacking computer terminals and picking locks. The weakest part of the control scheme is the cover system, which usually misbehaves, while the weakest gameplay components are the inane AI and the overall glitchiness (nothing like being stuck in a room when the game glitches out each time you approach the exit, only to restabilize as you get farther away from it).
The leveling aspect of this rpg is not as robust as I would like, with too few options and a path that becomes even more limited as you progress. I definitely recommend selecting Freelancer and Operative as your Agent History and Specialization to give you the most options for customizing your character. Even with some weaknesses here, if the gameplay and graphic were as good as Splinter Cell: Conviction, but the Alpha Protocol rpg and attitude-based dialogue systems were left intact, this game would be likely in consideration for Game of the Year.
A word on boss fights. The way this game handled boss was annoying. It broke me out of the otherwise narrative structure of the game, much the way bad contextual prompts do, and reminded me that I was playing a game. Alpha Protocol handles these battles in much the same way it handles graphics. Like a throwback to games of 5 or more years ago. I had to pause one boss fight just to laugh at the way the graphics switched to cell shading in the middle of the fight.
Soundtrack: Most of the time, I wasn’t really conscious of the music in the game. Most of it just isn’t that memorable. There is at least one notable exception though. The cheesy 80′s music (Autograph’s “Turn Up the Radio”) that plays when you encounter Russian hoodlum Konstantin Brayko was catchy (for all the wrong reasons). This scene was reminiscent of the farm scene in Alan Wake. If you’ve played both scenes, you know what I mean.
Overall: I won’t include any spoilery stuff here for those of you who may not have finished the game (like me). I’ll just close by saying that Obsidian has brought us an extremely uneven game here. It has some big, ugly warts that definitely detract from gameplay, yet I can’t stop playing it to see what impact my decisions have on the outcome of the story (I’ve already caused the death of one ally because I held duty above friendship).
If you’ve played this game already, what do you think?
