Alpha Protocol (2010)

Having sat in my GoG wishlist for years, a 50% off sale and retail therapy coalesced into a purchase this morning.

AP has snuck into my rear view multiple times, as its praise is usually sung in comment sections. I remember bugs didn't allow it to review spectacularly well on release, but Obsidian has always made a good argument. Regardless, Mass Effect 2 absorbed my attention away from it at the time.

Considering its 2010 origin, I'm apprehensive of its political compass towards women, minorities and lgbtq. Having 16 years of experience since release, I'll be able to parse it appropriately, instead of being boyishly swept up in dopey ignorance.

Well, I just set up this 'cult classic'; it took about 40 years to install via our external USB DVD drive, but it's done! Applied the 1.1 patch and changed the in-game language to English* (I ended up with the Czech retail version). I haven't played an Obsidian game before—this is probably a weird one to start with, but I'm looking forward to it.

[*] Open BaseEngine.ini (in *\Alpha Protocol\Engine\Config), find the appropriate field under [Engine.Engine] and set it to Language=ENG (I think Language=INT works too).

Disappointing Design - Alpha Protocol

This is just a rant about various flaws of Alpha Protocol that i cut out of my review. It mostly serves as a warning.

• Menus are often wonky and sometimes won't close with Esc, requiring you to press a tiny (X) instead. Even worse are all the info screen. Instead of scrolling through text with, you know, the scrol wheel, they make you press a tiny arrow. The wheel scrolls through the entries instead... which you can already do with W/S... Picking a game to load is also overly difficult and you'll often end up cancelling by accident. And don't even get me started on changing mods on items...

• Hacking is a terrible minigame because it always has to be for some reason. It's even worse here because you have to drag a combination on top of another combination and click. The combination moves incredibly slowly but is highly sensitive so sometimes you try to click but move it instead. Oh yeah, and because it's so slow it doesn't follow your cursor so you're just fiddling the cursor somewhere way below the actual combination. I mean, did no one test this?

• I've had several CTDs.

• You also have to manually remove video files to prevent those stupid company clips from playing each time you start the game.

• There's an escort mission with an idiotic VIP who runs out in the open.

• The whole "you work for the baddies" thing is also super-obvious and directly copied from Deus Ex, you even return to the base at the end.

• At some point i had to pick between saving someone or following a baddy and i had no idea which door to pick (i picked wrong). Sometimes doors just permanently close behind you because you've reached a checkpoint. In both instances there was no way to go back because there are no saves, just checkpoints. Incredibly, this even applies to exiting the game. If you return to a safehouse all subsequent actions (reading e-mails, buying stuff) will be forgotten because there's no exit save. OMFG.

• For some bizarre reason the sensitivity on sniper rifles (which are static objects anyway) is insane. I had to use Logitechs program to set a DPI switching option to reduce it from 5000 to 200. In one mission you have to hover the sniper reticule over people so you can imagine how annoying hyper-sensitive movement is.

• Pistols are so ridiculously powerful that they turns 95% of the game in a cakewalk. APs "thing" is that weapons aim really slowly, you have to keep aiming at an enemy for several seconds to be able to hit them (the enemy doesn't, of course). Pistols can aim from cover. You don't even pop out and fire, it works like magic. And its skill is a time-stop that allows you to line up 6 shots that don't miss. Even most bosses can't take that much punishment. And i killed the final boss just with ~7 shots from cover. Yawn.

• Up until i reached the penultimate boss (Darcy), Alpha Protocol still had 4 stars. Then i shouted a few times, literally punched the wall and had to restart because of bugs. The boss is in a tower and magically throws bundles of grenades 100m to where you are. He has a bunch of (respawning?) support guys who take 3 non-critical headshots to take out. He is too far away for all of your weapons. The only way to really defeat him is to unlock a door in a nearby tower and use the sniper rifle there. All while he's sniping you, throwing multiple grenades and his men keep piling on.