Alpha Protocol Review
There are many questions asked in the world of Alpha Protocol. Why was an American passenger plane shot down with US missiles? Why do terrorists seem to have such cosy relationships with US defence contractors? Why are said defence contractors able to boss around US espionage agencies? But above all the question I asked myself the most was what exactly does Alpha Protocol mean? For one thing it’s the name of a super secret US agency (so secret the CIA doesn’t know about it) used by the government for deniable operations. It’s also the term for agents who’ve gone rogue and have been disavowed by their government (replacing the more popular term “burned”). Furthermore it seems it’s also the name for a protocol by which disavowed agents set up their own intelligence networks without the oversight of the Alpha Protocol agency. This ambiguity is symptomatic of the game’s general malaise – overall it’s a confusing and rather boring gaming experience, whose few shining innovative points never quite manage to redeem its overall failings.The game’s few shining innovative points never quite manage to redeem the rest of what is still a confusing and boring experience.
The main gameplay boils down to combat and conversations. The game lets you choose whether you want to spec as a super sneaky Snake wannabee (who can inexplicably turn invisible) or a guns blazing Rambo type. Of course the disadvantage of going for the guns, lots of guns route is that in the tradition of the worst shooting rpgs your bullets will go nowhere near the crosshairs unless you spend 10 hours putting all your points into pistols or assault rifles. There is something fundamentally unacceptable about lining up a head-shot only to have the bullet miss the target by a good 3 feet. About halfway along the skill tree for the various weapons you can unlock skills that allow you to perform a “focus shot” (holding the crosshair over a target for 5 seconds or so to be guaranteed an accurate shot) but this doesn’t make up for the unsatisfying gun-play in a game which purports to give you the choice to go all Badlands on everyone if you so choose. It seems pretty inconceivable that Alpha Protocol would choose an agent who can’t even get a guaranteed head-shot on someone from 5 metres until he gets to level 4 in pistol proficiency. Wouldn’t it have been a better idea to hire someone who already knew how to hit the broadside of a barn?
So whilst missions boiled down to a mediocre stealth game or a mediocre shooter, (and what has to be one of the most infuriating keypad hacking minigames ever conceived by a game designer) at least the conversation system provides an interesting reprieve. Here you have the choice of 3 different conversational angles: Be a suave James Bond type (which often makes you seem like a cocky preening git), a ruthlessly aggressive Jason Bourne type or a consummate professional who approaches conversations calmly. Certain characters will respond better to different tacks, your former boss at Alpha Protocol is a tough no-nonsense type who can’t stand wisecracks whereas one of the game’s most notable potential sidekicks, the distinctly psychopathic Stephen Heck, appreciates people who can go along with his insanity. You can definitely see the influences from Mass Effect in this conversation system (as with much of the rest of the gameplay) but the interesting twist is that every conversational response is on a timer. Unlike other RPGs in which you can silently stand contemplating your response, Alpha Protocol’s conversations flow naturally, with people talking directly after each other. This also leads to some genuinely nerve-wracking choices you have to make very quickly. One particularly difficult decision gave me about 6 seconds to choose if I wanted to save the life of one very important person or countless innocents. It’s at these moments, when Alpha Protocol is grabbing the feeling of being in a really tense fast paced spy flick, that it’s at its best.
However these fleeting moments of excellence don’’t make up for an otherwise boring or laughable experience. One moment that stands out in terms of low production values is a mission which takes place entirely behind a sniper’s scope. Using a realtime connection to your handler you have to get a visual of the different npc’s walking around so that your handler can identify the chap your supposed to off. As you examine the various different museum curators and novelists who apparently like to party with terrorist sympathisers, I couldn’t help but notice that about 50 percent of them were reusing the same character model. For all intents and purposes you’re spying on a party being attended by a large collections of identical clones. Of course re-used npc models is hardly a new thing to games but you can’t help but wonder if Obsidian couldn’t have gone to a bit more effort to design some different looking people so that you weren’t looking at two identical twins and being told they were entirely different people. Also it should be noted that the love interest in the Rome section of the game is one of the strangest looking character models I’ve seen so far in a current generation game.
Talking of Obsidian, one of their other hallmarks, a slew of unnoticed bugs and glitches, were surprisingly absent from Alpha Protocol (though it should be noted that I’m playing a significantly patched version in the summer of 2011). Admittedly I had the occasional mission objective that I couldn’t interact with or enemies getting stuck through walls, but nothing as game-breaking as can be found in say, Fallout New Vegas.
But sadly a lack of bugs does not a good game make. Alpha Protocol is largely a confusing, frustrating and tedious experience to go through. What it does badly it does terribly, what it does merely competently is boring and what it does well doesn’t do enough to make you overlook the games many flaws. It’s a plethora of spy movie clichés wrapped up in a frustrating game experience, and sadly it looks like Obsidian won’t ever get the chance to try to polish out the (significant) imperfections in a sequel. There are some great ideas in Alpha Protocol, but nothing good enough to motivate you to struggle through the games’ many flaws.
