Big Head Mode

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.