I’d been aware of Alpha Protocol through several Youtube
videos I’ve watched, but the influencer who said it was good to the point of
being worth buying was Metal Jesus. I’ve been playing it over the last couple
of weeks and managed to reach the end:
Alpha Protocol is an action-RPG, with a greater emphasis on
the action than we might expect from an RPG. You play as Michael Thorton, an
agent recruited into Alpha Protocol, a clandestine United States Agency. You
are sent to a mission in Saudi Arabia to assassinate a terrorist leader; when
transpires that all is not what it seems, you go on the run as a rogue agent,
working your way across Asia and Central Europe to piece together the evidence
you need to clear your name. Along the way, you’ll make friends, enemies, and
uncover a conspiracy to cause structural and economic disaster on a huge scale…
The game has two main elements. The first is the action
sequences, where you run, gun and stealth your way through a series of field
missions. The second is the dialogue sequences, where you have conversations
with people, developing your relationship with them depending on what approach
you take. How you handle these missions is up to you but for every choice,
there is a consequence…
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| I'm having some faff uploading pictures so I'm recycling my old ones... |
Many games boast that latter point, but in Alpha Protocol it
is true. There are three main campaign areas, and countries you visit later
make references to the events that happen in the previous ones. How you treat
various characters makes a difference to what extent they will support you
later. And some people like certain styles of attitude better than others –
people rarely respond positively to aggression, but some characters like the
professional dialogue, whereas others prefer the confident and suave talking.
All of this promises much, but sadly falls just short of
delivering. The action sequences work, but the shooting is a little off. The
viewpoint is over-the-shoulder third person shooting, which is great for
short-to-mid-range combat, and not much use for anything else. You can create a
build that focuses on melee combat, for example, but melee combat in Alpha
Protocol is not fluid enough for this to be a consistently good option.
Thankfully I’d decided from the beginning that I was going to focus on pistols
and assault rifles –the two most standard weapons in the game but the ones that
gave me the most flexibility and strategy. Also, the interface is very clunky;
even in 7th generation games it should never take more than one
button press to access your map and switching between weapons is a lottery,
gambling on which of the directional buttons brings up which menu.
The dialogue sequences work OK as well, although given the
huge number of variables involved with making this, there were some slips –
talking about in-game situations before I’d found out about them, repeating
lines of dialogue from previous conversations, that sort of thing. I’ve managed
one playthrough so far so I don’t know how much difference taking different
options makes; it would be good if it was substantial, but I’m not hopeful.
Nonetheless, it’s voice-acted very well, the graphics look good for their time
and the sound is fine, with the Brayko boss battle being particularly
memorable!
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| But it's well worth showing this bit again! |
With all that having been said, I’ve really enjoyed Alpha
Protocol. I could have used a roadmap to unlock more achievement points by
aiming for certain results, but I found it oddly liberating just to play
through the game, pick the dialogue options and courses of action that made the
most sense at the time, and seeing what happened as a result. I was content to
let my mistakes be mistakes, for example one NPC that I had a lot of investment
in died near the end of the game because I went the wrong way to try to rescue
her. It’s by no means a perfect game, but it’s an experience that relatively
few people have had, and one I was very pleased to get to the end of. I’d
recommend giving it a go if you fancy doing something a little bit different
with shooting and role-playing games.
Final Score: 3/5: Worth a look.
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